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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-272383952016-08-25T05:54:06.687-04:00Hard-Boiled PokerExistentialist musings from Short-Stacked Shamus,
 an online poker player of (primarily) micro and low limits.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-15440303413140366632016-08-22T20:23:00.000-04:002016-08-25T05:54:06.827-04:00Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 6 -- Samri, Moorman, and the Kooij

A short one today as the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event played down from nine players to a winner in just about six hours or so.
 The Frenchman Mohamed Samri ended up winning the sucker, kind of a surprise to be honest as there seemed others in the final group more likely to come out on top, including the eventual runner-up Teunis Kooij of the Netherlands and third-place finisher Chris Moorman, the British standout.
 Moorman started today with the lead, and Kooij -- which we were pronouncing as though it rhymed with "huge," often referring to him as "The Kooij" -- took it over early on. Both had big stacks and Samri was short during three-handed play, but Moorman lost a big preflop all-in with pocket sixes against the queens of Kooij, then lost the rest in the next hand to go out somewhat surprisingly in third.
 Kooij had the big lead to start heads-up play, but after the last two made a deal it was Samri winning both of the all-ins to take it down. Samri had less than $4,000 worth of tourney cashes before, so the €353,220 score was crazily big for him. And Kooij had no recorded results, so it was huge for him as well. Or should I say, hooij.
 Got back in the room in good enough time to give my mom a call on her birthday and assure her I was doing fine out here with the long work days and (often) short nights of sleep.
 Speaking of sleep, I'm moving over to help with Day 1b of the Main Event tomorrow, which has another of those undesirable 10 a.m. starts. I've traded off shifts, though, so thankfully won't be going in until later. Gonna take advantage of the extra hours here and relax some -- more mañana.
 Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.
Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-11539370289420158832016-08-21T17:15:00.000-04:002016-08-23T18:08:12.546-04:00Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 5 -- La Cena

Had a relatively shorter day of work today, short enough any way to allow for a nice, slow, late dinner with most of the PokerStars blog team that made for a very pleasant end to the workday.
 Had a rich tapas plate similar to one I remember enjoying last year. (In fact, I found a photo I snapped of the same dish a year ago and am including it to the left.) I also very much enjoyed passing around stories with the fellas regarding not just our poker-reporting adventures, but our non-poker lives as well (which we all thankfully have).
 Such is a nice side benefit of the late, post 9 p.m. dinner -- typical in Spain and referred to as la cena. The day is essentially done and there's no more worries to tend to afterwards (except perhaps writing a quick blog post before bed). No rush to "get back" anywhere.
 There was a lot of rushing around the tournament room today, of course, as we documented the playdown from 98 players all of the way to just nine on Day 3 of the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event. Online legend Chris Moorman carries the chip lead to tomorrow's finale, and would seem to be the favorite to win the sucker.
 It should be the shortest day so far tomorrow, if all things play out as they should. Might even have to wait a few hours afterwards before going for la cena once again.
Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-65321467911067578622016-08-20T22:51:00.000-04:002016-08-23T17:41:02.915-04:00Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 4 -- Percentage Players

Have been here since Tuesday morning and still am out-of-whack sleep-wise, so I'm cutting this entry short so as to get some snooze time sooner than later.
 The bubble burst in the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event today, but with 695 players making the money out of 3,447, that made the event a little less climactic, particularly since the first wave of cashers were only getting their €1,100 buy-in back.
 Was saying yesterday how I tend to prefer freezeouts. Not sure what to think, really, about the idea of paying a higher percentage of players in these things -- namely 20% (instead of 15%), a change the EPT introduced this season.
 There were some in the €50K Super High Roller tweeting negatively about their event featuring 20% payouts, and today I heard Frank Op de Woerd interviewing EPT Tournament Director Neil Johnson about it. (EDIT [added 8/21/16]: Here's that interview, if you're curious.)
 I'll have to think further about it to decide what I think. Having the top 10-15% cash has always seemed like a reasonable amount, but I can also imagine entertaining arguments that such a range is arbitrarily selected -- that is, if another percentage had been adopted as the "standard," we'd feel differently about this one.
 All I know right now is my energy level has dropped to that same 10-15% range, so I'll cut it off here and sign off. Check the PS blog. More here mañana.
 Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-10250203485409794992016-08-19T21:51:00.000-04:002016-08-23T17:36:10.683-04:00Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 3 -- The Big Freezeout

Crazy huge field for the third and final Day 1 flight of the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event, which my colleague Jack and I helped report once again along with help from our photographer friend René.
 That to the left is a pic of the registration line early in the day. Ended up with 1,755 players on this day alone, which brought the overall number of runners up to 3,447 -- a little over 150 more than what they drew for this same €1,100 buy-in event from a year ago. That makes the prize pool €3,343,590 with €423,600 up top for the winner.
 It's kind of a unique thing these days to have a relatively big field event for a relatively low buy-in and there not being any reentries involved.
 Looking at this past summer's World Series of Poker, there were seven events out of the 69 that drew larger fields in terms of entries, although four of these were reentry events. Only the Main Event, the Seniors, and the Monster Stack were freezeouts drawing more "uniques" to play -- of those, only the Monster Stack really compares (being a $1,500 event).
 As a fan and reporter, I very much prefer freezeouts. As a player I do as well, although that could be in part because when I first started playing tournaments, "rebuy" events (as they were called, and for which there is a distinction) were then the exception, not the norm.
 From the reporting side of things, it's tedious enough to do multiple Day 1s, but to have the same players entering over and over and report on their bustouts time after time is more than a little absurd. I'm remembering one event from a couple of years back I covered in which a player entered seven times, and I reported five of his bustout hands.
 Talk about chronicling trivia.
 Anyhow, things get a bit more interesting tomorrow with the bubble bursting and everything becoming a bit more meaningful going forward. Thankfully I'm catching a slight break with these 10 a.m. starts, as Jack is covering the start and I'm doing a little extra at the end, giving me a bit more time in the mornings for other things. I won't go on about it, but I'm no fan of the pre-noon starting times, no way no how.
 Back at it tomorrow. Check that PokerStars blogfor more on the ESPT, as well as for reports from the first €10K High Roller which should be playing down to a winner.
 Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.
Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-35951494182871999612016-08-18T23:55:00.000-04:002016-08-23T17:32:17.177-04:00Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 2 -- Three Hours (and Other Threes)

Kind of a crazy day today, what with the 10 a.m. start time for Day 1b of the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event.
 In the non-poker world, 10 a.m. would represent a late start to a person's workday, but such is far from the case in poker. Noon has been a standard earliest start time as long as I can remember, with the monkeying around with things the WSOP did this summer to start an hour earlier therefore predictably causing an understandable rumpus.
 This 10 a.m. start was a bit hard on your humble scribbler, primarily because I tend to have other work I have to do on these trips, and the mornings become the only reasonable time to get such tasks done. Didn't get to sleep until around 3 a.m. and so had to wake around six just to have enough time to get through what I had to do in order to get to the tournament on time.
 Three hours of snoozing is not enough, folks. No way, no how.
 Thankfully going forward there are a couple of factors that'll alleviate things somewhat. For one, we'll actually have earlier end times, which makes the earlier starts less terrible to endure. Also, my partner Jack is going to get us started the next few days while I'll come in a little later and do some extra stuff at the end, which'll make my life a lot more sane.
 By the way, here's a funny hand I saw from the first Day 1 flight. One of those strange, did-I-really-see-what-I-thought-I-saw kind of hands.
 A player limped, the small blind called, then British player Adam Owen looked at his hand in the big blind.
 The blinds were 1,000/2,000, adding up to 3,000. The antes were 300 apiece.
 Owen announced he was raising all in, and after the dealer counted out his stack it proved to be exactly 33,300.
 The situation was three-handed. Until, that is, Owen's two opponents successively let go of their hands. That's when Owen decided to show his cards, turning them over one at a time.
 The first one was a black three. The second was the other black three. No shinola.
 Back at it tomorrow -- Day 3 here for me. Check the PokerStars blog for the reporting thus far, and keep it there to see what comes next.
 Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.
Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-72747181060636355982016-08-17T23:18:00.000-04:002016-08-18T09:56:13.032-04:00Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 1 -- Lag Player

The first long day of work here at the European Poker Tour Barcelona festival was a good one, mostly focused on the initial Day 1 flight of the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event with a few look-ins on the early €10K High Roller (the first of several high rollers on the schedule).
 I was flagging a bit by the time night fell, however, my body clock still way off thanks to having being projected six hours ahead of my usual time. I don't usually suffer that much from jet lag, but it hit me squarely this time to increase my fatigue during the last few levels of the night.
 Compounding things was the discovery near the end of the day that the tournament we're covering is starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow rather than the typical 12 noon or 12:30 p.m. Not sure of the reason for the change, other than anticipating a big turnout and needing to plan well for available table space while the many other prelims go off all around.
 There were 3,292 players in this ESPT event last year -- all uniques, as it is a freezeout, not a re-entry -- and it could be they actually draw more this time for the €1,100 buy-in event. I guess everyone all over Europe has been waiting all summer for this sucker, and Barcelona is a fairly central spot for many.
 Anyhow, while I'm bummed about losing the couple of hours of sleep, our day will end earlier tomorrow (and the next two days when we'll again have the 10 a.m. starts). It'll all work out.
 Head over to the PokerStars blog to see what's happening both with the ESPT Barcelona event and everything else. Right now, I gotta go snooze.
 Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.
Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-41230776805252176172016-08-16T23:10:00.000-04:002016-08-17T03:51:56.779-04:00Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Arrival -- Surf's Up

