Poker Blog Round Up: 23 February

So, what was Daniel Negreanu’s response to Dexter-gate? Unsurprisingly it was rather weak. The best he could do to justify his embarrassing attempt to be “entertaining” was to put a link up to a clip from Trading Places, the 1983 comedy starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. The clip features Dan blacking up and this proves what point Daniel? Other than the obvious fact that there was a context to Aykroyd doing it plus he’s actually a professional comedian and a pretty funny one too. Unlike Danny boy, of course.

Daniel also tried to tell us that when his wife applied the make-up it came out much darker on video. Plus of course he gave us a long list of all the different races he is friends with. Obviously Daniel is not a card carrying member of the Klu Klux Klan or anything like that, but how he can't admit his total misjudgement in this whole fiasco is beyond me. From his latest blog entry you can sense he is feeling the pressure though when he writes: “I'm getting pretty sick of all things related to poker, that don't involve actually playing poker. This blog, the columns, the book writing, the internet forums, it's all getting really old, really fast.” Wow DN, I wonder why?

He goes on to say: “In fact, yesterday I was seriously contemplating making some pretty big life changes. As in, dumping the blog, my columns, etc. Not for any other reason than I want to play poker again. Not no limit hold'em, but poker. Stud 8 or better, Omaha 8 or better, Triple Draw, pot limit Omaha, limit hold'em, all the games”. That sounds like a brilliant idea, let’s hope Danny himself reads that back and thinks so too. Previous to all that Daniel actually writes a vaguely interesting account of how he built up his tank and ended up playing in the big game at the Bellagio which, I suspect, is what most of his readers would like to read…

I think Shaniac is a little peeved at me (I’m assuming he reads this brilliant column, but of course, he may have no idea of its existence) because I accused him of being a foodie. Sorry Shane, didn’t mean to hurt your feelings because I do think your blog is one of the best out there. Recently he’s been updating us with his chip count from some tournament somewhere, but the best thing is this quote from another site that is an excellent follow-up to a piece that Shaniac wrote on Phil Gordon a while back. Shane must be pleased as his observations on Gordon are thoroughly vindicated.

“After losing a three-way allin to Barry Greenstein with A7 vs KJ, the following takes place:

As Gordon gets up to leave, he complains about the nature of his beat, and the normally reserved Erik Cajelais asks him, "Why don't you just take your beat and leave?"

Gordon, flabbergasted, stops packing to stare down Cajelais. "What the f-what the hell is your problem?"

"Just take your beat and leave," says Cajelais. "You'll be fine."

"We'll meet again," says Gordon, again starting to leave.

"You don't go deep enough in tournaments," says Cajelais. "We'll never meet."

Now Gordon, obviously more than a little irritated by the beat and the French-Canadian, spreads his arms in a show of strength and tells Cajelais, "Any time you want to go, we'll go."

He walks out, still repeating "anytime," as Cajelais agrees with him, "Anytime." But Gordon vanishes into the night, and Cajelais sticks around to count his chips and relax, knowing there's probably a Day 2 in his future.

I’ve ended up quoting the whole thing because it is so good. That is what I call tournament reporting! It’s about time somebody started documenting these moments. Poker is a neverending battle of ego, psychology and one-upmanship. Basically, it’s WAR. Let’s face it, most poker players actually hate each other and like nothing better than to see some other player go belly-up. I like the cut of this guy Erik Cajelais’ jib.

Obviously I was too nice to Quiet Lion last week. I must be getting soft in my old age. What was I thinking giving him a good write-up? Luckily our first class flyer is back to his old tricks this week. Fast becoming the blogosphere’s dirtiest old man the one time writer of Microsoft Word and and keen oenophile is regaling us with more tales of uberbabes and Chilean sea bass.

The Full Tilt Poker pro has been in Reno and has found out one of his favourite strippers is getting married. He recalls a past encounter, writing: “Veronica was very friendly and pleasant as I beat her at pool and when I called it a night, leaving the rest of the crew at the bar, she walked me to the door and lingered. I looked her up and down… She had the kind of body that made you want to buy a trapeze just to see if you still had any acrobatics left in you. But redheads are bad luck, I thought, and decided to give it a pass as I turned and walked out the door alone”. Richard, no! I thought you were a Lion not a pussy. What’s the point of blogging about life in the seamy underbelly of places like Reno - “the biggest shitty little city in the world” - if you don’t partake? Get some closure for once man!

To be fair the Lion maybe has a girlfriend at the moment – in the previous entry he tells us about an evening with Jenni, his “uberhot new sweetie”. Does that phrase plus a couple of provocative photos of said girl mean girlfriend? I don’t know, but I like the look of her friends (as does our Ricky by the sound of it).

Well, here’s a disappointment. After spotting his blog and his attempt to turn $1,000 into $200,000 Fukken_Eh appears to have given up. “The authors have deleted this blog” is what you’re met with when you click onto his site to check up on his progress. I did notice that when he had a good session Fukken_Eh was all chirping chips a nd projecting when he would get to the next level, but if, Heaven forbid, he had a losing session he seemed to get very gloomy and immediately start talking about giving up on his project. I guess he went on tilt and got ironed out. What went wrong? I thought online poker was easy and everyone turned a couple of dollars into hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars. Wow, he really blew it…

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Finally, for all of you who think I just like to dish it out you can have a look at this. This is how lean this week is – I’m reduced to pimping my own blog. Feel free to flame away in the comments.

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

23 February 2007

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