1. Doyle Brunson – 78 years old

There is no single figure in the game of poker more universally respected and admired than Doyle Brunson. Known as “Texas Dolly,” Brunson was a road gambler in the 1950s, traveling across Texas and the Southwest to make his living playing in back-room poker games. He was also one of the original gamblers invited to play at the inaugural World Series of Poker in 1970. He has won 10 events, including the Main Event in 1976 and 1977, good for the second most all-time despite having taken an extended break from tournaments during the 1980s and ‘90s when they weren’t in vogue. He wrote a book called How I Made One Million Dollars Playing Poker, which sold for $100 per copy upon its publication in 1978; its name was later changed to Super/System, the poker strategy guide that forever transformed the landscape of professional poker.

During the poker boom years he had his own online room, Doyle’s Room. He was a regular in the highest-stakes games in Las Vegas, and he was a member of The Corporation that took on billionaire banker Andy Beal in a $100,000/$200,000 Limit Hold’em match at Bellagio in 2004. He appeared on television more than 99.99 percent of American septuagenarians thanks to shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker Superstars Invitational. He also continued to win in tournaments, adding a WPT title and two WSOP wins to his $6.1 million resume.

Brunson became the 16th member of the Poker Hall of Fame upon his election in 1988. He is its oldest living member.

2. Berry Johnston – 76 years old

In the high-variance world of poker tournaments, not many players have demonstrated the long-term consistency of Oklahoma’s Berry Johnston. From 1982 to 1985 he was within striking distance of the WSOP Main Event title three times, finishing 3rd (1982), 4th (1984), and 3rd (1985) against top competition. He then won the 1986 WSOP Main Event, taking home $570,000. Though he never again finished any closer to a win in that event than 5th place, he has cashed in it a total of 10 times, more than any players in the tournaments’ history. He has also earned money at least one WSOP event in every year from 1982 to 2010, with multiple cashes in 21 different years. All told Johnston has made the money in 59 WSOP events, tied for 7th place all-time.

Away from the WSOP, where he has won $2 million, Johnston has also been a long-term success in tournaments. He was a consistent presence at final tables in Las Vegas tournament series from the 1980s and ‘90s through the early 2000s, earning another $1.4 million.

Johnston became the 29th member of the Poker Hall of Fame upon his election in 2004.

3. TJ Cloutier – 72 years old

There was a time when Texan TJ Cloutier was the most feared poker player in the world. That fearsome reputation is slightly diminished today, but he remains one of winningest players of all time with $9.9 million in lifetime earnings despite lean years since 2007.

Beginning with a victory in a $2,500 event at the Plaza in Las Vegas in April 1983, the former tight end for the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts and Montreal Alouettes built a reputation as a winner. In the years between 1990 and 2007, Cloutier had six-figure earnings in poker tournaments every single year, a streak that would have extended all the way back to 1985 if he had earned another $25,000 in 1988 and 1989. He has 59 cashes at the WSOP, tying him for 7th all-time with Berry Johnston and Chau Giang.

Cloutier’s place in WSOP history was almost magnified on several different occasions. He twice finished 2nd in the 1985 WSOP Main Event, to Bill Smith in 1985 and to Chris Ferguson in 2000. He also finished 3rd in 1998, when Scotty Nguyen won, and 5th in 1988 when Johnny Chan repeated as champion. He turned his knowledge of final tables into an influential series of strategy guides written with Tom McEvoy, including Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold’em.

Cloutier became the 32nd member of the Poker Hall of Fame upon his election in 2006.

4. Billy Baxter – 72 years old

Georgia’s Billy Baxter might just be the best lowball player in WSOP history. All seven of his gold bracelets have come in lowball events, with five of them coming in No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw – no surprise given the popularity of lowball games in the American South. He’s also just a good big-bet player in general, which has come in handy in the age of No-Limit Hold’em; his total lifetime tournament winnings, mostly from hold’em and lowball draw, total $2.3 million.

Away from the tables, Baxter probably did more for elite poker players than anybody in American history by fighting the government over taxes on his own poker winnings. His case, William E. Baxter, Jr. Vs. The United States, established that pro poker players’ winnings are earned income, which is taxable at a lower rate than unearned gambling income. Baxter also helped one elite player in particular, putting up the $10,000 for former champion Stu Ungar when he won the 1997 WSOP Main Event for a record third time.

