Calling the Clock: Success for Selbst, Book for Bilzerian and Caped Crusaders in California

Calling The Clock: Sexism, Guns and Oil Paintings

Lee Davy rolls up this week’s poker news including Vanessa Selbst winning another seven figure score, Dan Bilzerian writing a book and not contracting sexually transmitted diseases, and much more.

The exalted rise towards the ceiling of poker greatness continued for Vanessa Selbst this week as she won her third seven-figure score of her career.

Calling the Clock: Success for Selbst, Book for Bilzerian and Caped Crusaders in CaliforniaThe three-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner left nine men with faces looking like a leather hat that had been left outside in the rain too long as she took them apart at the seams to win the inaugural Super High Roller Celebrity Shootout.

The event was a $1m winner takes-all event that created a tug of war between five celebrities well known for being poker players, and five poker players well known for being celebrities.

Clint Stinchcomb, CEO, Poker Central was responsible for rounding up the herd. The likes of Don Cheadle, Hank Azaria, Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu participated. Selbst pushing Kevin Pollak off the edge of a cliff to walk away with the million.

Another poker playing Vanessa who has been busy this week carries the surname Rousso. The former PokerStars Team Pro has been busy evading elimination in the Big Brother house, and she is doing a great job. The reality TV show started with 17 incumbents; there are 11 left.

The winner walks away with $500,000 and all the sins of the celebrity lifestyle that accompanies such an honor. Still no one in the house recognizes who Rousso is, and that includes the poker dealer from LA who is sharing the house with her.

When it comes to winning a boatload of money playing games you have to mention the likes of Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. We missed them at this years World Series of Poker (WSOP). They popped their head around the corner for the One Drop, but other than that where were our lost angels?

The pair are currently in Manila playing in a cash game that Poker King Club CEO Winfred Yu believes is the biggest in the world (HK$20,000/$40,000/$80,000). They did manage to dip out the game to promote an exciting new format of NLHE called 6-Plus. Remove the low end of the deck, turn aces into fives as well, and suddenly you have a game where the whales believe they have a chance of crushing the sharks. It all smells of epic tragedies waiting to happen if you ask me.

Talking about epic tragedies, and men who like to play for millions of dollars. Dan Bilzerian is writing a book. I know this because Dan Bilzerian said so on the Instagram page I was scrolling through when I was not staring at naked women hanging over him in Turkish bath style picture poses.

Bilzerian is no doubt writing about his memoirs. It will be a fun read. He did manage to drop the pen for a short time this week. He fed his goat and sued one of those celebrity online magazines that kids love to ogle at, after they quoted an alleged Bilzerian conquest saying that he gave her chlamydia. Bilzerian obviously denies the rumor that there is white discharge falling out the end of his love truncheon.

The chlamydia claims seemed to have a reverberating kickback for Bilzerian’s popularity this week. He may have 11.5m teenage boys masturbating over his Instagram page, but he is no longer in the Ranking Hero HeroScore Top 10. Rumors of STD’s and poker players do not go together. He is out. Ranking Hero announcing a partnership with 2+2 that will see posters rewarded for their contribution to poker, enabling them to climb the rankings of HeroScore – as long as they don’t have any STD’s.

Talking about heroes and the caped crusaders of Team PokerStars Pro have ended their tour of Californian cardrooms this week. They visited 11 cardrooms in total, mingled with their fans, raised awareness in the state and raised a ton of money for charity, like all super heroes do.

Jason Somerville was also on that tour. That’s why he wasn’t twitching. Don’t worry. He will be back. This week he announced a new two-year Twitch deal. It won’t be as crazy as his previous 78-consecutive day streak, but it will still contain all of the goodness that you are used to I am sure.

From PokerStars to partypoker and their relationship with Dusk Till Dwan (DTD) seems to go from strength to strength. This week they announced plans to inject $400,000 of guaranteed cash into a new enterprise called the UK Daily Majors. UK based players get the opportunity to win a ton of money, for a relatively small fee, on a daily basis. There are also opportunities to win a Porsche and face Rob Yong heads-up for $25,000 in cash.

From poker rooms to the people who make them tick.

Aaron Lim became the first player to win two Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Main Event titles when he won the latest event in Manila for $131,780. That’s the first time in nine years anyone has done that. Firas Haddad picked up $126,760 after winning the first event of the new World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) season in Foxwoods, Manig Loeser won his first live tournament in two years when he downed the World Poker Tour (WPT) National Main Event in Rozvadov for €76,000, Pierrick Tallon won the top prize of £53,000 when he won the United Kingdom & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) Main Event in Bristol, and Ben Jee & Daniel Neilson picked up the two biggest prizes at the 2015 Sydney Poker Championships.

Time ladies & gentlemen please.

Someone has just called the clock.