Party Poker Blog

I grew up a pretty big fan of boxing. And gambling on boxing.

And tonight feels like old times, getting together with friends to watch a huge match between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

This is arguably the last gasp of dying breath from a once proud sport that is now smoldering in ruins.

And so, I'm going to relish every minute of this evening's event.

During the bout, I'm going to be screaming with a Jekyll and Hyde persona because I've laid a significant amount of dough on Mayweather to win, but I'll be outwardly rooting for De La Hoya.

I can't lose, damnit.

There's a large debate going on about Mixed Martial Arts, and to a greater degree, the UFC, taking over boxing. I'm of the camp that it's already happened.

Over at the insanely popular UFC site that I help with, UFCjunkie, there's a nice writeup about current UFC lightweight champion, Sean Sherk, sitting ringside at the fight and hoping for a fight with Mayweather. Or Maryweather, as I've taken to calling him since he insulted MMA.

It's telling to note that HBO has inked the UFC for future PPV events. ESPN has begun covering the UFC, even adding a link in their navigation menu in their website.

And now there's news that Yahoo! Sports appears to have launched a full-time boxing and MMA section, luring away a blue-chip boxing writer.

But it begs the question: when was the last time there was a new global sport like the UFC? I can't think of one. Racing? Nascar? Hell, the INDY 500 has been going on since 1911, so I don't think that qualifies.

Exciting times, indeed.

But for tonight, I'm going to enjoy every freaking round of two top fighters going toe to toe in the ring. It's going to be a long time before something of this magnitude comes along again in boxing.

I'm gambling on the UFC.

TGIF.

My main man, Johnny Hughes, has sent me an excerpt from his possible upcoming novel.

For the love of everything Good in the World, can someone please hook this man up with a publisher or an agent. He's got loads of priceless stories that need to be shared, damnit.

Enjoy:

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Texas Poker Wisdom by Johnny Hughes, an excerpt

In the summer of 1960, Buddy Bolton and Matthew O'Malley both went on impressive winning streaks in the West Texas Hold 'em games.. Youthful optimism told them Buddy's 1953 Mercury would make it across the desert. They headed for Las Vegas. It was the age of the beatnik. They wanted to see the things they had read about religiously as they studied their Kerouac novels. That summer, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were battling for the Democratic party nomination for President. Lubbock and Las Vegas both had a population of about 125,000 people. Buddy and Matthew had both just turned twenty-one. Both were already well-rounded gamblers........


Guy McAfee built the Golden Nugget in 1946. Previously, he had owned a string of whore houses and gambling joints in Los Angeles where he served for years as the commander of the Los Angeles Police Department vice squad. When the political climate changed, he moved to Las Vegas. Benny Binion had a very similar experience. He had been the boss gambler around Dallas until his Sheriff lost. Guy and Benny were neighbors and pals.

A rare afternoon rain spotted both boys blue oxford shirts as they dashed across Fremont Street to the Golden Nugget. Matt told Bill Boyd they were both experienced poker dealers and were looking for work. "We are used to playing with paper currency not silver and chips but we'll get the hang of it." They sat down at an empty table and both boys demonstrated their expertise and fancy moves with a deck of playing cards. Boyd offered them jobs as shills, playing poker for the house. He said they could train as dealers and move up later. Shilling paid $1.50 per hour or twelve silver dollars for an eight hour shift. Poker dealers made $22.50 for eight hours. Mr. Boyd took the deck to explain their job duties.

"You'll be playing dollar-limit five card stud." Boyd said. He dealt two cards to Matt, Buddy, and himself. "If you have a pair, put your cards at an angle like this where the other shills will get out. If you have an ace in the hole, put your left thumb on the corner like this. If you have a king in the hole, move your thumb down about a half inch like this. Those are the only signals, for a pair or an ace or king. There might be five shills in a game. You play real tight and fold when a man is out in front of you such as showing an ace you can't beat. Watch the other shill's hole cards for signals. I don't want y'all going against each other unless it is to keep a game going. Sometimes there are all shills. You get a fifteen minute break every hour but no drinking on the job."

Buddy and Matt played poker from three P.M. to eleven P.M. every day but could neither win nor lose. It was very exciting for ten or twelve minutes. ` They started each afternoon with sixty dollars. Matt went broke two or three times a day. Buddy was the top shill as to winnings because he played like he had been told sometimes, made unpopular bluffs at the other shills, and made frequent false signals when no one had a pair. The pot cut was ferocious. There were nickels, dimes, quarters, and silver dollars. The dealer constantly made raking motions, cutting a few coins with his fingers and more with his palm. If it got down to one live one and a shill and the bet was a dollar and the call was a dollar, the rake was a dollar.