Baxter became the 33rd member of the Poker Hall of Fame upon his election in 2006.

5. Dewey Tomko – 65 years old

Not many former kindergarten teachers have finished runner-up at the WSOP Main Event. In fact, there’s only one who’s ever done that – but he’s done it twice.

Florida’s Dewey Tomko already had one WSOP bracelet to his credit when he finished 2nd to the legendary Jack “Treetop” Straus in the 1982 Main Event. By the time he finished 2nd to Carlos Mortensen in the 2001 Main Event, he was a three-time bracelet winner and highly regarded professional player, having been one of its most consistent finishers in tournaments throughout the 1980s and having returned to form just in time for the poker boom. Though his activity has slowed since 2008, Tomko has still won $4.9 million in his tournament career.

Tomko became the 36th member of the Poker Hall of Fame upon his election in 2008.

Poker News

Of all the poker books ever written, most of them are eminently forgettable. But some stand out from the crowd, for a number of reasons. They may serve as historical documents, painting a particularly vivid picture of bygone people and times. And in some cases, they may still offer advice that can help one win at the tables.

In order of their year of first publication, here are five old poker books that still hold up well in 2012.

1. The Education of a Poker Player by Herbert O. Yardley (1957)
Despite the inclusion of some casual racism that sadly marks it as a product of its times (Yardley lived from 1889 to 1958), this book, written by an honest-to-goodness secret agent, still works on a few levels.

Yardley’s advice is fundamentally sound enough that you can still win using it. You won’t beat really good players by relying solely on the lessons he relates here, but winning at poker really isn’t about beating good players. It’s about maximizing your odds at all times, and the best way to do that is to play against people worse than you. If you can find some bad players willing to play Five-Card Stud or Five-Card Draw against you, Yardley can help you run them over.

Education also works as an historical document. Yardley learned to play poker in the first decade of the 1900s, a time from which not a lot of poker literature remains. From telling us how poker players thought to how they selected games and tables to what games they spent their time playing, the book does a fine job of describing a world that ceased to exist many decades ago. It also describes the rules for variations on Stud and Draw with or without the joker, the kinds of games that people used to learn playing around the kitchen table before online poker streamlined the games of choice and made the Joker card obsolete.

But most of all, it’s an entertaining read. From turn-of-the-20th-century American saloons to pre-Communist China, Yardley spent his life in interesting places surrounded by interesting people. Mix that in with his method of delivering poker advice through telling stories specific to each game and you’ve got the recipe for an entertaining read.

2. Super/System: A Course in Power Poker by Doyle Brunson (1979)
Big-bet games have been the standard in poker for nearly a decade now, reversing the long dominance of limit games and emptying the bankrolls of tens of thousands of impatient players along the way. If you want to trace the advanced strategies of today’s winning big-bet players all the way back to the source, you need go no further than Super/System. Like The Art of War, only for for poker players, the book describes Doyle Brunson’s “power poker” approach to the game. It’s immediately recognizable as the forebear of today’s typically hyper-aggressive no-limit hold’em players.

Like The Education of a Poker Player, though a bit less dated, the advice for many of the games is a good enough blueprint to help you develop a solid winning strategy. This is especially true for the older limit variants, some of which haven’t seen much more advanced analyses widely published in the intervening decades. As for the no-limit hold’em advice, it’s a mixed bag these days; savvy players will see your tricks coming a mile away, but you’ll demolish less-advanced opponents the same way Brunson did in the old days.

The book also provides an insight into the life and times of Brunson himself. He may not be out there running over tournament fields or dominating big-bet cash games the way he used to, but the 10-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and two-time Main Event champion is still one of the most successful players ever to take to the felt. The chance to read about his experiences as a Texas road gambler in the man’s own words is a priceless portal to another bygone era.

3. The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez (1982)
Alvarez’s book isn’t a poker book in the same way as the first two entries on this list. There’s hardly a mention of poker strategy in this slim volume – fitting, since the author is the only one among the five here who was an amateur poker player. As a literary writer, however, the highly respected Alvarez brings a poetic flair and an outsider’s eye for detail to his descriptions of the 1981 WSOP.