That redeye flight to Barcelona was easy enough. Nine hours or so in the air, I think it was, then a short shuttle ride to the hotel which will be home-away-from-home for the next couple of weeks. Am not far from the water, and so have already gotten a glimpse of those gentle Mediterranean waves lapping up against the eastern shore.
 Watched one movie on the way over, this late 1970s coming-of-age flick from John Milius called Big Wednesday. As I've well established here over the years, I'm kind of a sucker for all things seventies, and so found the film engaging enough, if a little empty.
 It stars Jan-Michael Vincent, Gary Busey, and William Katt as three Malibu surfers, checking in on their characters' stories every few years as they grow into adulthood. The movie fairly obviously tries to evoke an American Graffiti-like depth in its reflections on having to let go of the fun stuff that marks us during our younger years and accept the responsibilities that come with growing older, though ultimately (for me) it didn't really give the viewer that much to ponder.
 I remember first hearing about this movie when I was a teen, but never seeing it. I probably would've been more intrigued by it then, not now that I'm on the other side of the growing-up process being depicted.
 I suppose I have kind of a been-there-done-that mindset here in Barcelona, having been here before and gone through the routines of the reporting in the past. Then again, it's hard not to be excited by the beginning of a new festival, and of course getting to reunite with the fun folks with whom I get to work on these things adds a lot to experience.
 That's a message of Big Wednesday, of course -- that friendships transcend pretty much everything. Except surfing, maybe.
 Gonna float off to sleep here now as my clock is all screwy. More tomorrow, a.k.a. big Wednesday.
 Image: Big Wednesday (1978), Amazon. Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-30936509258601076772016-08-15T20:13:00.001-04:002016-08-15T20:13:27.593-04:00Back to Barca

A quick note scribbled in the airport, letting you know I'm about to board another one of those flying tubes that's carrying me back to Barcelona, Spain where I'll be among the throng reporting on the first stop of Season 13 of the European Poker Tour.
 This will be my third time in Barcelona. Had the great chance to bring Vera along on this trip a few years back (three years ago, I believe), which made for a fun vacation for her. Going it alone this time, as she's hanging back to help manage the farm while I'm away.
 Am curious to see how much of the city I recognize this time around. That's one benefit of going back to these places multiple times -- they start to become familiar and thus distinct from the other stops. And, of course, sticking relatively close to the casino makes certain places (especially restaurants) even more memorable as we return to them time and again.
 I'm also intrigued to see the EPT get cranked up once again, as it always seems to be growing and evolving in interesting ways.
 I'll give a shout once I get over to the other side of the Atlantic. Hablamos mañana.
 Image: "Vil.la Olimpica (Hotel Arts)" (adapted), Francesc_2000. CC BY 2.0.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-34601368213245317442016-08-12T12:15:00.000-04:002016-08-15T14:33:43.325-04:00Preseason Football is Like Play Money Poker

That NFL Hall of Fame Game was canceled last Sunday because of some sort of field-painting snafu, thereby delaying the start of the preseason by a few days. Such teasing perhaps increased the anticipation slightly prior to last night's games, although truthfully the whole NFL preseason is pretty much a tease, if you think about it.
 As the Carolina Panthers lined up to begin their initial preseason game last night versus the Baltimore Ravens, I was slightly excited to turn away from the Olympics for a bit and finally -- finally -- dial up the sport I enjoy watching the most. But it only took a series or two (and the subbing out of the starters) to remember these games aren't quite "real" football. (Crazy to think how tickets for these games cost the same as regular season ones.)
 In fact, it only took me until the start of the second quarter before I was already flipping back over to swimming and gymnastics.
 Found myself thinking a little of play money poker games -- pretty much the only kind I play anymore online, and only rarely at that. There's always a small little feeling of excitement when sitting down, kind of a very, very faint echo of the feeling from years ago when playing real money games. But it goes away quickly, and it's hard to maintain focus and/or enthusiasm thereafter.
 I do want to restart my play money "Home Games" on PokerStars at some point, which in way work to create a kind of interest and competitiveness that can be fun. I'll try to get motivated in that direction sooner than later.
 Meanwhile we can wait out these tedious preseason contests until September 8 when my Panthers get another crack at Denver in the season opener. The real opener, that is.
 Image: "100% Genuine Fake Shop. Lol!" (adapted), Graham Hills. CC BY 2.0.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-5695054163971541612016-08-11T21:59:00.000-04:002016-08-12T22:21:37.294-04:00Bovada Turns Ignition

So it sounds like Bovada -- the U.S.-serving online poker site (and casino and racebook and sportsbook) -- is going to shut down at the end of September.
 The site has been sold to Ignition Casino, and players have been invited to open accounts over there and have their funds transferred over. There's a casino there, too, to go with the poker room, but no racebook or sportsbook I believe. An email to players explains how Ignition's poker room "uses the same platform as Bovada," and so includes all the same games and tournaments.
 In fact, the site looks very much like a "skin" or copy of Bovada in every respect. In other words, the move is a bit like the one the site pulled off back in December 2011 when the U.S.-part of Bodog split off and was rebranded as Bovada.
 I played on Bodog back in the day, and still have an account over on Bovada although I never played any real money games there. After messing around with some small bankrolls won via freerolls on Merge sites during the year or two following Black Friday, I haven't bothered trying to play on any of these "rogue" sites at all. Too many stories of various difficulties getting funds onto such sites and making withdrawals have been enough to discourage me -- never mind the much worse tales of scams and loss of funds (via various causes) making playing on those sites even less enticing.
 Of course a lot of players have stuck with Bovada in particular over the last few years, with its traffic essentially rivaling that of the 888poker, the world's second-most frequented online poker site behind PokerStars (that is, well behind Stars which is like 8-10 times as busy as either).
 That's including the Bodog.eu portion of the player pool, too, which I'm not sure will be the case with Ignition. That is to say, Ignition may only have U.S. players competing against each other, or at least that's what an Ignition customer service rep told PokerNews.
 Americas Cardroom (on the Winning network), another U.S.-facing site, also remains popular among a decent number of American players, despite all sorts of bugginess with its software and other issues (besides that missing apostrophe in its name).
 It remains kind of curious how this Bodog-Bovada-Ignition shell game gets to continue onward while managing to escape the punishments -- and, it seems, the miscalculations that helped lead to those punishments -- that knocked their larger rivals out of the U.S. five-plus years back. Seems like this might be a step away from the U.S. online poker game (of sorts) for Bodog owner Calvin Ayre who recently has been mentioned in some of these investigative reports regarding Bitcoin (with which he seems heavily involved).
 The rogue sites remain interesting on some level, I suppose, if only as a dim echo of other examples of shady, legally-dubious poker games that have constantly been part of the history of the game in the U.S. But for me the interest is essentially academic, as I'm content to watch from the virtual rail.
 Image: Ignition Casino. Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-37096330181789141082016-08-10T20:15:00.000-04:002016-08-11T20:27:48.917-04:00Canada Bill, Karl May, and Imagining the Old West

This week's installment of Poker & Pop Culture over on PokerNews is the last of a few entries discussing "steamboat poker" during the 19th century.
 The last of the characters covered in the steamboat sequence is William "Canada Bill" Jones, a hustler who was in fact better known for his prowess dealing three-card monte than for his poker playing. In fact, George Devol (with whom Jones partnered for a time) said "he was a fool at short cards" (i.e., poker).
 The section on Canada Bill includes mention of one of the more famous quotes attributed to him, one having to do with it being "immoral" to let suckers keep their money, a line that comes up in Rounders (among other places).
 One side road that I didn't go down in the column regarding Canada Bill was the way he pops up in a couple of stories from the 1870s written by a popular German fiction writer named Karl May. One is titled "Ein Self-Man" and the other "Three carde monte," and the last one gets retold early on in a later work of May's called Old Surehand II.
 The stories are set in the Old West and involve a fictional version of Canada Bill. In the stories May pits his version of Canada Bill against Abraham Lincoln, kind of staging an odd, partly humorous "battle" between the Canada and the U.S. with the two characters representing their respective nations. With both characters, May is highly liberal with his embellishing and reimagining, so much so that the characters are really only superficially connected to their historical counterparts.
 May isn't so well known in the U.S., but is very popular in Germany, having sold over 200 million books during a career that stretched from the 1870s to his death in 1912. He wrote adventure stories and novels set in various places far from Germany such as the Orient, the Middle East, and the U.S. A recent New Yorker profile of him says his "stories of the American West are to this day better known to Germans than the works of Thomas Mann."
 Among his most popular works were a series of stories and novels about an Apache named Winnetou and his friend Old Shatterhand, a German immigrant who narrates. Well after his death during the 1960s, a bunch of film adaptations of May's writings were made, most of them of his Old West stories. Whether via his writings or indirectly through the films, May's many "Cowboys and Indians" stories have had a lot to do with how many Germans came to view the early history of the United States and especially Native Americans.
 I'm intrigued to read more of Karl May and get more familiar with this curious Europeanized version of 19th-century America. Perhaps what makes me most curious, though, is the fact that May never actually visited the U.S. (even though apparently he often told people that he had).
 That is to say, all he knew of the American West he had learned from books and others' writings. Then he transformed it into something else. As The New Yorker piece explains, May's writings never did that well in translation among American audiences, primarily because what they were describing was too familiar, or not as "exotic"-seeming as was the case for the Germans who read him.
 "Americans would be more likely to get the stories if they were set on another planet," says an American publisher of May's translated works. He adds that the books are in fact most popular among German immigrants.
 Seems like it could be an interesting detour to take, reading some more Karl May and learning more about this wholly imagined Old West he created in his writings.
 Meanwhile, if you're curious to read about the actual Old West -- in particular poker playing on 19th century steamboats -- here are those Poker & Pop Culture columns:

"Professional Card Sharps Rocking the Boat"
"George Devol, the Ultimate Steamboat Sharp"
 "'It's Immoral to Let a Sucker Keep His Money'"
Image: Winnetou, Karl May, Amazon. Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-40623594184135046712016-08-09T21:45:00.000-04:002016-08-11T09:21:17.110-04:00Making the Case for Online Poker: Somerville On CNBC

A post to share this clip of Twitch star, Team PokerStars Pro member, and ambassador of the game Jason Somerville appearing on today's episode of Power Lunch on CNBC to "debate" the topic of legalizing and regulating online poker in the United States with Rev. James Butler of the California Coalition Against Gambling Expansion.
 The scare quotes are deliberately included there, as we've become well accustomed to the these versions of "debate" that mass media presents us that aren't really debates at all, but dim parodies of actual dialogue and reasoned discourse.
 If you've watched any CNN or other cable news networks lately -- or any time, really -- you know what I'm describing. Every single news item is accompanied by a shouting match between two commentators taking "sides" even in cases when the issue isn't even especially "debatable." Sad! (As one of the subjects often discussed such contests would tweet.)
 It reminds me of an funny track from The Credibility Gap's Bronze Age of Radio album (from 1977) titled "Editorial Reply." A news station allows a citizen to come on the air and offer an opposing view to an editorial calling for an increase in safe driving. The commentator is introduced as Dr. Lewis de Longpra, Executive Secretary of the de Longpra Institute of Editorial Reply.
 The editorial -- delivered by David L. Lander (best known as Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley) -- begins with the observation that the argument in favor of safe driving "completely ignores the documented value of reckless driving as a form of self-expression."
 From there he lists several complaints sounding the theme of unwanted governmental intrusions.
 "There is no area of modern life more highly regimented and controlled by the government than life behind the wheel," he complains. "Between speed limits, mandatory headlights, and divided highways, today's driver is encased in a web of womb-like precaution. We believe he should once again be able to enjoy driving in reverse down a mountain road -- that driving should once again stand for freedom, dignity, and grisly death."

