Party Poker Blog

Just a quick note before I go back to work sunbathing.
Also, the Party Poker Bad Beat Jackpot has just rolled up to $334,000. Guess I'll waste some time there.

Anwyay, we're up to 40 players registered for the tourney. I'm fairly confident we'll hit the 50 needed to give away a WSOP seat.

But the big news right now is that 60 Minutes is running a feature on poker Wednesday night at 8pm EST. It will apparently have Dan Rather interviewing 2003 WSOP champ, Chris Moneymaker.

This is some kind of watershed mark but I can't put my finger on what exactly...

Back soon - but here's the press release:

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BEST POKER PLAYERS REVEAL THAT THEIR SUCCESS IS NOT IN THE CARDS
-- ON "60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY"

The world's best poker players say their success has nothing to do with the
cards and everything to do with faces, words and body language -- theirs and
their competitors'. Correspondent Dan Rather's report on the poker phenomenon
will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY April 20 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the
CBS Television Network.

Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker. He was a 27-year-old,
$40,000-a-year accountant from Tennessee who learned the game on the Internet.
"When I first got out to Vegas, it was my first live tournament with the World
Series and I went out there and I was completely nervous, so I wore shades and a
hat to cover everything up," remembers Moneymaker. He would not have had a
chance at winning the tournament if it were not for the kindness of a stranger.
"A person told me the third day of the World Series that whenever I was
bluffing, I would flair my nostrils," says Moneymaker. "I didn't know I was
doing it...."

Daniel Nagreanu -- a high school dropout -- became the 2004 poker player of the
year after winning nearly four-and-a-half million dollars. "If I come to a
table where I'm sitting with eight people that I've never seen before, I think
within 15 to 20 minutes I can have a rough idea how they play poker based on
what...they're wearing, based on things they say," says Nagreanu He is also
always observing himself. "I see some of the things I do, so I'm constantly
changing up what I'm doing....I study the tapes...like an NFL coach would study
the NFL."

Chris Ferguson, better known as "Jesus," is one of the brainiest players -- he
has a PhD in computer science. His also won the World Series of Poker in 2000.
"An education doesn't make you intelligent," says Ferguson. "You're going to
be intelligent whether you have that education or not. An education just makes
you educated, but one thing all the top poker players have in common
is...they're incredibly intelligent. They're incredibly good at making these
very, very difficult, very close decisions and making them accurately."

Jeff Fager is the executive producer of 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY and Steve Glauber
is the producer of this report.
* * *

Press Contact: Kelli Edwards 212/975-6795 kee@cbsnews.com