The Golden Nugget poker room had a steady flow of foot traffic and gawkers. Bill Boyd would pull a five-dollar bill out of his billfold and ask a tourist to try the five stud game, "Your first chips are free. I need to keep the game going. Just try it." Matt and Buddy always exchanged humorous glances when the sucker lost the five dollars and invariably reached for his own money. Once a faded former show girl whose better days were another desert story over drinks played for thirty-six straight hours, losing hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Buddy felt sorry for her and Matt almost did. He told Buddy, "If I ever felt sorry for anyone, it would be her. But this is a gambling house. You see a lot of long faces." ........

There was one real poker game at the Golden Nugget, a six-dollar limit Razz game. This was a six card stud low ball game. Bill Boyd would put Buddy in the game and sit behind him and give him pointers. Matt was jealous but kept quite. The first day, Buddy won the house $184. He expected some type of tip or bonus but didn't get it. Bill Boyd was known as one of the best stud players alive. He was later one of the first men inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. The next day, Boyd left Buddy in the Razz game nearly his whole shift. He spent more time sitting with and coaching Buddy than he did hustling up suckers for the more profitable snatch games. Buddy won $232 for the joint against regular players who came every day. The ante was a quarter. The house pot cut was only one ante.

Matt asked Mr. Boyd if he could play in the Razz game some time. Bill Boyd said, "You are too loose to play my money." Matt never forgot that. Their bankroll was going down slowly like the sun behind the mountains. Matt didn't want to but he held his nose and wrote Moody pleading that a loan be sent to the Post Office, General Delivery, Las Vegas, Nevada. Matt said, as he had often, that he wanted to return to Texas Tech in the Fall and change his no-count ways. On their third trip to the Post Office, Matt received a small letter with no return address. Inside was a two sentence letter in Moody's spidery fancy script. It said, "There is only one thing worse than being a gambler. It is thinking you are one when you are not." It was unsigned.

Buddy was becoming a disgruntled employee. He was the big winner in the Razz game every day. Their chance to become poker dealers didn't seem to be any closer. Matt cited the rules when they had both been shills at the dice games in Lubbock for the Reverend Pruitt. "The Reverend would give us ten bucks a day even on a bad day. When the joint made some good money, he'd give us fifteen. Mr. Boyd ought to slip you a little something extra for beating the Razz."

Sometimes, they'd bet a couple of bucks on a baseball game to pass the time. They decided to bet all their day's wages on the front line at the dice table for one roll when they got off work. They lost three days in a row. Their bankroll went down some everyday. Lubbock was looking nearer and dearer. In their lives, the rent being due often propelled decisions great and small. Their discussions returned to the cinch fortune they could make in Lubbock in the fall running a poker game and booking football. Really save a bankroll. All the things they had been saying to each other since the third grade seemed fresh and new. It wasn't as if they had a whole hell of a lot of choice. They couldn't admit that to each other or themselves.

It's been three years.

From the great Jesse May:


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It's started. The erosion of poker truth has begun. In today's world it is he who slings the mud farthest that clamors to the top. Hold your tongue Johnny come lately, watch out Daniel in the lion's den, because poker players know that if a man has fleas he's been lying with the dogs. And the men of respect they know who the dogs are, with quiet mouths and jerky glances they've been fading dogs for years, because it's not so long ago. Maybe the microscope got turned upside down into a megaphone, maybe every televised hand has been parsed twice and passed through Sklansky, but that doesn't mean that past is ashes.

And in the poker world, character has never been fleeting. The players have minds like elephants caught in the steel traps, the world was never so big that you could sit down at the table and nod just once for times gone by. The water's under the bridge with the writing always clear on the wall. Poker's big now, but the story is the same as ever. Someone will be getting fucked, and if you're desperate enough to want to survive, sell your soul and join the team. Don't worry. He'll throw you bones, he'll toss mongrel scraps and promises from above, after all Don King made Holyfield rich and famous. Rich and famous and collared to a post.