Harry Shearer, playing the part of the station's spokesperson, frames the bit with an intro and follow-up, reminding the audience at the end that while the station may allow such demented commentary, they obviously don't endorse it.
 "It is the position of the management that Mr. de Longpra is brain damaged," he concludes.
 Then comes a short commercial for "Credibility Gap Potato Chips," subtly underscoring the larger, cynical point being made about commercial news.
 To be fair, the short six-minute segment on CNBC was at least well moderated, and there was some dialogue between Somerville and Butler, at least in the form of each refuting points made by the other. (Often in these spots it doesn't even seem as though the sparring speakers are even aware of anything the other is saying.)
 Both Somerville and Butler manage to get across their main points quickly and succinctly in the short time each is given as well. Butler overdoes the moral objection to gambling, although doesn't sound as crazed as Mr. de Longpra or other online gambling opponents from whom we've heard over the years. That said, his arguments aren't really specific to online gambling (though still apply, from his perspective at least).
 Meanwhile Somerville did well, I thought. I believe he's only actually on camera and talking for a minute-and-a-half or so (total), but still communicates several points, including the most persuasive ones that (1) the rest of the world (practically) does license and regulate online poker; (2) Americans are already playing in high numbers on unregulated sites; and (3) other forms of gambling like betting on horse races and lotteries are legal in the U.S.
 If you haven't seen the clip, you can click over to PokerNews and watch it here:

 "WATCH: Jason Somerville Discusses the Need for Regulation of Online Poker in the U.S. on CNBC"
On a related note, I didn't write anything here about Jason Mercier's appearance on "The Dan Le Batard Show" last week, a show I listen to regularly. I thought Mercier did well representing poker in that forum as well, although I was a little disheartened that Le Batard and Jon "Stugotz" Weiner seemed less inspired with their questions and general fun-seeking as they often are.
 Click here for a summary of Mercier's appearance over on PokerNews, including a link to the show.
 Images: CNBC; The Bronze Age of Radio (1977), The Credibility Gap, Amazon. Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-58963286836320576832016-08-08T22:23:00.000-04:002016-08-10T12:30:41.133-04:00Passive Viewing

Dipping into the Olympics here, as I imagine you have been doing as well. It appears that between the rack of channels coming in via the dish and the Roku, we can watch practically anything whenever we want, which is nice.
 Funny, though, I'm still finding it preferable in the evening simply to tune into the local NBC channel and let the network decide what events to show me and when. I suppose I fall into the large category of "passive" Olympics viewers. I'm referring to those of us who aren't super enthused about being delivered every moment from every sport, or even that curious about any one sport in particular.
 The same is probably true for most of those who end up watching the WSOP Main Event coverage on ESPN. They aren't hanging on every twist and turn back in July like some of us, and so it's actually more palatable for them to watch the sucker get strung out over several months however ESPN sees fit.
 Vera is interested in the dressage portion of the equestrian events, of course (which don't really crank up for a couple of days). And I'm dialing up men's basketball sometimes, too, particularly when the U.S. is playing as they need earlier tonight. But otherwise, we're content just to let it play as ambient sound-and-image, looking up whenever the announcers' excitement captures our attention.
 Speaking of that men's basketball game earlier, the U.S. team found itself tied 18-18 with Venezuela after the first 10-minute quarter. Was a sorta-kinda surprising start considering they'd opened up the Olympics beating China by 57 points and were expected to do something similar in their second game tonight. (The matchup with Australia on Wednesday ought to be more competitive, I'd think.)
 Even so, it felt an awful lot like a much-outclassed poker player winning a few pots early on in a session, but destined to lose it all back eventually -- and likely sooner than later. Sure enough the U.S. outscored Venezuela 30-8 in the second quarter, ultimately going on to win by 44.
 When games go in that direction, they, too, become part of the background as I do other things, only looking up occasionally to check the score and watch another U.S. fast break.
 Image: "Play the long ball," (adapted), Craig Sunter. CC BY-ND 2.0.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-63923346186052525342016-08-05T15:50:00.003-04:002016-08-05T16:10:00.761-04:00Live Updates: The 1973 World Series of Poker Main Event, Day 2 (Part 2)Day 2 (May 15, 1973)
 11:02 p.m.: That's One Way of Looking at It
 As preparations are being made for heads-up play between Puggy Pearson and Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim Preston just now found himself engaged in conversation with an English journalist on the rail.
 "Listen, you play a lot of poker over there in England," said Preston. "What do you think'll happen?"
 The journalist responded that he didn't know, but that he saw Pearson and Moss representing "a classic confrontation between the old sentimental hero" and "a man emanating killer death-rays."
 "I see Johnny as the gentle giant about to do battle with Pug, who is one step removed from Cro-Magnon man," he added. Preston shook his head.
 "Neighbor, you sure have a funny way of saying things," he said.
 11:05 p.m.: Heads-Up Play Begins

The two remaining players are back in their seats and heads-up play has begun. A reminder of the counts:
 Johnny Moss -- 70,400
Puggy Pearson -- 59,600

 11:35 p.m.: Puggy Pushing

Puggy Pearson has been the more aggressive player during heads-up play thus far, often stealing the blinds as Johnny Moss has been content to fold hand after hand.

 12:01 a.m.: Big Chip Poker

Players have agreed to remove the lower denomination chips and just play with $500 chips going forward so as to speed up play. No more yellow and green $25 checks or $100 black and white ones.

 12:30 a.m.: Pearson in Front
 Puggy Pearson has taken a series of pots to move out in front of Johnny Moss. He now has around 80,000, while Moss has slipped back to 50,000.
 12:38 a.m.: Moss Escapes

Puggy Pearson opened from the button for 500, Johnny Moss made it 1,000, and Pearson called. The flop came , and Moss led for 2,000. Pearson eyed his opponent while rolling his cigar around in his mouth, then put in a raise to 7,000 total. Moss hesitated, then shoved all in for 33,500 total.
 That caused Pearson to think a while longer, then with what almost seemed a disappointed look he called, bringing the total pot to around 70,000 -- more than half the chips in play. Both players decided to table their hands:
 Moss: J-6
Pearson: J-2
 "I gotta have a six," said Moss with a chagrined look. Moss flopped top pair, but Pearson had two pair and was on the verge of winning the title and $130,000.
 The turn brought the , changing nothing. Then came the river... the ! Moss made a better two pair, and as the crowd went wild Pearson stood with his hands in his pockets and head down, looking at that river card.
 The match is just about even again!*
 12:45 a.m.: Moss Extends Lead

Johnny Moss now has about a 3-to-1 chip advantage over Puggy Pearson. Moss has about 96,000, while Pearson is down to 34,000.

 12:48 a.m.: Break Time
 The players are taking a short break with Johnny Moss still in front.
 1:05 a.m.: Play Resumes
 Cards are back in the air. No one who has been on the rail seems to have left despite the late hour -- in fact, if anything the crowd has gotten larger as word filtered through Binion's Horsehoe Casino that the tournament is now down to heads-up.
 1:27 a.m.: Pearson Makes Big Call, Collects

With the blinds 500/1,000, Puggy Pearson completed and Moss knocked the table, saying "Deal!"
 The flop came . Moss checked, Puggy Pearson bet 2,000, then Johnny Moss raised to 5,000. Pearson called. The turn brought the , and this time Moss led for 5,500. Pearson called.
 The river was the . Moss didn't wait long, pushing out enough chips to cover the 30,000 or so Pearson had behind.
 Pearson sat back in his chair, riffling his chips. "Well," he said, "I don't believe you got spades, John. I believe you got something else. Might have trips, but I don't think you have spades."
 After considering carefully for more than a few minutes, Pearson finally pushed his remaining chips in the middle, turning over  for a rivered two pair as he did. Meanwhile Moss turned over  for just a pair of treys, and Pearson won the big pot.**
 Puggy Pearson -- 84,000
Johnny Moss -- 46,000
 2:00 a.m.: All Even Again
 Puggy Pearson and Johnny Moss are now essentially even with about 65,000 chips apiece.
 2:40 a.m.: Updated Chip Counts
 Puggy Pearson has regained the advantage in a big way, and now sits with about a 4-to-1 lead over Johnny Moss.
 Puggy Pearson -- 102,000
Johnny Moss -- 28,000
 3:25 a.m.: Puggy Pearson Wins ($130,000)! Johnny Moss Just Misses Third Title

On a flop of , Puggy Pearson led with a bet of 1,500, then Johnny Moss raised to 5,000. Pearson didn't hesitate, instantly pushing all in, and after shrugging Moss called to put himself at risk.
 Pearson:
Moss:
 Moss had a couple of live cards and an open-ended straight draw, but his outs were reduced as any spade would give Pearson a winning flush. The turn was the , and Pearson was just one card away from victory. The crowd began to get louder, but was quieted down before the final card was dealt.
 The dealer then delivered fifth street -- the !
 "My gawd," said Pearson as he smiled broadly. "I've done it."
 The crowd exploded with noise at the sight of the final card. Meanwhile, Moss immediately stood up to congratulate Pearson. "If it had to be anybody other than me, I'm glad it was you Pug," said Moss, and Pearson thanked him.
 Jack Binion then brought out a silver cup filled with bricks of cash totaling $130,000, awarding it to Pearson as photographers snapped away from all angles. It's the biggest prize ever won in a poker tournament in Las Vegas.
 Meanwhile, a stud game has started at the neighboring table. "Hey Puggy," shouted one of the players. "Bring some of that cash over here and sit down!"
 "I'm goin' home, boys," answered Pearson, still grinning. "I'm all wore out."
 *Bradshaw's numbers don't really add up, as he has Moss up to 96,000 after this hand even though he only put less than 35,000 in the middle on this double-up.
 **Spanier's account of this hand is much more accurate than Bradshaw's (as the documentary shows).
 Earlier coverage:

