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Laugh at this you will

... or maybe not. I don't know. But partly because I'm bored and partly because I've had three hours of sleep (got up in the middle of the night to send wifey off to volunteer to help the hurricane victims in Biloxi -- I'm so proud of her), but mostly because I'm just a geek, I whipped this up about five minutes ago. Hope you enjoy.


By the way, if you're looking for yet another poker site to try, or just another bonus to whore, you might want to check out my latest flavor of the month, Stay Home Casino. The poker part of the site is yet another Poker Room skin (I swear, those things are breeding like tribbles these days), but they also offer a sportsbook and other casino games, if you're into that sort of thing. They're running a 50 percent first-time deposit bonus, but be aware that you only get it if you deposit $100 or more (maximum bonus of $500). In addition, they also offer an additional 20 percent bonus on the first and every subsequent deposit if you use Neteller.

We Love Katamari (until it hurts)

Not much in the way of poker play to relate today, as we spent the weekend celebrating my youngest son's birthday, complete with bowling party. Then, it was back home to play with toys all day Saturday. And that's where my subject line comes in to play.

When it comes to children's birthdays, I have adopted a strategy which my parents used, which is that when one has a birthday, the other also gets a token gift. That keeps everybody happy and minimizes the fights over new presents. So, this weekend turned into a video game holiday, with the birthday boy getting a Nintendo DS, while my oldest son got "We Love Katamari," the sequel to "Katamari Damacy." Now, if you haven't played "Katamari Damacy" before, you probably won't understand, because it sounds so damned stupid. But it is probably the singlemost addictive game, ever. Basically, it involves rolling stuff up into a ball. That's it. You have a ball, you roll it onto other stuff, the other stuff sticks to the ball, rinse, repeat. That's it for the gameplay. Of course, the stuff you roll up can't be bigger than your ball, or else it won't stick. And you're usually trying to roll up enough stuff to get your ball a certain size before time runs out. But yeah, it's a whole rolling-stuff-up-in-a-ball game. It's very, very simple, but it's also somewhat challenging, and that's what makes it so addictive. You're playing, thinking the task before you should be so easy to accomplish, and then you fail, so you play again, and again, and again, and then it's 3:00 in the morning and you know you have to get up and go to work the next day, but you just want to finish this game, no wait, one more.

Anyway, I woke up this morning with a blister on my thumb roughly the shape of Georgia, but thankfully only as large as a small county. Unfortunately, this is also the same thumb I attempted to sever the other night. I was making a salad, saw we were out of ham (well, non-rancid ham, anyway), and I think that subconciously I must have decided to substitute with thumb instead, as I proceeded to slice the very tip of my thumb about halfway off. Not a cut, a failed amputation. I've not tried yet, because it would hurt like a bitch if I did, but I'm thinking that if I held it out the window while driving really fast, it would probably attract all dogs within a mile radius by functioning as a veritable wound-whistle.

So, between the blister and dangling flesh, my thumb is throbbing and very sore, not to mention uber sensitive. I don't have to actually touch anything, all I have to do is get near something and it hurts. I'm thinking of renting it out to geologists, as I'm fairly certain that it can detect subtle variations in the earth's magnetic field.

But, enough whiny stuff. I think I've got it out of my system now.

No, wait, I forgot. I could talk about my play at the poker tables, which has, since my last writing, taken on an uncanny resemblence to demolition derby (crashing, burning, self-destruction). But, unlike my thumb, I'm thinking (hoping, praying) that I've stopped the bleeding in my game and can hopefully get back on a roll.

Definitely enough whiny stuff. How about some poker news?

If, like me, you've been wondering what in the hell happened to to the World Poker Tour's offshoot Professional Poker Tour and why it hasn't been on TV yet instead of all the damned WPT repeats, here's part of the answer:

WPT Enterprises in Dispute With the Travel Channel Over the Professional Poker Tour

LOS ANGELES -- WPT Enterprises, Inc. (Nasdaq: WPTE) filed suit in the California Superior Court on Monday, September 19, seeking to keep the Travel Channel ("TRV") from interfering with WPTE's prospective contractual relationship with another broadcaster in connection with WPTE's new program, the Professional Poker Tour (the "PPT").