The men of respect have mostly been rangers. They grew up with talent, they were burdened with honor, and they banded alone and faded getting fucked. There have been freight trains of others, cattle cars in and rib roast going out, and the few mangy cows that avoided the slaughter bled from the jugular and squealed like pigs before the devil came down and offered the deal. And the men of respect? They padded softly, out of the limelight, from game to game and in the wee hours of the night. Stu Ungar showed up in a coffeshop in Tahoe on the morning of a final table to find the other nine having breakfast as one. He howled. They shouldn't have made him mad. He didn't
collapse with the Ace-king when the pressure came on. And the dogs hated him for it. And they always will. The oppressed people, they never want to be free. All they want is to rule.

Is it true Mr. Molson? Is it true that there are players who will benefit from the fact that no sponsorships are allowed? Is it true that one management firm has sprung up, a company whose office is in some building in Minnesota, the same building as the W pis-pee? Is it true that Bile has handpicked some players to promote, to promote in the advertising and the commercials, leading lights to front the team, while the rest of the players have to listen to prize pool bullshit, to an incessant drone that is aeons old, band alone and fade getting fucked? There was only one player at the Sands who didn't take the money, who said sponsorships are for children while $40,000 was being offered for two hours wearing of a hat. There was one who claimed to be above the fray, but players want to know why. Players want to know why. You think the Furrier's a savior, you think he took something where nothing's been before? Well then Bill Gates is a genius, too, with clean hands to boot. But there's a lot more at stake then one man replacing his Toyota with a Lexus.

There's poker players out there, stars of the game, men of respect who hold their tongue and go about their business, because they've doing it since boo. Since the Furrier was a snake. Since he was a hooded serpent who bought people and smashed them. What you think? You think they don't deserve what's fair? You think you can tell a man who's survived the war that the gun is not loaded?

Make no mistake Johnny. Money is not added. Money is not filtering down. Promises are not being kept. The players are the stars, they always have been, and the overlords will be thieves long before we call them Daddy. Basketball and baseball, there is a reason for players' unions, there is a reason that there is a sharing of television revenue, that players wear logos, that there is a player pension fund. And there's a reason why old boxers drive delivery trucks. One man stands up, a quiet man, a man of respect, and in his own small way he says, look. Do you see this?

Where's the 40 million for the TV contract? Where's all the money that sponsors pay to have their brands associated with the most exciting guy to ever fling two cards and his stack in the pot? You think people want to watch some schmuck who will crumble at the sight of a raise? Everybody wants to watch the golden hearted lions, watch them flock in the jungle. But the man wants them to be stupid. He needs the smart ones to band alone, to fade getting fucked, and the stupid ones can join the team and clamor loudly. Because dissent is the terror of the Furrier.

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OK, time to shift gears for a second. If you want the Joy Miller insanity, scroll down.

But for now, STB sent me the Wall Street Journal article from today talking about our beloved game of poker and it's current pains.

Enjoy:

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Harvard Ponders Just What It Takes To Excel at Poker
Prof. Nesson and Others Stress the Skill Involved;
Why It's a Legal Issue
May 3, 2007;

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Four-time poker champion Howard Lederer makes a plush living playing cards. His scholarly calm at the table has earned him the title "The Professor," along with $3.3 million in tournament prize money.

Just don't call him lucky. To describe poker as anything but a game of skill, he says, "is just wrong."

Now poker fans in academe are jumping in to help prove that point, most recently with a daylong "strategy session" at the Harvard Faculty Club bringing together poker pros like Mr. Lederer, game theorists, statisticians, law students and gambling lobbyists.
[Howard Lederer]

"The purpose of this meeting," said Harvard University Law School professor Charles Nesson, kicking things off beneath the dusty visages of long-dead Harvard poets and divines, "is to legitimate poker." To do that, Prof. Nesson and his fellows hope to show, statistically, philosophically, legally and otherwise, that poker is a game in which skill predominates over chance.

It is the straight flush of poker theory -- and just about as elusive.

The skill debate has been a preoccupation in poker circles since September, when Congress barred the use of credit cards for online wagers. Horse racing and stock trading were exempt, but otherwise the new law hit any "game predominantly subject to chance." Included among such games was poker, which is increasingly played on Internet sites hosting players from all over the world.

By making the case for poker as a skill, aficionados hope to roll back the law, and even win the game newfound freedoms in states where wagering on poker is currently banned.

Poker has been on a tear for years in the U.S. and is "rampant, in a good way," among Harvard law students, Prof. Nesson says. Poker-players-turned-celebrities vie for million-dollar purses on ESPN and the Travel Channel. Millions of Americans now play the game with some regularity. The Department of Labor last year recognized "professional poker player" as an official occupation. Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who sent his regrets for the Harvard session, plays in a regular game.