Day 1, Part 1
Day 1, Part 2
Day 2, Part 1
Note: All hands and other details compiled from Jon Bradshaw, Fast Company (1975), David Spanier's Total Poker (1977), and the CBS Sports Spectacular documentary of the 1973 WSOP Main Event. Editorial judgment has been used whenever apparent discrepencies between the sources occur, and some creative license employed to fill in occasional narrative gaps, time stamps, and other details.
 Photos: "Binion's Horseshoe Casino presents The World Series of Poker," CBS Sports Spectacular (1973).Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-51120736983059129142016-08-04T15:49:00.000-04:002016-08-05T13:59:57.918-04:00Live Updates: The 1973 World Series of Poker Main Event, Day 2 (Part 1)Day 2 (May 15, 1973)
 6:15 p.m.*: Shuffle Up and Deal
 The preliminaries are done and the six remaining players have settled in for today's final day of play in the 1973 World Series of Poker Main Event.
 As we noted at the end of Day 1, Jack "Treetop" Straus returns to the chip lead to start the official final table with a stack of 42,725. Puggy Pearson is Straus's nearest challenger at the moment with 41,350, with Johnny Moss in third with 22,000 and the others all hoping to improve their short stacks.
 Here's how they are seated as the action begins:
 Seat 1: Bobby Brazil
Seat 2: Jack Straus
Seat 3: Sailor Roberts
Seat 4: Bobby Hooks
Seat 5: Puggy Pearson
Seat 6: Johnny Moss
 6:39 p.m: No One Taking the Bait from Hooks
 Bob Hooks has been on the short stack for some time, and he just now open-shoved all in again and once more got no callers.
 7:15 p.m.: Roberts Sails Home in Sixth**

After a  flop, Puggy Pearson bet and Sailor Roberts shoved, and after a lot of talk Pearson called the raise. Pearson showed  for top set of aces, while Roberts didn't show his cards, prompting a lot of speculation around the table about what he might have.
 The turn brought the  -- a third spade that might have filled a flush for Roberts. But the river was the , making a full house for Pearson.
 Roberts then showed his cards --  -- and the dealer provoked a bit of consternation when first announcing Roberts had won the pot. The full house was pointed out to him, though, and Roberts is indeed out in sixth.
 Roberts didn't move very far away, though, as he's joined the lowball game at the neighboring table at which Amarillo Slim Preston and several of the other eliminated players can also be found.
 Pearson is up to 54,000 now, comfortably in first.
 8:02 p.m.: Hooks Hanging On
 After pushing all in a total of 11 times without getting any callers, on the 12th try Bob Hooks did at last get called by Jack Straus. But Hooks survived and five-handed play continues.
 8:10 p.m.: Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh, What a Relief It Is
 Puggy Pearson just ordered a glass of water and some Alka-Seltzer, downing it at the table in one big gulp.
 8:25 p.m.: Hooks Eliminated in Fifth

Bob Hooks was just all in again before the flop, but a  runout added up eights full for Johnny Moss, and Hooks is out in fifth.

 8:33 p.m.: Brazil Doubles Through Straus
 Bobby Brazil just reraised all in for 5,300 before the flop, then watched Jack Straus reraise after him to force folds all around.
 Brazil had  while Straus needed to improve with . The  flop gave Straus a pair, but the turn was the  and river the , and Brazil survives.
 8:39 p.m.: Pearson Busts Brazil in Fourth

All in for his last 3,600 before the flop, Bobby Brazil heard Puggy Pearson call him from across the table, then ask him "Have you got the best hand?" Brazil looked over at Pearson's pocket jacks and answered "no," and five cards later the jacks held up and the 25-year-old Brazil is out in fourth.
 "I played a couple of hands very bad trying to trap a person, and I wound up getting trapped myself," explained Brazil to Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder afterwards. "But I'm not sorry, I learned a lot. Really, really tough competition -- they really are."
 8:45 p.m.: Updated Chip Counts; Three Remain
 Puggy Pearson -- 62,000
Johnny Moss -- 45,000
Jack Straus -- 23,000
 8:47 p.m.: The Pride of Texas on the Line
 An announcement was just made telling the crowd of the updated chip counts.
 "Well, whatta you think Slim?" asked Doyle Brunson of Amarillo Slim Preston, both participating the lowball game in which several other knocked out players are taking part. Recall how last year both Brunson and Preston were among the final three along with current chip leader Puggy Pearson, with Preston ultimately prevailing.
 "I think we got us a fine horse race now," Preston said to Brunson before turning back to the feature table.
 "Play hard, Johnny," Preston called to Johnny Moss. "We gotta keep this thing in Texas."
 8:50 p.m.: Break Time
 The three remaining players are taking an impromptu break.
 9:05 p.m.: Action Resumes
 Players are back and have already played a few small pots as play continues.
 9:28 p.m.: Puggy Calls Busted Bluff, Cripples Straus
 Following an  flop, Jack Straus led with a bet and his opponent, Puggy Pearson, made the call. Straus fired again after the turn card, the , and Pearson called once more.

The river was the , and Straus pushed in his last 14,000, meaning he'd committed all 28,000 or so with which he'd begun the hand. After much thought and talk, Pearson made a move as if to push his chips forward but did not, earning a reprimand from Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder who told him the move was a little too much like "coffeehousing" (see left).
 Pearson decided to make the call, anyway, and when Straus showed a busted draw, Pearson turned over  to claim the big pot. Straus is now on fumes.***
 9:55 p.m.: Updated Chip Counts; Three Remain
 Pearson now has nearly 70% of the chips in play.
 Puggy Pearson -- 90,000
Johnny Moss -- 22,000
Jack Straus -- 18,000
 10:28 p.m.: Moss Getting Mowed Down
 Johnny Moss has now become the short stack among the final three, his stack having dipped down to around 10,000 at present.
 10:37 p.m. River Ace Saves Moss
 Johnny Moss opened with a raise to 2,200 from the button, getting calls from both Jack Straus and Puggy Pearson. The flop came , earning checks from both Straus and Pearson. Moss thought for a few moments, then chose to push all in with the 12,500 he had left behind.
 The crowd fell silent at the announcement of Moss's bet, and the lowball game nearby stopped as well as players looked on to see what would happen next.
 After about a half-minute, Straus tossed his hand in the muck. "Well, Johnny," said Pearson, "what do you got?" Moss kept silent.
 "I think you got two kings or two aces in the hole," surmised Pearson. "You ain't got nothin' else, y'know. At least, I hope you ain't got three queens or three jacks."
 Finally Pearson counted out calling chips and pushed them forward, tabling Q-J for two pair as he did. He was right with his read, as Moss showed A-A.

The dealer burned a card and dealt the turn -- the . Then came the river -- the ! The crowd roared in response to the unlikely runout, and Moss's wife, Virgie, came forward to give him a kiss on the head. She then leaned over and kissed the dealer on the cheek, too, prompting laughter from the rail.
 Moss now sits behind a much more comfortable stack of 33,400.
 "I was ready to walk out," Moss said quietly as the next hand was being dealt. "I ain't drawed out on nobody in a long time."
 10:48 p.m.: Treetop Cut Down in Third

A short-stacked Jack Straus went all in with a straight flush draw on the flop and was called by Johnny Moss who'd flopped a set of eights. The turn and river didn't work out for Straus, and he's out in third. That hand appears to have put Moss in the lead to begin heads-up play.
 The players are taking a short break before they commence their tournament-ending duel.
 10:55 p.m.: Chip Counts to Start Heads-Up

Johnny Moss -- 70,400
Puggy Pearson -- 59,600

 (To be continued)
 *Among the several discrepancies between the sources, the CBS documentary suggests play resumed around 2 p.m., while Bradshaw says they began just after six.
 **Bradshaw has Roberts going out in fourth, not sixth (after Hooks then Brazil), although the documentary shows that was not the case. Incidentally, both Bradshaw and Spanier report this hand in detail, though their accounts conflict with each other and with what is seen in the documentary.
 ***Spanier suggests this was the hand that knocked out Straus ("marked his exit"), but the documentary shows otherwise.
 Note: All hands and other details compiled from Jon Bradshaw, Fast Company (1975), David Spanier's Total Poker (1977), and the CBS Sports Spectacular documentary of the 1973 WSOP Main Event. Editorial judgment has been used whenever apparent discrepencies between the sources occur, and some creative license employed to fill in occasional narrative gaps, time stamps, and other details.
 Photos: "Binion's Horseshoe Casino presents The World Series of Poker," CBS Sports Spectacular (1973).Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-89832165799400005712016-08-03T16:14:00.000-04:002016-08-04T15:27:06.215-04:00Live Updates: The 1973 World Series of Poker Main Event, Day 1 (Part 2)Day 1 (May 14, 1973)
 11:55 p.m.: Hoff Sent Off in 10th

Soon after the players reassembled around a single 10-handed table, the one with the fewest chips tangled with the one with the most.
 Bobby "The Wizard" Hoff" was down to his last 1,400 and found himself all in prefop against chip leader Puggy Pearson. The  runout favored Pearson, and Hoff hit the rail in 10th.
 12:22 a.m.: Cassella Doubles Through Pearson
 A short-stacked Jimmy "Fury" Cassella was just all in and at risk in a hand versus Puggy Pearson, but managed to survive much to the delight of his wife cheering on from the rail.
 "You like the way I played that, Sailor?" asked Cassella afterwards of Sailor Roberts sitting across the table.
 1:10 a.m.: Subtract Addington, Out in Ninth

Picking up the action with the board showing 6-10-8, Puggy Pearson was first to act and he fired a bet, and his opponent Crandall Addington called. The turn brought a Q and this time Pearson checked, providing Addington the impetus to put the last of his chips in the middle.
 Pearson looked like he was considering folding, but he finally made the call, turning over Q-Q for a set of queens. From his talk he was worried about Addington having a straight, but the latter tabled 9-9 for a double-gutshot. The river blanked, bringing a low card, meaning Pearson's set was best and Addington was out in ninth.
 1:45 a.m.: Van Ausdall Ousted in Eighth

We missed the action, but the Missourian Roger Van Ausdall has been eliminated in eighth. Puggy Pearson continues to enjoy the chip lead. They'll likely play until there is one more knockout before stopping tonight, thereby establishing an official six-handed final table.