Under an existing agreement between WPTE and TRV for the World Poker Tour program (the "WPT Agreement"), TRV is afforded the right to negotiate with WPTE with respect to certain types of programming developed by WPTE during a sixty (60) day period. Pursuant to the WPT Agreement, WPTE submitted the PPT to TRV and began negotiation but failed to reach an agreement with TRV within the allotted negotiation window. Consequently, WPTE began discussions with other networks. While WPTE and TRV later revived their attempts to reach a deal after TRV's exclusive bargaining window had ended, WPTE ultimately received an offer from another network. WPTE submitted this offer to TRV pursuant to TRV's contractual last right to match the deal as specified under the WPT Agreement. Thereafter, TRV sent letters to WPTE and the other broadcaster asserting, among other things, that WPTE was not entitled to complete a deal for the PPT with a third party.

In response to TRV's communications, WPTE filed a suit alleging that TRV interfered with WPTE's prospective contractual relationship with a third party as well as attempted to contravene WPTE's express contractual right to produce non-World Poker Tour branded programs covering poker tournaments.

WPTE and TRV have worked closely for three seasons delivering quality poker television under the World Poker Tour brand. Steven Lipscomb, Founder and CEO of WPT Enterprises, Inc., said "We have forged a strong relationship with the Travel Channel over the last three years and are in the middle of producing Season IV of the World Poker Tour, the most successful show in the history of the Travel Channel." Lipscomb further said, "We need to be very clear that this dispute is not about either side's commitment to further building the WPT franchise together. This is simply an issue of process and contractual interpretation with regard to the new Professional Poker Tour program."

TRV's fifteen (15) day right to match the deal expires Tuesday, September 27th. If TRV does not exercise its right to match by that date, WPTE intends to sign a PPT deal with the other broadcast network.

In case you're wondering which "other broadcast network" is being referenced, it's ESPN.

And you know how you hear a story and you think, "Dear God, that's the weirdest thing I've ever heard related to poker," and for a while it is? But then, just when you are growing comfortable in the notion of possessing knowledge of the weirdest poker story, something else comes along and blows it away? Here's that something else:

Dead Man's Estate Funds Free Online Poker Site; Eccentric Millionaire Goes ''All In'' One Last Time

LOS ANGELES -- Today LastCallPoker.com (www.LastCallPoker.com) a free Texas Hold' Em Web site designed and funded by deceased millionaire, Lionel "Lucky" Brown was launched on the Internet. Last Call Poker uses the web's most sophisticated poker system, featuring a no-download Flash engine, an in-game chat system, and a level of graphic design and interactivity unmatched in the online games industry.

Brown, upon his death, willed five million dollars of his fortune to the creation of LastCallPoker.com to facilitate the development and maintenance of this online game site. Lucky Brown always said that a hand of poker he won at the end of the War gave him the seed money for his fortune.

As his final resting place has been kept secret, an undisclosed amount of money has been set aside for "wakes" to be held in cemeteries nationwide where poker fans will play Tombstone Hold 'Em, a poker variant Brown invented while serving in Europe at the end of World War II. Graveyard Games are currently scheduled for cemeteries in San Francisco, Washington D.C., New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and others to be announced. Rules for Tombstone Hold 'Em and a calendar of events can be found at www.LastCallPoker.com.

Yeah, the weirdness doesn't stop there. When you sign up, you get a profile page, which in and of itself isn't all that unusual, except that you're asked to list your death date and a "mortography" (mine says, "shot by a jealous husband"). In fact, they're all about the death thing.

Other than that, however, the site looks nice. I keep looking for a real-money hook, but haven't found it yet. It looks like it truly is just a play-money site. The graphics are pretty cool, as they've used models to create actual photograph avatars, and you get to pick your own. I will gripe that none of them looked sufficiently evil enough to fit my evilbilly moniker, but really, the only one I've ever seen that does is that clown at Full Tilt Poker.

Clearing the backlog

I know it's been a long, long time since I've posted, but things have been quite hectic of late. There was a major shakeup at work that has had me concentrating a lot more on my job of late and less on pretending that I know anything worthwhile about poker.

Not that I don't have plenty of items of questionable worth to discuss. During this hiatus, I've continued to build a mental list of things I want to write about, and that list is getting quite lengthy. Hopefully over the next few days, I'll be able to clear a lot of that out.