Yet poker, in many corners, retains its image as a smoky pastime of gamblers and cheats. More pernicious to some is its modern incarnation on the Web, where play also boomed until Congress passed its September ban.

Supporters of the law, which was slipped into a port-security bill, argued that Internet casinos feed addictive gambling and lead college students to rack up huge losses on their credit cards. They also cited concerns that the sites were run by offshore companies outside the purview of U.S. law.

Leading a Counterattack

Mr. Lederer and his sister, Annie Duke, one of the country's best female poker players, are helping lead the counterattack. Joining them is the newly muscular Poker Players Alliance, the game's lobbying group, whose membership has swelled to more than 400,000. The group has targeted unsympathetic lawmakers and launched letter-writing campaigns to overturn the ban. The group's Web site features the photo of a brain and the line, "It's Better to Be Skillful Than Lucky."

Now academics like Prof. Nesson are joining the cause. "It's about time poker became a subject of academic inquiry," says the Harvard professor, an amateur poker buff who at 67 buzzes about campus on a moped.

Prof. Nesson has jumped on the poker cause largely as a personal-freedom campaign. He says he has received no money from the industry, but the Poker Players Alliance did pay for the faculty club rental and food for the day.

Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, who hosted a recent strategy session on poker, created a Web page for the gathering, including audio from the day-long event.
The game's main lobbying group, the Poker Players Alliance, makes its own brief case for poker as a skill.

Annie Duke, one of the game's best-known players, writes a blog, where she argues that her game is mainly skill.

Ms. Duke's brother, Howard Lederer, also a repeat poker champion, ascribes some of his success in the game to mastering a Zen-like calm.

For more information on economist Steven Levitt's research into poker skills, visit Pokernomics.

Poker is at heart a betting game in which players compete against one another for a growing pot of money. Players win either by getting the others to fold their cards or by having the best hand, ranked according to a hierarchy. Poker's name most likely derives from an ancient French bluffing game called poque, from the antiquated French verb poquer, which meant "to bet."

The luck-versus-skill debate is a lot more recent. Under U.S. common law, games that are predominantly chance are considered gambling, while those that are mainly skill are not.

In 1989, in a case enthusiasts love to cite, a California circuit-court judge ruled in favor of poker as a skill, allowing the state's famed card rooms to stay in business. But in 2005, a North Carolina state judge smacked down a local card club, calling poker a game of chance. Case law in other states is just as mixed. Judges in Colorado, for instance, have taken both sides.

'Mini-Version of Life'

Prof. Nesson's gathering quickly agreed that poker is clearly a game that some excel at and others don't. "Poker is a very structured mini-version of life -- and also an incredibly difficult game to get good at," says Mr. Lederer, who took up cards at 18 and dropped out of Columbia University two years later to play full time. Both he and his sister now consult for online poker sites, and both attended the Harvard gathering.

Mastering the game, particularly the dominant version these days known as Texas Hold 'Em, can take years. Its complexity of betting and bluffs has long exasperated computer programmers who have tried to mimic the best players.

But defining that skill is just as tough. Is it an ability to bluff? Is it largely a mathematical knack at calculating the odds of getting a certain hand, and then betting accordingly? Or is it a combination of those skills?

Scientific Solution

Some hope the solution can be found scientifically. Jay Kadane, a statistician at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, doesn't play the game. But he was drawn to the Harvard session by the idea that one could show, statistically, what makes some players better than others. The online poker companies have reams of minute-by-minute data on the decisions and bets of thousands of players, and Mr. Kadane has pitched to potential sponsors a project that would crunch those data in search of proof that poker is a game of skill.

University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, who co-wrote the best-selling book "Freakonomics," is already in the midst of a similar quest. His project, called Pokernomics, seeks to analyze the electronic data from more than a million hands of Texas Hold 'Em with the goal, he says, "of understanding what makes a person a good or bad poker player." Mr. Levitt, who is doing the project without assistance from the poker industry, has invited players to email in their own electronic data from games on the Internet but wants a minimum of 10,000 hands per player so he can analyze their moves in depth.

In the absence for now of any scientific proof, Prof. Nesson urged the group to come up with more legalistic arguments. Ms. Duke has won more than $3 million in tournament prize money. One sure sign that poker is a skill, she says, is that unlike roulette or the lottery or betting on football, "you can purposely lose at poker if you choose." To lose requires skill, she says -- or at least an ability to affect the outcome.