Much of the early WSOP history taken as gospel today comes straight from The Biggest Game in Town. Alvarez had the ear of the Binion family, not to mention plenty of the game’s early forces, from Jack “Treetop” Straus to Doyle Brunson. That led to the inclusion of some self-serving stories as legitimate history, but the tales are related so well that they’re entertaining if not always altogether true in the strictest sense. He also didn’t make much mention of then-rising star Stu Ungar, who won the Main Event that year and would go on to become one of the game’s most legendary figures.

The early WSOP era was already giving way to the expansion of the game in 1981 when Alvarez arrived in Las Vegas. His book still stands today as a singular look at that time and place.

4. Improve Your Poker by Bob Ciaffone (1997)
Probably the least-celebrated book on this list, in some ways Ciaffone’s tome is the most indispensable in terms of practical poker advice that still holds up today.

Part of the lasting appeal of the book is that it’s a collection of short essays about a wide variety of topics rather than a volume that attempts to explain one variant or another in exhaustive detail. There’s as much attention given to general concepts and gambling basics, like reading your opponents or managing a bankroll or understanding the value of an overlay, as there is to the ins and outs of any specific poker game like hold’em or Omaha.

As Ciaffone notes in the introduction, he had been playing poker for 47 years by the time the book was published. Most of that time was logged in medium-to-high-stakes cash games, though he also played in tournaments from time to time (and finished in third place at the 1987 WSOP Main Event). All that experience, combined with the knack for explaining things simply that earned him the nickname “Coach,” will prove invaluable to anyone looking to build a solid foundation for a lifetime at the poker tables.

5. Positively Fifth Street by James McManus (2001)
McManus’ book mixes two stories into one riveting read. The first is the trial of Sandra Murphy and Rick Tabish, accused of murdering Ted Binion, son of Horseshoe casino owner and World Series of Poker founder Benny Binion. The second story is the tale of McManus’ own unlikely journey from working a magazine assignment to winning a single-table satellite tournament to making the 2000 WSOP Main Event final table.

McManus, a novelist and college writing instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, spins the two threads together so seamlessly that the 400-page book breezes by. Thanks to his close attention to detail, the book serves as a time capsule of the very end of the pre-online poker era. Back in 2000 the stars of the previous 15-20 years, like TJ Cloutier, were still shining bright. Meanwhile some of the players who would shape the post-poker-boom era, like McManus’ tablemate and eventual champion Chris Ferguson, were only beginning to come into their own. The past and future of poker were regularly rubbing elbows at the tables, not knowing at the time that the game they played would change forever within just a few short years.

Poker News

Some of the disgruntled Open winners are now suggesting that since the Miriam Foundation charity was the recipient of their buy-ins and re-ups, it should also be on the hook for FTP’s failure to pay. This argument was backed by former Montreal Open co-organizer, lawyer Morden C. “Cookie” Lazarus, who suggested Miriam “had a moral if not legal obligation to pay” the winners.

Cookie, if you weren’t aware, is (a) rumored to be part of a group trying to relaunch Absolute Poker outside the US, and (b) godfather to Mitch Garber, head of Caesars Interactive, the fledgling online poker business that is somehow expected to generate enough rake from a regulated US market to erase Caesars Entertainment’s $22b (and growing) debt. If encouraging such fantasies is all Caesars Interactive is required to do, then it’s a good thing the company is run by Garber, who for years engaged in the fantasy that he was running PartyGaming, when everyone else knew it was Ruth Parasol, Anurag Dikshit and others who really called the shots. But we digress…

Meanwhile, things are getting uglier between Cookie and Miriam. According to PokerNews, the two parties are waging a legal tussle over the rights to the Montreal Open name. Cookie’s also teamed up with a new sponsor (PartyPoker) on a new charity tournament with a different beneficiary (the Jodi Lazarus Fund for Hereditary Breast Cancer). As a good-will gesture (and a slick PR move), Cookie’s invited the unpaid Montreal Open winners to his new event as VIP guests.