 2:38 a.m.: The Tournament Hath No Fury; Cassella Out in Seventh

Jimmy "Fury" Cassella -- the New Yorker and only east coast entrant -- hung on for a while with a short stack. But his luck finally ran out in all-in spot versus Johnny Moss, and he departs in seventh.

 2:50 a.m.: Day 1 Concludes; Treetop on Top

With just six players left they've called it a night. During the final hands Jack "Treetop" Straus grabbed the overnight chip lead away from Puggy Pearson.
 Straus ended with 42,725, Pearson with 41,350, and Johnny Moss is in third position with 22,000 even. Meanwhile Bob Hooks, Bobby Brazil, and Sailor Roberts will each return to below average stacks to begin tomorrow's final day of play.
 Play cranks back up tomorrow at 6 p.m. Come back then and we'll find out together who from this group will be the next World Series of Poker Main Event champion.
 (To be continued)
 Note: All hands and other details compiled from Jon Bradshaw, Fast Company (1975), David Spanier's Total Poker (1977), and the CBS Sports Spectacular documentary of the 1973 WSOP Main Event. Editorial judgment has been used whenever apparent discrepencies between the sources occur, and some creative license employed to fill in occasional narrative gaps, time stamps, and other details.
 Photos: "Binion's Horseshoe Casino presents The World Series of Poker," CBS Sports Spectacular (1973).Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-43633532100963669112016-08-02T22:18:00.000-04:002016-08-04T15:27:25.197-04:00Live Updates: The 1973 World Series of Poker Main Event, Day 1 (Part 1)Day 1 (May 14, 1973)
 3:55 p.m.: Welcome to the World Series of Poker!
 Hello from Binion's Horsehoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas where some of the best Texas hold'em players in the world will soon be gathering for the $10,000 buy-in World Series of Poker Main Event.
 Play is tentatively scheduled to begin around four o'clock, although players are still milling about and it doesn't appear they'll be sticking to that plan quite so closely. Stay tuned as we find out together who will be the next world champion of poker.
 4:04 p.m.: Collecting the Cabbage

Jack Binion is busy collecting the last of the 13 buy-ins for this $10,000 Main Event. Among those participating will be Jack "Treetop" Straus who is just coming off winning the $3,000 Deuce-to-Seven Draw event, as well as Walter "Puggy" Pearson who has already picked up two wins this week, one in $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em and the other in $4,000 Seven-Card Stud. Last year's champion Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston is also back to defend his title, as is Johnny Moss, WSOP champion during its first two years in 1970 and 1971.
 It looks like Binion has 12 of the 13 bricks of cash, with only Bob Hooks left to make his contribution to what will be a $130,000 prize pool, all of which will go to the champion. Stay tuned, as the first hands of the 1973 WSOP Main Event are about to be dealt.
 4:16 p.m.: Tennessee versus Texas
 "I'm playing this game a lot better than I was last year," said Puggy Pearson to Amarillo Slim Preston just now as the pair wait for the first hand to be dealt. Recall that Pearson finished runner-up to Preston in last year's Main Event.
 "Like I told you before, if it wasn't for Tennessee there wouldn't be no Texas, so you're lucky to be here in the first place," Pearson added with grin.
 "If you people from Tennessee could suck like you can blow we wouldn't need to be shipping no oil there," Preston fired back.
 "Cut that out!" answered Pearson with a big laugh.
 4:22 p.m.: Everybody Say Cheese

The 13 participants are posing for pictures now to commemorate the event. Action will be underway soon!

 4:28 p.m: Cards in the Air!
 After drawing for seats around two tables, play has finally begun. Once three players are eliminated, they'll redraw to sit around a single 10-handed table. Here's how they are seated to begin:
 Table 1
Seat 1: Puggy Pearson
Seat 2: Sherman Lanier
Seat 3: Roger Van Ausdall
Seat 4: Bob Hooks
Seat 5: Bobby Hoff
Seat 6: Jimmy Cassella
 Seat 7: Sailor Roberts
 Table 2
Seat 1: Amarillo Slim Preston
Seat 2: Doyle Brunson
Seat 3: Johnny Moss
Seat 4: Bobby Brazil
Seat 5: Crandall Addington
Seat 6: Jack Straus
 Players start with stacks of 10,000.
 4:49 p.m: Chips Are Flying (But Not on the Felt)
 The action has been quite slow to begin, with no major pots having occurred as yet. Amarillo Slim Preston has been livening things up for the considerable rail of spectators, tossing them $1 chips as he continues a running dialogue with them as well as his tablemates.
 5:30 p.m.: Slim Collects
 "Hard to fool is the world's champion, neighbor," said Amarillo Slim Preston after collecting a small pot just now. He's chipped up slightly in the early going, as has Puggy Pearson on the next table.
 7:15pm: Slim Sniffs Out Straus Bluff

With the board showing , Jack Straus made a hefty bet of 3,600 to send Amarillo Slim Preston deep into the tank. As the announcer noted Straus's bet, Preston added his own commentary.
 "Jack's betting and Slim's sweating," cracked Preston.
 He continued to ponder the decision. "How come every time you in there I ain't got no hand," he complained, and after lighting a cigarette continued to think about the situation.
 Finally Preston set out a stack of chips to call, and Straus showed he was bluffing. With a queen in his hand Preston's queens and jacks were best, and he claimed the pot.
 "It's hard to fool a world champion," said Straus with a grin, echoing a line Preston delivered earlier. "That sucker won't lay down nothing."
 9:00 p.m.: Dinner Break; Updated Counts
 With all 13 players still in, they've decided to pause proceedings and take a 45-minute dinner break. Here's a look at the updated counts as they do:
 Amarillo Slim Preston -- 18,325
Bobby Hoff -- 17,325
Puggy Pearson -- 14,075
Sailor Roberts -- 13,100
Bobby Brazil -- 10,950
Jimmy Cassella -- 10,100
Johnny Moss -- 8,775
Crandall Addington -- 8,525
Roger Van Ausdall -- 7,500
Jack Straus -- 6,725
Doyle Brunson -- 6,700
Bob Hooks -- 6,000
Sherman Lanier - 1,900
 9:45 p.m.: Play Resumes
 Players are back in their seats, having enjoyed a complimentary meal in the Sombrero Room consisting of catfish, hush puppies, hominy grits, and black-eyed peas -- a suitable repast for the many Texans here today.
 9:59 p.m.: Full House for Puggy
 Following a  flop, Puggy Pearson fired a bet of 1,300 only to see Bobby Hoff raise to 2,600. After a brief pause, Pearson made it 5,600 to go, then Hoff shoved all in. That last raise had Pearson covered, but he nonetheless made the call, standing up as he did.
 "I guess I run into four fours," he said, turning over a pair of eights for a flopped full house. "I ain't got the nuts."
 Hoff had one four, but not two, making Pearson an overwhelming favorite to survive. The turn was the  and river the , and Pearson is now up to 31,000 and the apparent chip leader.
 10:30 p.m.: Lanier Leaves in 13th

A pawnbroker from New Orleans, Sherman Lanier was the only amateur in the field today. Oddsmaker Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder made him 50-to-1 to win, the biggest underdog of the bunch.
 While Lanier fought gamely against the pros prior to the dinner break, he was down to less than 2,000 when play resumed, and just now he became the first player eliminated after losing the last of his chips to Puggy Pearson.
 11:25 p.m.: Runner-Runner Flush Sinks Slim in 12th

Down to his last 4,000, Amarillo Slim Preston just found himself all in on a  flop. He was ahead of his opponent who had , but the  turn and  river added up to a flush for his opponent, and Preston is out in 12th.
 "Gentleman, there's one way I can lose it... it come heart-heart... that's what it come," said Preston afterwards before leaving the table. He hasn't gone very far, though, as his voice can still be heard clearly as play continues.
 11:30 p.m.: Doyle Goes Down in 11th

Doyle Brunson has been eliminated in 11th place, which means there will be a brief pause in the action while they reassemble around a single 10-handed table.

 11:40 p.m.: Updated Chip Counts and Seating Assignments for 10-Handed Table
 The remaining 10 players have redrawn and are now seated at a single table. Pearson and Straus have amassed the biggest stacks thus far, having put some distance between themselves and the rest of the field.
 Seat 1: Jimmy Cassella -- 9,175
Seat 2: Crandal Addington -- 12,650
Seat 3: Bobby Brazil -- 7,200
Seat 4: Jack Straus -- 31,700
Seat 5: Bobby Hoff -- 1,425
Seat 6: Roger Van Ausdall -- 6,900
Seat 7: Sailor Roberts -- 8,900
Seat 8: Bobby Hooks -- 8,150
Seat 9: Puggy Pearson -- 35,450
Seat 10: Johnny Moss -- 8,225
 (To be continued)
 Note: All hands and other details compiled from Jon Bradshaw, Fast Company (1975), David Spanier's Total Poker (1977), and the CBS Sports Spectacular documentary of the 1973 WSOP Main Event. Editorial judgment has been used whenever apparent discrepencies between the sources occur, and some creative license employed to fill in occasional narrative gaps, time stamps, and other details.
 Photos: "Binion's Horseshoe Casino presents The World Series of Poker," CBS Sports Spectacular (1973). Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-46597415367787909972016-08-01T09:40:00.000-04:002016-08-02T20:28:25.126-04:00Reporting from the 1973 World Series of Poker