Her brother offers another proposal, which he suggests might impress a future judge. The "vast majority" of high-betting poker hands, he says, are decided after all players except the winner have folded. So if no one shows his cards, Mr. Lederer says, "can you legally argue that the outcome was determined by luck?"

The poker industry may get lucky anyway. Last week, Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, introduced a bill the poker industry supports to overturn the September ban and regulate online gambling. Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler says he has drafted a more specific bill after being besieged by poker players in his South Florida district. "My bill will say that poker is a skill," he says.

After his strategy session wrapped up, Prof. Nesson led the group to a bar for drinks. He was delighted, he said, at how the group "pushed game theory to the level of metaphor." Sipping a scotch on the rocks, he tossed out the idea of creating a poker university, with himself as one of its teachers. Then, "we could infuse all levels of education with the skills that come from poker," he said.

---

Weeeeee.

Lots of craziness out there in the poker world today pertaining to Terrence Chan, Annie Duke, Steve Dannenmann and Joy Miller. I've read some nasty threads all over the place. See prior posts for background if need be. Or go read Otis at UpForPoker.

And luckily for you, I have Joy's response right here on Guinness and Poker.

I actually talked to her last evening. Weirdly enough, she was Jenna Jamison's agent for awhile.

And then my hero, Johnny Hughes, emailed her this morning and got her response which she graciously is allowing me to share with ya'll right here. Johnny, too.

Enjoy:

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thank you for the advice.

there's nothing i can do to make a bunch of strangers who have decided to involve themselves in a situation that doesn't affect them, change their mind about me. i was obviously taking one for the team.

terrence was wrong to involve complete strangers in this situation BEFORE coming to me or anyone else that could have helped him. he chose to discuss it with the internet. he NEVER complained about annie sitting with steve until he got home and put it on his blog. that was wrong of him, and the personal attacks on me have absolutely nothing to do with that.

the trashing doesn't really affect me, as no one who lives in my life is on there discussing my anatomy or "personal issues", i truly dont feel i need to defend myself to complete strangers who are trolling the internet reading gossip. i even actually emailed someone a complete lie to see if they'd put it up without checking it and they did! TWO in fact!

i have been trying to conceive a way to get terrence feeling whole, but the more he's commented and added fuel to the fire, the more it's forced me to be distracted by having to field phone calls from psychos who are "going to stab me at the WSOP this summer" or emails referring to my parent's raising a whore. my phone is now tapped for the next 7 days by the LAPD because i was getting so many disgusting and graphic phone calls that i had to have some traced.

i always had the intention of dealing with terrence, one on one, in fact, i've had 3 conversations over the phone with him. i don't blast business or personal issues in to forums where people without complete knowledge of the situation feel compelled to comment. i'm sure he's updated his "fans" on every new development, so i'll leave the business of discussing things with the entire world to him.

i'm not important, i never said i was, all i alluded to was i thought terrence was being unfair by LATER telling me his annoyance and then DEMANDING a seat, which anyone would agree was not appropriate. i don't affect these people and when you sit down to play poker, i don't have any affect on that either, so i DO wish that those who are speculating on me personally, would re-evaluate if they even want to waste their time discussing me. because frankly, i'm only marginally interesting.

i do thank you for the advice, but i'm not willing to bother responding to people that are just plain nasty and gossip-y. thank you for seeing that i am being the scapegoat, it makes it a little easier to take ;-)

by the way, if you want to post that i am an avid skydiver who once saved a man whose parachute didn't open -- it might add to my allure -- it's a lie, but then again, most of them are! ;-)

be well!

Johnny Hughes rocks. And you know what, he's dead right about this, per my prior post.

His email to me this morning - posted with permission, of course:

---

Subject: Defending Dutch Boyd

Come on, Iggy, you come across as a tolerant, flexible person whose humor alone would brand him as a man who looks on the behavior of gamblers with enough salt to impress Lot's wife. Would you be so quick to jump on your very own namesake? Heavens no, say I. You have heard the old saying, "People from cincinnati should not throw stones."

I met Dutch when he first came to Las Vegas. I am hard of hearing a little and when he said his name was Russ, I thought he said Dutch. I introduced him around the World Series of Poker as Dutch. We played together quit a bit in the 2,5 no-limit Hold 'em. We shared some meals and hung out. I took an immediate liking to Dutch. I showed him some cheater's moves to watch out for. Dutch laughed at that since he had studied magic as a kid. He showed me the amazing chip tricks he later did on TV in the World Series the year after I met him. Dutch was on a very skinny bankroll since he had gone broke on that Internet deal. He was only twenty. He made a big mistake and he knows it.