DANNY GOES BATTY, DOYLE GOES SOFT
Last week, Daniel Negreanu posted a video blog in which he doubled down on previously expressed sentiments regarding FTP board members Ray Bitar, Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer. Specifically, Negreanu said he wouldn’t bat an eyelash if players with thousands of dollars in limbo since FTP’s demise happened to spot the FTP “scumbags” on the street and subsequently decided to “bash [them] in the nuts with a baseball bat.” Kid Poker took pains to stress that he wasn’t personally planning on laying some Cooperstown smack on anyone’s grapes, and insisted that he’s “not Charles Manson” instructing others to act thusly, just that he understands the impulse to do so.

Now Doyle Brunson has metaphorically saddled up and ridden to Ferguson’s and Lederer’s rescue. On Monday, Brunson issued his own lengthy blog post on the subject of FTP malfeasance, in which he tried to ease the nooses off the necks off Ferguson and Lederer while tightening the ones around Bitar, FTP’s chief financial officer, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission and Phil Ivey (via an oblique reference to an FTP-sale-killing lawsuit filed by a “major stockholder”). Doyle’s reasoning? “I’ve been in contact with Lederer the last few months. When someone I’ve known for years, trusted and respected looks me dead in the eye and says he didn’t know about the financial problems, call me a big old Texas sucker because I will believe them.”

Doyle admits he’s no lawyer, but believes that “intent” is “a very important word.” Doyle’s opinion is that “there was no intent of wrong doing [at FTP] for years.” The curious qualifier of “for years” doesn’t really bolster Doyle’s argument. With all due respect to Texas Dolly, his blog tries to defend the indefensible by rationalizing that Ferguson and Lederer were poker players first and businessmen second. So, which of these two hats were they wearing when they were cashing all those monthly six-figure dividend checks? Ignorance is no excuse, and claiming that you didn’t know when you had a fiduciary duty to know just won’t cut it in this day and age.

Brunson ended his blog with a plea for tolerance via Christ’s instruction to “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Then again, right before Samson pushed over the stone columns that brought the roof down on the Philistines who’d blinded him, he said (hopefully with a thick Schwarzenegger accent): “Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.” Personally, we’re going with the Old Testament on this one…

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Elsewhere at the Prague Poker Festival, Estonian Raigo Aasmaa took the Grand Series of Poker Prague main event title. From a starting field of 500, it came down to Aasmaa and Belgium’s Roger Hairabedian, who started heads-up play with a 2:1 chip advantage over Aasmaa. But by the end, it was Aasmaa breathing the sweet smell of success and the €80k in prize money. Hairabedian settled for €70k, while Finland’s Kimmo Kurko took third and €60k.

Across the pond in Atlantic City, Tuan Phan showed 617 other players who was the boardwalk emperor at the World Series of Poker Circuit AC main event. Phan earned over $188k and his first WSOP-C gold ring for prevailing in what was the second-largest WSOP-C field of the season and the largest WSOP-C main event field ever held in the eastern seaboard’s gambling hub. In true ‘there can be only one’ fashion, Phan eliminated eight of his nine final table opponents, including runner-up Hao Le, who earned $116k, while Marc Roy finished third, collecting $85k.

Elsewhere in America, Jason Mercier earned a cool $683k at the Bellagio $100k Super High-Roller Event in Las Vegas this weekend. Mercier also earned a $25k seat at the WPT World Championship, to be held at the same venue in May 2012. A field of 29 deep-pocketed players took part in the event, including Daniel Negreanu, Ben Lamb, Erik Seidel, Sorel Mizzi and Sam Stein. However, only five players would finish in the money, and none of those big names made the cut. In the end, it was David Sands earning $619k for finishing second, Isaac Haxton in third (($582k), Justin Smith in fourth ($289k) and Roger Sippi pleading the fifth to earn $192k.

Andy Lee has triumphed at the inaugural Star Poker Summer Series main event, earning $270k for besting a 164-strong field. (If you’re wondering whether that’s a typo, it is indeed summer in the tourney’s host city of Sydney, Australia.) The field was a disappointment for the organizers, who’d guaranteed a $1m prize pool, meaning there was a $221k overlay. Tom Rafferty withstood Lee’s will to win longest, earning $170k for his second-place finish. Matviy Bilenky took $100k for finishing third.