Over the weekend I was in the middle of doing some reading for this week's "Poker & Pop Culture" column for PokerNews when I had an idea for something I'm going to try to do this week on Hard-Boiled Poker.
 The idea came as I was rereading Jon Bradshaw's great gambling narrative Fast Company, published in 1975 (reviewed here), in particular the chapter on Johnny Moss. That chapter contains a detailed report from the 1973 World Series of Poker, including a number of specific hands described with varying levels of detail.
 There were 13 players participating in that year's Main Event at Binion's Horseshoe Casino. It was the first year players paid $10,000 to play, actually. In 1970, the first WSOP had no tournament, then in 1971 the buy-in for the Main Event was $5,000. Then in 1972 the buy-in was $10K, but Benny Binion paid half of it for each player.
 As would be the case through the 1977 WSOP, the Main Event was played "winner-take-all," meaning the champ earned a $130,000 first prize. There were no bracelets yet, either, just a "corny trophy" (as Becky Behnen, Binion's daughter, described it years later). The bracelet first was introduced in 1976.
 As I was rereading Bradshaw's entertaining account, I remembered how this particular WSOP Main Event not only was covered much more extensively than previous ones, but many subsequent ones, too.
 David Spanier also writes extensively about the tournament in his 1977 book Total Poker in a chapter focusing on Pearson. (I reviewed Total Poker here.) Like Bradshaw's account, Spanier's includes a number of hands as well as chip count updates along the way.
 There is also a filmed record of the event, made by Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder for the CBS Sports Spectacular anthology show and available on YouTube. During the 47-minute program you can see portions of several hands being played, get updates on counts, and hear still more table talk and other information from the event.
 Speaking of media coverage, Benny Binion was interviewed in May 1973 by Mary Ellen Glass shortly after the completion of that year's WSOP, and Binion tells her how "this poker game here gets us a lot of advertisement, the world series of poker." He continues: "Last year it was in seven thousand newspapers; I don't how many it was in this year, whether it was more or less, but we got awful good coverage on it this year." (You can read the two-part interview here and here.)
 The 1972 WSOP was won by Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston, who then went on to help publicize the WSOP (and poker, generally speaking) by appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson multiple times. Preston was also featured on 60 Minutes, spoke before various groups including the National Press Club in D.C., and produced a book titled Play Poker to Win that the some of the other players joke about at that 1973 event.
 Some have misread Binion's "seven thousand newspapers" quote to Glass as saying there were 7,000 articles written about the 1973 WSOP, when obviously he was referring to the 1972 one. In any event, Preston's publicity tour certainly contributed heavily to the coverage, not only helping boost the number of articles but attracting folks like Bradshaw and Spanier to be there in 1973, as well as encourage CBS to go along with Snyder's idea to do the special for the Spectacular.
 Here's my idea -- using primarily Bradshaw, Spanier, and the CBS documentary, plus a few random extra bits of info gathered online, I thought I'd compile as best as I could some "live updates" from the 1973 WSOP and share them here on HBP over the next few days.
 The tournament itself lasted two days. They started sometime during the late afternoon on Monday, May 14, 1973, probably around 4:30 p.m., and after about nine hours of play (plus a dinner break) the original 13 had played down to six players. Play resumed on Tuesday, May 15, 1973 at around 6 p.m. again, and it was sometime after 2 a.m. that the last hand was dealt.
 Coverage begins tomorrow, and may continue for the rest of the week depending on how quickly I can get through it all. Come back then and follow along as Crandall Addington, Bobby Brazil, Doyle Brunson, Jimmy Cassella, Bobby Hoff, Bob Hooks, Sherman Lanier, Johnny Moss, Walter "Puggy" Pearson, Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston, Brian "Sailor" Roberts, Jack Straus, and Roger Van Ausdall do battle to see who becomes the 1973 WSOP Main Event champion.
 Image: "Binion's Horseshoe Casino presents The World Series of Poker," CBS Sports Spectacular (1973). Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-91443800507083304002016-07-29T18:29:00.000-04:002016-07-29T18:29:24.606-04:00First They Support You, Then They Attack

There's a new article appearing on the ESPN site today about Ichiro Suzuki, the Japanese-born baseball star who is closing in on 3,000 career hits in the major leagues.
 Suzuki had already had a significantly successful career in Japan before making his Major League Baseball debut in 2001 at the age of 27. He played nine years fro the Orix Blue Wave of the Nippon Professional Baseball league, accumulating 1,278 hits while batting .353 and winning the league's MVP award three times.
 This is his 16th season in the majors, and today he sits with 2,998 hits in the MLB. That means all told he has 4,276 hits across his entire career. A few weeks ago when his overall total surpassed Pete Rose's MLB record of 4,256 hits in the MLB, there was small bit of back-and-forth over whether or not Suzuki had really broken any record or not.
 I've written here about Rose before, a hero of my youth who at age 75 is now still a controversial figure thanks to his ignoble, forced exit from baseball. Around the time Suzuki's cumulative hit total reached and then surpassed Rose's in mid-June, Rose was quoted in USA Today making kind of a snarky comment about the notion that Suzuki could be considered the hit "king."
 "It sounds like in Japan they're trying to make me the Hit Queen," Rose told USA Today. "I'm not trying to take anything away from Ichiro, he's had a Hall of Fame career, but the next thing you know, they'll be counting his high-school hits."
 Getting back to today's ESPN article, Suzuki was asked if anything bothered him about the coverage from when he passed Rose's total. The question wasn't specifically about Rose's comment, but that's what Suzuki addressed in his response.
 "I was actually happy to see the Hit King get defensive," says Suzuki, unsubtly acknowledging Rose's crown. "I kind of felt I was accepted."
 He goes to explain how about five years ago he'd heard Rose had said some positive things about him, even saying he wished Suzuki could break his record. "Obviously, this time around it was a different vibe," adds Suzuki.
 That's when Suzuki adds an interesting comment about American culture that kind of explains his point about feeling as though he had been accepted upon hearing Rose's comments last month.
 "In the 16 years that I have been here, what I've noticed is that in America, when people feel like a person is below them, not just in numbers but in general, they will kind of talk you up," says Suzuki. "But then when you get up to the same level or maybe even higher, they get in attack mode; they are maybe not as supportive. I kind of felt that this time."
 That observation actually made me think of poker, a game which more than a few people have recognized parallels various "American" ideas and characteristics. I'm thinking on a "macro" level about how the game works and continues to sustain itself, not about particular strategy or even game mechanics.
 In poker, the good players often try to encourage the bad players to remain in the game -- or at least that's what the good players who have some clue about how the game actually works are doing. They compliment and even nurture (to an extent) the lesser-skilled in order to keep them playing, which in turn helps keep the "economy" of the game healthy.
 Then, once the not-so-good players become good themselves, they aren't treated quite the same way. To put it in Suzuki's terms, the good ones don't "talk them up" as often, and in fact may well go into "attack mode" (so to speak), having recognized their own status being legitimately challenged.
 I hadn't thought all that specifically about this process occurring on a cultural level, and in fact being a distinguishing characteristic of American society. But I think Suzuki is probably onto something with the observation.
 He's 42 now, and says in the article he wants to play until he's 50. I suppose if he did there exists an outside chance Rose's crown as MLB hit king could be threatened for real, although the chances are heavily against that happening. In any case, ornery old Rose will certainly let us know if he thinks there's ever a real threat to his title.
 Image: "Ichiro Suzuki at bat in St. Louis, 2016" (adapted), Johnmaxmena2. CC BY-SA 4.0.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-40830355532655855582016-07-28T13:27:00.000-04:002016-07-29T18:29:15.967-04:00Plotting a Getaway

Was sincerely contemplating making a run over to Cherokee early next month to play in one of the World Series of Poker Circuit preliminary events, but I'm not sure it's going to work out schedule-wise. Even if it doesn't, the WSOP-C now comes to Harrah's Cherokee multiple times a year, and so I'm sure there will be another chance before long to go.
 The World Series of Poker Global Casino Championship is running there from August 4-16. Here is the schedule.
 The idea of making the trip got me thinking about how infrequently I've played live poker of late, never mind tournaments. That would necessarily put me into a certain category of player, say, in a WSOP-C event or one of the lower buy-in events in other tournament series (including the WSOP) -- the player for whom the tournament is a relatively unique occurrence, not part of a longer "grind" or more involved commitment to the game.
 In fact, that category is a fairly big one -- probably the biggest by a decent margin, as far as the lowest buy-in tournaments go. In other words, at any given table in (say) a $365 event at Cherokee next week, there will be several seats occupied by folks for whom the buy-in level and status (for want of a better word) of the event is about as high as they'll ever play.
 Such players necessarily approach such tournaments much differently than do those occupying the other seats for whom it's small change, or just one of dozens (or even hundreds) of events they'll play over the course of a year. From a strategic standpoint, then, dividing everyone into one of the two major camps -- regs and recs (you could call them) -- would be an important first step to make when it comes to player profiling and reads.
 We'll see -- I may be able to get off the farm for a day or two yet. Would be fun to try to shovel some chips instead of stalls, even if only for a short while.
 Photo: Visit Cherokee, NC. Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-62780405746143091952016-07-27T16:51:00.000-04:002016-07-29T16:04:50.748-04:00No Money in Wacky Usernames, Everyone Is Solid

Chuckling here over the latest report of a big winner on PokerStars' Spin & Go game, this time over on the French site where a trio of players entering a €25 game hit a lucky spin and got to play for €300,000, with €250K of that going to the winner (and the losers each getting a nice consolation prize of €25K).
 The story is interesting in part because the fellow who won the sucker, a Russian player, was streaming on Twitch at the time, and so the entire short tournament he was on camera, going through the emotions of first realizing how big the prize was, then talking to himself (and his viewers) with increasing animation as the tournament played out.
 In its report on the win, PokerStars has embedded a short video of the fellow's Twitch stream showing the Spin & Go, with Team PokerStars Pro Online's Mikhail "innerpsy" Shalamov providing commentary and translation.
 It's a fun watch. He luckily wins a big all-in with 7-6 versus K-Q, then soon has the other opponent at risk with pocket fours against his A-2. The flop comes 3-5-K, then a four on the turn gives him a straight. The river is a blank, and he wins the €250K (pictured above -- click to enlarge).
 His reaction is pretty great, as you might imagine -- literal jumping for joy, followed by some genuine tears as his tremendous fortune starts sinking in. I've seen references to it being the biggest single online poker win ever streamed on Twitch -- in fact, I think it breaks the previous high by a wide margin.
 The part of the story, though, that has gotten the most attention is the fellow's username on the PokerStars.fr site -- "SolidPenis."
 No shinola. Not since "RectalRash" won a SCOOP five years ago -- the win memorialized by Dr. Pauly in a post headlined "RectalRash irritates field en route to Triple Draw victory" -- has there been a more embarrassing username that had to be reported.
 Just as the Russian fellow this week apparently set a new standard for online poker-playing Twitch streamers, he's also probably established a new, hard-to-surpass standard for ignominious IDs.
 Image: PokerStars blog.
Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-14909510532523540402016-07-26T21:02:00.000-04:002016-07-27T21:12:55.101-04:00Not the Madman Theory