Most of our conversation had to do with why someone so intelligent with a law degree would rather be a professional poker player. Meeting Dutch and his crew opened my eyes to the revolution and dominance of the twentysomethings in tournament poker. While we were playing together, Dutch went off to play a satellite for the World Series. He asked me if I wanted half his action. I told him, "I don't put in with nubbins." We had been having a lot of fun talking and joking at the poker table. This enormous black man, easily north of 350 pounds, who introduced himself only as "Big" threw in with Dutch. We all sweated it out but Dutch got knocked out. The next year he went on to the final two tables and lots of TV fame.

The year after that, Dutch got down to three handed in the Razz event against T.J.Cloutier and Howard Lederer. Dutch's "crew" of Bret, Scott, Joe, and some others were loudly cheering for Dutch. I was too. Now all those guys I have mentioned have won bracelets, including Dutch.

I knew the fast money, hard living, and Las Vegas nights would take a toll on some of these young gamblers. Does that shock you, Iggy? Recently, Dutch admitted he had bipolar problems and sought treatment. Let us all give him a chance to find himself. He who has never been stoned should caste the first rock.

If you knew Dutch, you would like him. That Perry thread looks like a big drunk talking and thinking he was being funny. How many of you would like the worst things you said spread out there on the wooly wide web? I like Dutch but it is sure all right with me if you do not. Some of my friends are for him and some of my friends are against him and I am for my friends.

Johnny Hughes

---

Well said, Sir.

Howdy all. Quick rambling tangential post.

We interrupt the poker content here for some WoW nonsense. Poker content below.

We probably all know somebody who plays World of Warcraft.
And we pity them.

But hell, after I learned that ten million people were playing even I went and checked it out for a few weeks. I like fun games as much as the next guy, even if they do involve elves.

So I finally found the TuffFish of WoW. Great stuff.

I don't know why I enjoy this so much. His rage? His accent? The drawings?

He's trying to run a group of WoW players and kill a big bad dragon.
There's a poker metaphor here somewhere.



Second on tonight's list of WoW thingies is a post about playing paladins. Again, I guess this is only funny if you've some semblance of the game, but I don't care. I'm blogging it anyway.



Nice.

Now to the third and final WoW thingy. This is truly wacky.

Offering sex for virtual money? Is this prostitution? Or is the truism "Time is Money" coming to fruition in the virtual game space?

This lady wanted a horse in World of Warcraft. They are apparently expensive, not unlike the real world. So she offered someone (anyone!) the opportunity to bonk her in exchange for the gold needed to purchase the damn pony.

Hell, I've slept with people for less.

But here's the original ad she posted to Craigslist: An Epic Mount.

And she got some takers along with some unwanted publicity, especially since her photo was included on her above post.

And God Bless Capitalism, she got her horse: Epic Mount Prostitute Triumphs.

Part of me wants to call shenanigans on this sordid affair but I can't find any evidence to back it up.

I don't understand people who grind on WoW versus poker. Grinding in poker is my middle fucking name.

So here's a few poker tidbits to tide you over.

Wow, an old Dutch Boyd thread from TiltBoy, Perry Friedman, documents some very bizarre behavior by Dutch. Read and decide for yourself.

----

I originally alluded to this a couple of months ago, but now that Russ is getting all this attention, I felt obligated to come forward with more details. My original post can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/jfus

Below you will find one of my chats with Russ Boyd. I had contacted him to talk about Pokerspot and had some reasonable and normal conversations with him prior to this chat. At one point, he had asked me to become his mentor, and I said I was not interested. At one point, he had asked me to become his mentor, and I said I was not interest. After several "normal" chats, he eventually started becoming very irrational and delusional and made some bizarre posts to RGP and sent me some strange emails during this time period as well. During the chat below, he started driving up my "warning" level on AIM chat for no apparent reason.

I have included one of his chats below, but I have removed his phone number and social security number for his protection. I have also changed his AIM ID, since he was not using his "pokerspot" ID. I was hesitant to post these chats, mostly for Russ' own protection, but I think that given recent events, it is worth posting. In order to post it with a clear conscience, I made the changes above because I will not sink to his level.

I also have some saved email from the good old days from Pokerspot where they were weaseling about cashouts and claiming technical issues.