The Asia Pacific Poker Tour will add a stop in Seoul, South Korea at the Paradise Walker-Hill Casino between March 7-11, 2012. The main event will be a KRW 3m (US $2,600) buy-in. A source at Crown Poker told PokerNews.com that the Aussie Millions intends to stage a repeat of the $250k Super High Roller event this January. The 2011 version attracted 20 participants, including eventual winner Erik Seidel, who took home a hefty $2.5m for a hard day’s work.

Finally, Doyle Brunson has been granted a “lifetime player card” by the Epic Poker League. The 78-year-old Texas Dolly had already qualified for a two-year eligibility window based on his past accomplishments on the tournament scene, but he’s yet to take part in either of the EPL’s first two events. Brunson told the Associated Press that while he appreciated the honor, he found “tournaments are getting too hard to come through … I don’t plan on playing a whole lot of tournaments the rest of my life.” Bottom line, nice gesture to a poker icon, but, given Brunson’s apparent disinterest, what’s the point, besides earning the EPL a little midweek press? Oh, right…

Poker News

Brunson is a member of the Poker Hall of Fame. The nominees for the Hall’s Class of 2011 were announced last week, and among them was current Epic Poker League commissioner Annie Duke. Daniel Negreanu would likely be nominated for the Hall, only they changed the rules a while back so that you had to be 40 to get in. Not that Danny’s bitter, mind you. Asked by PokerListings.com to comment on this year’s nominees, Negreanu questioned the reasoning behind Duke’s presence on that list.

“For what? Robbing people at UB? Owing Russ Hamilton money and never paying him back? For stealing money from people at the poker table? For representing poker in the worst light imaginable when she was on Celebrity Apprentice? For all those things, then yes. If you took out the ‘F’ and added a “Sh’ in the word ‘fame’ then yes, I think she should be inducted.” Hey, at least he didn’t use the C-word this time. “Along with her brother [Howard], the Lederer family would be the king and queen of the poker Hall of Shame.” And just in case you think Danny was merely having a bad day, here’s another Howard Lederer dis from just last month (the ‘buffoon’ and ‘arrogant idiot’ comments begin around the 1:15 mark).

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When heads-up action commenced, the Poker Brat held a chip edge of about 1m, a gap he proceeded to stretch to almost 13m, putting Rast on the brink of elimination. But Rast clawed back, doubling up twice in quick succession to pull even with Hellmuth, before delivering the coup de grace after Hellmuth went all-in. Despite having now finished second three times at this year’s WSOP, Hellmuth was histrionics-free in defeat, no doubt assisted by the knowledge that he’d made his biggest career tournament cash at $1.063m. Rast earned $1.72m, a swanky trophy and his second bracelet of 2011 (the only double-gold winner thus far). The rest of the eight cashed as follows: Minh Ly ($665k); Owais Ahmed ($482k); Matt Glantz ($376k); George Lind ($300k); Scott Seiver ($244k) and Ben Lamb ($201k).

In slightly less dramatic fashion, Maxim Lykov has taken Event #54, the final $1k NLHE event of 2011. The 23-year-old Russian pro outlasted a field of 2,644, personally eliminating five of his eight final table opponents, to take his first bracelet and just shy of $649k, bringing his lifetime tournament winnings over $2.5m ($1.5m of which has come this year). Dror Michaelo earned $400k for finishing second. In typical Russian fashion, Lykov was matter of fact about his triumph. “I have more money, but now I need to win the Main Event.”

Ah, yes… The $10k Main Event kicked off on Thursday, with none other than Doyle Brunson doing the ‘shuffle up and deal’ honors before taking his seat at the featured table. Earlier in the week, Brunson had claimed he was skipping this year’s ME, but must have woken up in a particularly good mood or something (although he’s since busted out, so kiss that good mood goodbye). So far, WSOP organizers are saying over 3,200 players have registered for the 2011 ME, with just under 900 of those taking their seats on Day 1A (compared to 1,125 last year) including Jason ‘Costanza’ Alexander. Serenity, now!

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With the dickishness out of the way, the ladies got down to business. In the end, real estate investor Marsha Wolak took top honors, dispatching heads-up opponent Karina Jett in a single hand. Jett, who has previously recorded two fourth-place finishes in this event, took home $119k for being Ladies Championship bridesmaid. Wolak earned $192k and the eternal gratitude of women everywhere for not being Jonathan Epstein.