I'm only finally getting around to this much-derided article from Wired last week titled "How Poker Theory Explains Ted Cruz's Convention Speech" by Jason Tanz.
 The speech was quite something, by the way, with Cruz very deliberately withholding a specific endorsement of the party's nominee, smirking all the way.
 Saw a number of responses to the Wired piece last week, most of which seemed to find the poker analogy weakly presented. Also saw several eyeball-roll references to the article's reliance on Phil Hellmuth's "animal types" theory as presented in his 2003 book Play Poker Like the Pros.
 You remember Hellmuth's idea, don't you? As a way of presenting certain categories of players according to playing styles, Hellmuth described the mouse (squeaky tight), the lion (aggressive and bluffy), the jackal (loose and maniacal), the elephant (unmovable calling station), and the eagle (soaring over the rest as "one of the top 100 players in the world").
 In actuality, the idea to explain different playing styles in such a manner isn't such a bad one, particularly when addressing relatively untutored players (as most readers of Hellmuth's book were). The presentation in the book is kind of rushed and a little vague, though, making the "animal types" idea a bit less useful than it could have been.
 Meanwhile for someone in 2016 to bring it up as a seemingly unchallenged bit of "game theory" as Tanz does is not nearly as brilliant an idea as the author probably thought it was. He identifies Donald Trump as a jackal, then tries to argue that Cruz is one, too, with his RNC speech showing his willingness to play wild and loose. He then tries to give Cruz some of the characteristics of the lion as well, crediting him in a guarded way with having at least some strategic know-how.
 Tanz does successfully highlight the importance of position in poker, noting how Cruz's place in the speaking order (before others) was disadvantageous. But concluding by saying "maybe Cruz mis-bet" again belies the author's understanding of the game. (Who says "mis-bet"?)
 There's one other problem in the article, though -- a passing reference to Richard Nixon that also misses the mark. Here's the line:
 "Jackals can be difficult to play against because, as in Nixon's Mad Man theory, they don't abide by the rational rules of poker."
 That's more or less what Hellmuth says about jackals, but that's not what the "madman theory" actually was. Rather than being an example of someone recklessly betting and raising without any seeming logic, the madman theory concerned projecting the image of someone who "played" that way, but who in actuality did not. It was, at its core, a strategy of bluffing.
 Via others, Nixon wished to convince foreign leaders that he was irrational and ready to bomb away on a whim. For example, during the prolonged and mostly unsuccessful negotiations with the North Vietnamese, there were multiple instances of Nixon having National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger try to represent RN in this way, hoping it would frighten the North Vietnamese into a truce.
 The comparison in the Wired article is thus entirely misleading, suggesting the "madman theory" wasn't an actual strategy, but just a literal description of Nixon's "mad" style of dealing with certain, unfriendly opponents.
 Nixon was kind of mad, mind you. But the "madman theory" wasn't this.
 Image: Play Poker Like the Pros, Phil Hellmuth, available via Amazon. Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-54265541791193468472016-07-25T14:27:00.001-04:002016-07-25T14:43:23.176-04:00The Asynchronous Audience

Over the last few days I've gradually been listening to the final PokerNews Podcast of the 2016 World Series of Poker (episode #406) -- of the summer portion of the WSOP, anyway. Kind of just the way things worked out in terms of my listening opportunities, although there wasn't such an urgency to listen right away as there was with earlier episodes since this one recapped the action as it concluded on that final day when the Main Event played down from 27 to nine.
 That's where the Main Event will remain, of course, for approximately 100 more days until the "November Nine" (which starts at the end of October) finally gets going.
 There are a lot of good interviews in this episode -- the ones with Gordon Vayo, Cliff Josephy, and Griffin Benger stand out as especially interesting. Again, I've said it before (and recently), but Remko Rinkema is terrific with these.
 Along the way Remko and Donnie Peters talk through that last day, recounting highlights and big hands. Which is how most of us will be experiencing that day (and the couple preceding it) once ESPN begins airing its coverage -- not until Sunday, September 11, actually.
 In other words, the WSOP shows won't begin on ESPN until after the NFL has already begun, as the network is obviously once more using poker as a kind of "counterprogramming" to football. Doesn't matter too much, though, as I imagine many will go the DVR route, watch "on demand" via the WatchESPN app, or view the episodes online in some other fashion when and where they wish. Kind of like the way I'm listening to the PNPod.
 If you think about it, those of us who like to follow the WSOP Main Event now experience this particular tournament very much like other "series" people watch on demand -- i.e., dramas, comedies, etc. That delivery method also creates conditions for the same sort of "asynchronous" dialogue about the tournament we often have online via various social media outlets and discussion forums.
 All of which means our talk about the tournament so far has been necessarily scattered and strung out. Even when the episodes start airing seven weeks from now, they'll only serve as vague points of reference for the discussion as it goes forward -- apart, perhaps, from a big hand or two (such as Benger's aces-over-kings ouster of the talkative William Kassouf in 17th) which might get us all on the same page for a brief moment.
 Not saying this is good or bad, just different from most major poker tournaments and sporting events that are covered live (or essentially live), and perhaps more like other facets of entertainment culture that are not collectively experienced at once. At least the final table will give us a chance to witness and respond to the WSOP Main Event as a group.
 Meanwhile, if you want to talk about the WSOP Main Event, well, go right ahead. We'll catch up eventually.
 Image: "Scattered Time," dommylive. CC BY 2.0.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-64807740338807220722016-07-22T15:10:00.000-04:002016-07-23T15:16:38.639-04:00Pay Dat Man Hees Mahney

Some of you have probably seen this already, but I thought I'd end the week by sharing it here, anyway.
 A tip of the fedora to our buddy, Remko Rinkema, for having tweeted about it yesterday -- a short three-minute clip from a longer interview Matt Damon recently gave to BBC Radio 1.
 During the clip Damon talks about the 1998 film Rounders with which most of us in poker are still obsessed after all of these years.
 Damon starts off by noting how when the film was made, the skill element in poker wasn't appreciated by the larger public nearly as much as is the case today. He also chats a little about having gotten the chance to visit the underground clubs in New York on which the ones in the film were based.
 From there Damon moves on to share a hilarious anecdote about John Malkovich, a.k.a. Teddy KGB. I won't spoil the fun if you haven't seen the clip yet, other than to say it involves Malkovich appearing to confess to a major bluff to Damon while actually only making a smaller one:

 Image: Rounders (1998) (dir., John Dahl), Amazon. Short-Stacked Shamushttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-27238395.post-14773622511620106462016-07-21T21:21:00.000-04:002016-07-23T14:32:50.864-04:00Wild Bill's Last Hand

Over in the "Poker & Pop Culture" series on PokerNews I've reached the end of a section focusing on "saloon poker" during the 19th century, mostly focusing on some of the more notable names associated with poker of the era.
 This week's column is all about James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, covering his story in brief including his famous murder at a poker table in 1876. From there, though, I move on to talk more broadly about the idea of the "dead man's hand" as it has played out in popular culture over the almost 140 years since.
 Hickok, as many know, was said to be holding two pair, aces and eights, at the time he was murdered. In the column I talk about how in fact there were several other poker hands designated the "dead man's hand" before a book about Hickock in the 1920s helped solidify the association between the term and his hand.
 I also get into some -- not all -- of the later references to the dead man's hand and/or aces and eights, a catalogue that includes John Wayne, R.P. McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Motörhead, and Bob Dylan among others.
 Here are links to all the "saloon poker" posts, if you're curious to explore any of them:

Digging for Gold (and Aces) in California
Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, A Premium Pair
The Many Versions of Bat Masterson
Lady Gamblers and Poker Alice
The Long, Strange Life of the Dead Man's Hand
My primary goal with these articles is to highlight the many ways poker enters "mainstream" popular culture, and not necessarily to write a straightforward history of poker as others have done (including most recently James McManus in his 2009 book Cowboys Full). However, particularly during these early installments of the series, I have nonetheless spent some time narrating the game's early history to set up a useful context for what's to come.
 The next few articles come under the heading of "steamboat poker," then after a brief discussion of poker in the Civil War I'll be moving on to consider the game as it appeared in a variety of contexts -- in early clubs, on the bookshelf (with the first poker strategy titles), and in homes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
 Photo: Wild Bill Hickok, public domain.Short-Stacked Shamushttp://firstname.lastname@example.com


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You have searched for John Egan (footballer born 1992)
- Proposed revamp a step in the right direction for Indian football: John Abraham
In an exclusive interview, ISL club NorthEast United owner John Abraham voices his optimism not just about ambitions for the upcoming season but also the future of Indian football that could undergo a major overhaul from the 2017-18 season.
- No kids for John Abraham for now
He has a successful career as an actor, manages a production house and also owns a football team. Actor John Abraham, who is awaiting the release of actioner 'Dishoom', says he is not planning to extend his family at the moment as he is "concentrating on setting" his systems right professionally.
- Golf: Bryan leads John Deere Classic
Los Angeles, Aug 13, 2016 (AFP) -Wesley Bryan fired a seven-under 64 to take a one stroke lead in the second round of the rain-suspended PGA Tour's John Deere Classic on Friday. The 26-year-old American is playing in his first PGA Tour event since earning his PGA card.

subset: commoncrawl


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- This Girl Graduated From KNUST As A Medical Doctor And Won 12 Of 15 Student Awards
- Ladies, If You See Any Of These Signs He Is Just Not Serious About You
- Touching! Watch How Ghanaian Pilot Saved Over 300 Passengers From Fatal Crash
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- Parliament recalled to consider Mahama's impeachment motion
- Montie trio remission unfortunate - K. B Asante
- Montie FM's Mugabe to turn heat on Akufo-Addo
- NDC outdoors campaign team, targets 20 seats in Central region
- Be bold with the hunger strike – Pratt tells Maurice Ampaw
A Better Tomorrow
Features: Olu Jacob, Ngozi Ezeonu, John Dumelo, Chioma Chukwuku, Ken Erics, Rita Arum
Classic Nollywood pattern - Mother is an upstanding person and a deep Christian. She offends a lazy employee who is heavily connected and looses her job. During the time of her job loss, she looses her husband and that lazy employee is now in a position of power to punish her. This lazy employee goes and becomes uneccesarily mean in order to 'feel great'. When all these is taking place, her children get involved and try to help their mother. Some fall into all kinds of funny and weird things to raise money to help and of course, at the end of the movie - justice is served and all the evil doers either die or end up in prison. We see Ann (mother - Ngozi Ezeonu) put back to her position of power.