Like I said in my old post referenced above, I can forgive the chat he had with me, and dismiss some other things as youthful indiscretion, but he has been unrepentant about his dealings with the Pokerspot clients and it was clear some of his actions were intentionally deceitful and fraudulent. This I cannot forgive.

Regardless of what state of mind he was in when we had these chats, they should lend some insight into his true character.

RUSSBOYD: You ready yet to take on a protege, Perry?
RUSSBOYD: Can you hear me now? Good.
friedm5: I am here.... not looking at a protege
RUSSBOYD: fuck
RUSSBOYD: Maybe I should change my name to Perry Freed man
RUSSBOYD: you listening?
friedm5: Yes
friedm5: How do I know you are even Russ Boyd?
friedm5: Somehow, I get the feeling you are not
RUSSBOYD: I can give you my number.
RUSSBOYD: you and I can have a little chat about what I've been up to last year.
RUSSBOYD: I hacked poker.
RUSSBOYD: Find out what I did two years ago.
RUSSBOYD: Be my mentor.
RUSSBOYD: Pretty please?
friedm5: You seem a little too juvenile for me
RUSSBOYD: hehe
friedm5: I particularly like all the warnings
RUSSBOYD: Russ Boyd
RUSSBOYD: XXX.XX.XXXX
RUSSBOYD: YYY.YYY.YYYY
RUSSBOYD: I'm a reasonable man...
RUSSBOYD: get off my case.
friedm5: You gonna keep driving up my warning level?
RUSSBOYD: yeah.
friedm5: Cool
friedm5: I may have to block you, then
RUSSBOYD: don't do it yet.
RUSSBOYD: Fuck you
RUSSBOYD: FUCK PERRY FREED MAN
RUSSBOYD: you believe me yet?
RUSSBOYD: You want to win at poker? Win at life first...
RUSSBOYD: if you can't win at life, ask yourself a question:
RUSSBOYD: What's youre Social Security Number?
RUSSBOYD: Mine is XXX.XX.XXXX
friedm5: Well, you seem a bit too juvenile to be Russ Boyd
RUSSBOYD: Exactly
RUSSBOYD: thanks, man.
RUSSBOYD: What's your Social Security Number anyway?
friedm5: Why should I tell you that?
RUSSBOYD: give me a call when you are ready to talk
RUSSBOYD: then maybe we can switch lives for a year?
RUSSBOYD: I want to win at poker
RUSSBOYD: so maybe we make it so nobody loses?
RUSSBOYD: good idea
RUSSBOYD: let's see if it works.
RUSSBOYD: it's all about the buddy system... and I don't like any JEWS.
RUSSBOYD: I'm an Elvis Impersenator and I can tell you why.
friedm5: Well, how would calling you confirm that you are really Russ Boyd?
RUSSBOYD: ELVIS LIVES jews don't
RUSSBOYD: JUDAISM LIVES you don't
friedm5: I may have to report you to AOL for violating their terms of service
RUSSBOYD: FUCK YOU = "How can I help you?"
RUSSBOYD: do it again
RUSSBOYD: I DARE you to fucking do that again
friedm5: No need to... I am just going to report you to AOL for abuse and violating their terms of service
RUSSBOYD: uh oh
RUSSBOYD: I'm getting offline.
RUSSBOYD: You should call Russ Boyd if you think you can keep up.
RUSSBOYD: You know I don't play poker anymore, right?
RUSSBOYD: What if the devil asked you for three more wishes, and called it the contract.
RUSSBOYD: Sounds like a movie, right?
RUSSBOYD: Hopefully it comes out sometime next year.
RUSSBOYD: Just dont' kill yourself over a bad beat at poker.
RUSSBOYD: = Let Perry live the life for awhile until he gets back to me.
RUSSBOYD: just fucking warn me dude.

Perry

PS The above chat would be humorous if it weren't so sad and disturbing. I felt like I was running Meta-X psychoanalyze-pinhead in Emacs (which is basically "Zippy the Pinhead" spewing quotes into an Eliza-like psychoanalysis program).

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Yikes. Please Dutch - take your meds.

And finally, I gotta point out these posts by Terrance Chan via Otis. I mean, I've never met Terrance but I'm a long, long time fan.

Go read the insanity and links from Otis at UpForPoker on this story. Now.
Where the bunnies get burned

Sorry, but Annie Duke shows her true colours once again.

Terrence > Annie

A few links of the day for you.

Now She'll Never Go Back
Black men have something white guys don't have anymore: confidence in their masculinity, their sexuality. They clearly know they're men.