Matt Matros has taken Event #52, the $2,500 Mixed Hold’Em. This is the second bracelet for 34-year-old pro Matros, who took a $1,500 Limit Hold’Em event title in 2010, and had just missed two final tables (finishing 11th and 12th) at this year’s tourney. Matros earned $303k for besting a 580-strong field, including heads-up opponent Jonathan Lane (who earned $187k). While Matros is obviously thrilled by his victory, he was candid enough to admit that there was no way to “repeat the feeling of winning your first bracelet.”

That sentiment must be well understood by Doyle Brunson, who has 10 of the shiny gold things on his mantlepiece. After busting out of the $50k Poker Players Championship, Brunson tweeted “No main event for me. Maybe the DOJ will stake me.” Brunson subsequently announced that he wasn’t done with tournament poker, but that he had “lost a lot of passion for the game since Black Friday.”

The Main Event gets underway Thursday (7th) and prognosticators are out in force, trying to guess whether the 7% increase in attendance witnessed so far at the 2011 WSOP will produce a larger ME field. WSOP tournament director Jack Effel told the Associated Press that there “aren’t empty tables this year. We’re at capacity nearly all day, every day. What we’re seeing is a lot of the real poker players, the guys who play poker regularly … we’re seeing those guys more prominently than we have in the past. I think the big thing is that people want to win a seat for the main event. They want to get in – they’ve got to have some way to do that.”

Of course, many players were hoping their way in would come via online satellites, a strategy that went ‘poof’ after the Black Friday indictments knocked PokerStars, Full Tilt and the Cereus sites off the grid. Though the WSOP has added additional satellite events this week, Greg Raymer, 2004 WSOP ME champ, expects this year’s ME to fall below 6,000, after hitting 7,319 in 2010. While that would mean this year’s top prize would fall shy of the $8.9m Jonathan Duhamel earned for winning it all last year, Raymer was philosophical. “It’s not like [previous winners] were disappointed winning $5m and $7.5m.” Touché.

Poker News

On Friday, Doyle’s Room issued a press release stating: “We’re launching our brand new poker software. We’ve chosen to move to the Yatahay Poker Network. The new platform offers a completely new poker experience, and you’re going to appreciate all of the changes that are ahead.” The release goes on to quote Doyle himself as promising “a more tailored poker experience with more rewarding promotions and incentives,” such as a $65k Race To The Top launching in February and a schedule with $500k in monthly guarantees.

The release makes a point of stressing that “your players and all affiliate payments are safe. In fact, today’s announcement means that we’ll be able to bring all outstanding payments up to date … The new DoylesRoom is built with integrity, honesty and security, and both players and affiliates are going to love it.”

Precisely what the departure of its most prominent skin means for Cake is as yet unknown. Neither side offered any justification for the split, and a spokesperson for Cake issued only the following statement: “The Cake Network is working with DoylesRoom.com and True Poker in an effort to ensure their transition is as smooth as possible.”

Poker News

Brunson may not be the only Doyle currently considering a change of address. The anonymous chatter in online poker forums suggests Doyle’s Room is preparing to leave the Cake Poker Network, possibly ending up at Cereus. A few days prior to his blog post, Brunson was in Costa Rica, home to the Cereus Network’s UB.com. Doyle’s Room has been with Cake two years now, following Microgaming’s decision to pull out of the US market, and is the largest skin on Cake. CalvinAyre.com promises to keep an eye on the situation.

Speaking of UB.com, a 2+2 poster is claiming that Russ Hamilton, alleged perpetrator of Ultimate Bet’s $20m ‘superuser’ scandal, threw something of a tantrum at Florida’s Gulfstream Park poker room the other night. According to poster “Slif”, after he and his buddy took their seats, they recognized Hamilton at their table and began “an array of subtle verbal abuses” about the scandal, prompting the following outburst from an enraged Hamilton.

“You are a fucking dick…. a fucking dick. If you believe everything you read you are just stupid, just a stupid fucking dick. You do not know what you are talking about, you were not there. You just read about it and think you know…” Security arrived, so Slif and buddy proclaimed loudly that they didn’t want to play in a joint that “caters to this type of cheating scum,” then took their chips and bolted, leaving Hamilton with “a beaming bright red face and the veins on his neck popping out.” What does a stroke feel like?