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Addison VT956 Hickory Lane
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(Feb. 20, 2009) NEW YORK: The TV stations and networks in the CBS stable generated revenues of nearly $9 billion last year, down just 1 percent from the previous year. Pre-impairment operating income was $1.5 billion, down 14 percent from 2007 on lower ad sales and a $60.5 million restructuring charge.The TV results were attributed to a 13 percent decline in ad revenues, a Super Bowl-free year, and the impact of the writers' strike. Those factors were partially offset by a 41 percent increase in revenues from higher TV license and affiliate fees. For the fourth quarter ending Dec. 31, 2008, the impact of the falling ad market was more apparent. The CBS TV division revenues were down 8 percent to $2.2 billion. Operating income fell 40 percent to $272 million on lower ad sales and a $25 million restructuring charge.CBS's consolidated TV, radio, Internet and publishing operations generated 4Q revenues of $3.5 billion versus nearly $3.8 billion the year before, with operating income of $458 million versus nearly $731 million for 4Q07. Adjusted 4Q earnings were 34 cents a diluted share, more than the 26 cents expected by analysts but down from 56 cents from the year before.Full-year consolidated revenues were nearly $14 billion, down from less than $15 billion the year before. Operating income before impairment was nearly $2.3 billion for 2008 compared to $2.7 billion in '07. A $14 billion write-down on broadcast licenses taken in October pushed operating income into the red to the tune of more than $12 billion."As the contraction of the economy accelerated in the fourth quarter, our businesses were affected, in particular our local businesses, but we did not deviate from our ongoing strategy: to create winning content, regardless of the marketplace," said CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves. "At the same time, we continue to exercise a very disciplined approach to capital investment, and have taken substantial costs out of all of our businesses, in order to help margins going forward."To that end, the company slashed its quarterly dividend from 27 cents a share to 5 cents, payable on April 1. CBS (NYSE: CBS) shares jumped 13 percent to more than $5.90 in today's opening trades before settling mid-day at a 6 percent increase over yesterday's close of $5.14.
Hearing In Redstone Case Leads to Settlement
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Dauman Sells $10.6M More Viacom Stock
AT&T, HBO Strike Multi-Platform Distribution Pact
FCC Denies Liberman Program Carriage Complaint Against Comcast
Nielsen: U.S. Added 2M TV Households, to 118.4 Million
Xenon FF-Primes Capture the Fastest Game in Sports
Wildlife Comes Into Focus with Angenieux
Onyx Cinema Tests Zeiss Lenses for Upcoming Short Film


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Yesterday was all about the competition, but this morning Nintendo is going to present its view for the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS for the upcoming year. We all have high hopes for what we'd like to see, from more footage of Monolith Soft's X project, to perhaps seeing some of the first footage for the Legend of Zelda game being developed for the Wii U. It doesn't matter what you're excited for, just that you are!
Stick around and chat with other Wii U Daily readers in the comments and get hyped, because it's almost time!
Continue reading:
- Twilight Princess HD developer is "very
- The upcoming NES Mini console has a brand new
- Mario games dominate the Wii U eShop sales ch
- The very first Wii U game, Nintendo Land, is
TAGS: E3 2014, Nintendo, wii u


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When Finni Simko was a little girl, she relished regular trips with her grandfather to the Milwaukee Public Museum.... More detail
Sep 1 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Opening Convocation featuring Jose Araujo '05 MBA '09
Sep 2
Trad - Last day to add/drop classes
Sep 2 5:00 am - 6:00 am
EWO - Last day to add/drop 14-week classes, Sept 2
Sep 2 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Sheboygan County Fair


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McHaffie on Madagascan Mega-Route 8cby Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC May/2008
This news story has been read 26,476 times
Their failure was like a red rag to a bull and just a few days after his arrival in Madagascar, the Cumbrian crimp-master got stuck in. James McHaffie spent a total of nine days on the 1500ft route, climbing with Dave Pickford - who himself linked two hard F7 pitches on spaced bolts and natural gear whilst McHaffie got stuck in to the meatier sections. Added to the severity of the climbing were other difficulties; the epic jungle-bash approach and the sandpaper effect of the rock on fingertips in hot weather.
McHaffie redpointed the hardest pitch on the route; a 40 metre stamina-slab-nightmare with no holds and long run outs:
"It's way, way harder than The Very Big and The Very Small" he said.
In total McHaffie and Pickford freed 6 of the 11 pitches, with McHaffie climbing multiple F8c pitches. In his characteristic understated fashion he has down-graded some of them to F8b/+. The challenge to free the entire route remains. Arnaud Petit and a strong French team are currently in transit to the green jungle-lined valley of Tsaranoro and are hoping to bag the full free ascent of this amazing route, which will be one of the finest and hardest big wall routes in the world.
Posing Productions captured all this Madagascan madness on film and will be releasing more details when they have them.
[Editors Note] After initial confusion it seems that the pitches are complex and have been split by a belay. Fran�ois Legrand climbed the two higher pitches that McHaffie climbed (8b+ 8c approx) - but didn't report them as the true challenge is to link the two in to a 60m monster pitch. McHaffie did climb a lower pitch (8b+/8c) that had lost holds and was unclimbed since the initial free/aid ascent at 8b.
As reported in a previous UKC article on GCSE Climbing, September marks the start of a revamped GCSE syllabus in a number of... Read more
The fourth round of the IFSC Lead World Cup took place in Imst, Austria this weekend. A permanent fixture on the IFSC... Read more
Last weekend the Women's Trad Festival took place for the first time in the Peak District. It brought together over 65 climbers... Read more


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Happy Birthday to You: 8 Handmade Birthday Cards, Birthday Crafts, and Birthday Activities
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Party Supply Wreath
By: My Own Road
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Celebrations are always better when there are balloons involved. That's why this Party Supply Wreath is one of our favorite ideas if you're looking to make your own party decorations. Not only does this homemade wreath feature brightly colored balloons, it incorporates crepe paper too! Learn how to make your own with this easy tutorial.
Estimated Cost: Under $10
Time to complete: In an evening
Primary Technique: Florals/Wreaths
Difficulty Level: Easy
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17 Sad, Haunting Photos Of Neighborhoods Destroyed By Colorado Wildfires
Spooky aerial photos of the seemingly random carnage wreaked by the Waldo Canyon wildfire. With 347 homes destroyed and at least one fatality, Colorado was declared a disaster area today. These post-apocalyptic photos demonstrate why.
- At least 21 people died after a magnitude-6.2 earthquake hit central Italy. The mayor of Amatrice said, "the town isn't here anymore."
- Donald Trump has often claimed to be "the largest real estate developer in New York," but he isn't.
- Facebook says it mistakenly suspended two libertarian groups. It's the network's latest case of suddenly removing content.


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Get a DEAL with reductions in price for Father's Day an Aston Martin Driving Experience would be the dream of many and one that will ALWAYS go down well!
Book him the perfect Father's Day present online now for the gift he'll remember. You could even fill him on the day with his driving skills, overall a brill present for a Dad.


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The Disney Ballerina Enthusiast Faire ride, which recently celebrated its regional anniversary
This is the place to hang out if you have ballerina-mania. Here you can ogle ballerina costumes, read along with ballerina religious works, learn ballerina traditions, buy ballerina churros, and get dating advice from a just-like-in-the-movies ballerina!
Ruin everything with Zombie Mode
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A Pants Aflame production


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Don't speak as if you know what you're talking about. If you've …
Comment on Comiket 83 Trashed "By Dirty Foreigners" by Anonymous:
Don't speak as if you know what you're talking about. If you've ever been to Japan (which based on your based, I guarantee you have not), Japan is truly an immaculate country. Garbage cans are not at every street corner like in most Western countries, yet somehow, the streets are kept litter free. Why is that? Well, it is simply based upon their culture. Now your argument that the more people you have, the more likely you'll find an idiot (or idiots). That is true, but with a country that has a lot more people than you can imagine, condensed in an extremely small area, yet somehow still remains pristine, your argument is no longer valid.
Anonymous made other comments on this post:
- Comiket 83 Trashed "By Dirty Foreigners":
Try half a million – not 170 thousand.
- Comiket 83 Trashed "By Dirty Foreigners":
I agree. 500,000 people or more show up for the 3 day, bi-annual event.
- Comiket 83 Trashed "By Dirty Foreigners":
This is where Comiket takes place, idiot. And learn how to spell. WTF is 'komiket'?
- Comiket 83 Trashed "By Dirty Foreigners":
Japanese is a nation of slaves who brah how good it is to be kept under there own governments thumb! This is hilarious! Japan, you can keep your kneeling position, I'll walk my out your country! Bowing lil pipsqueaks!
- Comiket 83 Trashed "By Dirty Foreigners":
F'in animals don't know how to clean up after themselves. Pathetic.
Recent comments by Anonymous:
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Yoshiko doing the leg lock like a champ, the weirdest of them all is also the sexiest one.
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I'm gonna play some Just Cause now, just cause people like you guys.
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I totally disagree and no Boys before Flowers on the list even thougbh it was a university..
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Well, this takes you back doesn't it? Really enjoyed this show back then.
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Its just they used more reverb with a vibration shake. thats all :D very very cute Miku's..