But first, as a way to apologize to my readers, I want to share something that I've been sitting on for quite a long time, something that will be somewhat worthwhile to anyone who is somewhat close to Louisville. Here is the list of events for the WSOP Circuit event that will be held at Caesar's Indiana next month:

WSOP Circuit Event -- Caesars Indiana
Oct. 19 - Nov. 2

Oct. 19 - Satellites Begin
Oct. 20 - Event #1 (#300+40 No Limit Hold’em)
Oct. 21 - Event #2 ($500+50 No Limit Hold 'Em)
Oct. 22 - Event #3 ($1,000+60 No Limit Hold 'Em)
Oct. 23 - Event #4 ($500+50 No Limit Hold 'Em) w/re-buys
Oct. 24 - Event #5 ($500+50 7 Card Stud)
Oct. 25 - Event #6 ($1,000+60 No Limit Hold 'Em)
Oct. 26 - Event #7 ($500+50 Pot Limit Omaha) w/re-buys
Oct. 27 - Event #8 ($1,500+70 No Limit Hold 'Em)
Oct. 28 - Event #9 ($2,000+80 No Limit Hold 'Em)
Oct. 29 - Event #10 ($200+30 No Limit Hold’em)
                  Ladies Only @ 11am - L.I.P.S.
                  Mega Satellite @ 1pm
                  Super Satellite @ 8pm
Oct. 30 - Event #11 ($10,000 No Limit Hold 'Em)
                  Main Event Day1
Oct. 31 - Main Event Day 2
Nov. 01 - Main Event Day 3
Nov. 02 - Championship Event Final Table

---

Well, now that that's out of the way, I suppose I should share a little update about how things are going for me at the tables. I suppose shortly before I left off, I had mentioned (repeatedly) about how I had taken the family on a mini-vacation to Florida, financed entirely by poker winnings. Anyway, once I came back around the first of August, I had $18 left over in my Neteller account, so I just put that back into Poker Room, since $18 wasn't going to be of much use to me except at the poker tables. Well, by the time Labor Day came around, that $18 had blossomed into $600. I decided to withdraw it, keeping $400 to help pay to take the family on a Labor Day weekend trip to Cincinnati, as we do every year.

Thanks to my work, I get free tickets to a lot of attractions, so we did King's Island, Cincinnati Zoo and the Newport Aquarium for a grand total of $22 (I could only get two tickets to the aquarium, so we had to pay for the kids' admission). The rest of the trip was fantastic. We stayed in the Millenium Hotel downtown, which was fairly nice. I had one of the best burgers I've ever tasted over at Jillian's (the one with blue cheese on it -- yummy!). And I managed to pick up a copy of a new poker book which is surprisingly helpful -- Beyond Tells: Power Poker Psychology. But I'll get more into that in a moment.

With the remaining $200, I decided I would take a stab at the 500 percent bonus offered at Hollywood Poker. However, my poker play since Labor Day has left a lot to be desired. I went through quite a few days where I would up $100 one day, then down $100 the next. After one especially horrific day, I turned to Beyond Tells for some guidance, and it made an immediate impact like no other poker book I've read.

Let me explain a little further. You've probably heard, and likely even used, the complaint, "I don't understand what's happening. I'm playing exactly the same way I did when I was winning, but now I can't seem to win a hand." Often, this statement is used to say that very fishy games are seemingly impossible to beat, or as anecdotal evidence that online poker is rigged. And I have to admit, I fall into this trap myself, and felt myself slipping there lately. In fact, it's that exact same thought that has accompanied every steep drop in my bankroll. Anyway, after one especially horrific day this week, I turned to the chapter "Destined to Lose" and immediately recognized my recent play. I wasn't playing the way I always had when I was winning, even if it seemed to me that I was. I was chasing too many longshots, calling too much, staying with too many marginal hands ... all the familiar weaknesses of a poor player. The next time I sat down at a table, I was ready to banish all that bad behavior and, with a little bit of luck to accompany my improved play, I had one of my best days ever at a poker table.

Now I don't know if Beyond Tells would have the same effect on everyone else. A lot of times, you can hear the same lesson presented five different ways, but it doesn't click until someone presents a slightly different sixth way. But for me, this book was exactly what I needed to pull myself out of a slump.

Well, that's enough for my return to blogging for now. I still have quite a bit to get done today. However, before I leave, let me share one more gift with you.

We've all heard of Poker Tracker and how useful it is. If you've got, you already know. However, if you haven't felt like plopping down the cash to get the full version yet, here's a very acceptable substitute. There's a new program coming out with most of the same features as Poker Tracker and a even few new ones. It's called Poker Manager, and you can get a free, fully-operational version right now while it is in beta testing. Then, as a reward for all of those who beta test the product, you will get the first Gold version of the program when it is released. Just go to www.pokermgr.com and download the latest version. When you start it up the first time, you will be asked either enter an activation code or use the 10-day trial version. Just enter the code "BETATEST" and you will have the full working version. Enjoy.