Also beaming is Phil Hellmuth, the proud papa of a new mobile phone game featuring his likeness. Hellmuth’s High-Stakes Hold’Em is a collaboration between the poker brat, Oasys Mobile and Connect2Media that allows you to play tournament style with Hellmuth’s coaching, or go heads up against the man himself if you think you’ve got the cards (and the balls). But really, to best appreciate the product’s qualities, check out the pasty white guy ‘freestyling’…

Poker News

Speaking of the Heads Up Poker Championship, Annie Duke had a hell of a 2010. She clinched the title (and $500,000 prize) in that event, earned the distinction as the woman with the most in the money finishes at the WSOP and exposed what an asshole Daniel Negreanu is by being the bigger man when Kid Poker labeled her a C-word.

Other ladies making a splash in the year of the Tiger include: Jen Harman, who made two final tables at the WSOP; Vanessa Rousso, finished third in the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic; and online player Christina Lindley, who won the $300 No Limit Hold’em at the USACOOP.

Poker News

After opening a Twitter account, something I’m sure most over 65s haven’t a clue about, the online poker room owner asked his followers which poker player they’d most like to make whoopee with, and the answer was unanimous – Shannon Elizabeth.

Elizabeth beat out competition from Vanessa Rousso and Jennifer Tilly to take the crown of “Doyle Brunson Number One Whoopee Target,” and thanked Brunson via Twitter, to which he responded “You had it wrong about me voting you #1 fav for sex. I didn’t vote, but I can’t argue with so many (5300) voters:).”

Think someone was thinking about Jim, Nadia, and all that pie, weren’t they?!

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Global Gaming Event’s Win Dinner with Doyle Brunson League at DoylesRoom second of three event series continues in August and features a $1,000 Freeroll on August 14th at 3pm EDT. Then on Sunday, August 15th 3pm EDT is the Buyin Event including $1,000 cash added to the player prize pool as well as $1,000 in tournament tickets. Both events also include forum prizes – $250 for the top 3 forums for the freeroll event and $500 for the top 5 forums for the buyin event.

“This is a new type of tournament series for Global Gaming Events with an incredible opportunity for the winning player to win dinner with a poker legend! I can’t wait to see who wins!” says Tara Wilson, Director of Global Gaming Events support.

Even if you have missed the first event – no worries! You can still have a chance to Win Dinner with Doyle. The top 2 scores count towards the leaderboard rankings.

Don’t have a DoylesRoom account? Then head over to your favorite forum, download DoylesRoom poker client from your forum’s banner and open an account. Then head over to http://www.globalgamingevents.com and pre-register. Please pre-register with your LOGIN name and also make sure to use the email address you used when you signed up for your account. Then, in the drop down menu, choose your favorite forum. You’re all done!

Your forum not in the dropdown menu? Then add it! Global Gaming Events loves adding new forums! Just let them know by emailing support@globalgamingevents.com with the name of the forum, the contact email of the admin and then the URL. They’ll take care of the rest.

Pre-registration for this second set of Win Dinner with Doyle League Events closes August 11th at 3pm EDT. After pre-registration closes, watch for the reminder email as well as a link to get the screenshot to find the tournament on DoylesRoom.

The Freeroll event is restricted list and the buyin event is password protected. This password will be available when registration opens for the freeroll and will be included in the reminder email as well as be available on the site (http://www.GlobalGamingEvents.com).

Once again, hurry up if you haven’t already pre-registered! Tell your forum! Tell your poker buddies! Mark your calendar! This is an awesome event that shouldn’t be missed! Global Gaming Events wish you good luck to you and to your forum!

Press Contact:

Tara Wilson
Tara@Globalgamingevents.com
702 533 6000

http://www.GlobalGamingEvents.com

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Bit late for shades, Annette

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Take Brunson. Looks like he lost $100,000 on the Colts, but then that may not come as any great surprise given that he thought they were playing the Patriots.

And as for Ivey, word has it he had $2m riding on Peyton Manning and Co. Ouch!

Admittedly, the only reason I’m being so smug is because I backed Drew Brees for MVP – but if you can’t brag when you’ve outfoxed those two, when can you? Gents, don’t give up your day jobs. Read more.

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