For the easily-led Christian retard
James Dobson goes on the warpath against Doonesbury.

Brazen Beauty Behind Bars
An excellent new inmate dating site, and who can say that's wrong?
Besides the guy this woman helped kill.

Took the boat out today for the first time and had a splendid day. Until we ran out of gas, that is (yes, I was in charge of the gasoline). Thank God for trolling motors, even if it was an arduous trek back to the dock. My wife caught all the fish - I snapped a fishing pole in half and am severely sun burnt.

I barely made it back in time for Al's bracelet tourney. Yes, I'm sitting and folding there right now while doing some reading.

But for now, in honour of the NFL draft, allow me to blog the draft, Cincinnati Bungals style.

Fine column by Paul Daugherty:

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Bengals doing less with less
Adding personnel staff would cost dollars, but make sense

On Draft Day, the Bengals have what everyone else has: a board of names crammed with more information on each potential draftee than the CIA has on Castro. They can tell you how long it takes Darrelle Revis to run 40 yards, what Aaron Ross leaps vertically (tall buildings in a single bound!) and whether Michael Griffin prefers Skippy or Jif.

They have all the data and most of the intangibles. What they don't have is enough eyes, ears and opinions. They lack numbers. This hurts them more in the pro personnel area than it will today. But it hurts today, too. Yet Mike Brown likes his personnel department the way it's always been. Little.

He has his brother Pete, the team's vice president of player personnel, who watches more video than Ebert. Pete Brown is an unsung hero of the organization, sort of a Rain Man of scouting detail. He seems to know everything.

Mike has scouts: his son Paul, the director of football operations; Jim Lippincott; Greg Seamon; and Duke Tobin, a sharp talent spotter who sleeps less than a 12-ounce cup of Starbucks. Mike has two consultants: Bill Tobin, Duke's father, well-connected and wired into the football-rich South, most notably the Southeastern Conference; and John Cooper, the former Ohio State and Arizona State coach, equally entrenched in the college game. And that's it.

That's the problem.

It's not impossible to fix. It just takes a little money. Uh-oh.

In Baltimore, the Ravens have what they call the 20/20 Club. It's for ambitious, aspiring football savants, who'd rather break down game tape than have a life.

They're a group of scouts in their early 20s, hired for the poverty wage of about $20,000.

The 20/20s do grunt work, but they're also trained in what could be called the Ravens Way. They watch film. They're in personnel meetings. They're schooled in what the Ravens want in a player. It's not necessarily what you can measure, time or read on a stat sheet.

They're offered the carrot of upward mobility. Hence, the Ravens have a continuity in the personnel department that assures they get the kind of players that "fit (their) scheme, temperament, (and) persona" as national scout Joe Horvitz put it in an interview with the Washington Post. "We are grading specifically for the Ravens."

Baltimore also declines to pay the two scouting services used by all but six NFL teams, including the Bengals. The Ravens can hire two scouts for the $100,000 they save from not paying a service. "It forces us to become more reliant on ourselves, not on somebody else's word of mouth," Horvitz explained.

It's no coincidence the Ravens have the best draft record in the NFL since 1999. Forty-six of the 62 players (74.2 percent) taken by the Ravens since '99 were on a league roster at the start of last season. Twenty-twenty vision, you might say.

Teams have been doing this for a while. More than 25 years ago, the Baltimore Colts hired a kid straight out of Wesleyan, a Little Ivy League school in New England. He was the original 20/20. They paid him $25 a week and put him up in a local hotel. He broke down game film and occasionally slept on a desk at Memorial Stadium.

When he asked after a year for a raise and a company car, Colts GM Joe Thomas turned him down, so he moved on. The kid was Bill Belichick. He's done OK since.

Belichick has his own young grunts now in New England. He had a kid named Eric Mangini, reprising the role of Bill Belichick, circa 1980. Mangini coaches the Jets now. And so on.

These are people who can tell Belichick 10 minutes after a veteran from another team is released the reason he was let go, if he'd fit as a Patriot or if he'd be a waste of time. This is how the Steelers found an unhappy, supposed malcontent running back in St. Louis and turned him into a Super Bowl running back and likely Hall of Famer.

If he could land a diamond from the rough like Jerome Bettis, might Mike Brown kick in a couple hundred thousand a year for young, smart scouts?

We can dream. Meantime, expect business as always from the Bengals. Nothing spent, nothing gained.

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Last, but truly not least, a huge congratulations to CJ over at UpForPoker for moving all in. Well played, Sir.