The poker world is a funny place sometimes. Everybody enters with the dream of making it big and that doesn’t just apply to the players. The player representation game is full of people dreaming about nice cars, big houses and a life of luxury.

Over the last week the poker media have been subjected to two such individuals who have tried to generate some publicity for their fledgling agencies. The first was Oliver Tse trying to get the media involved in a prop bet with him regarding the results of one of his former clients, Gabriella Hill. As far as anybody can tell Tse sent a “personalized” email to every single person on media row offering the following wager:

I will accept a $10 prop bet from each writer who will be physically at the Rio on Sunday, with the following payouts:

1. I will pay you $10 if Gabriela still has chips at dinner break on June 7
2. I will pay you $100 if Gabriela were to make the money (i.e. finishing in the top 9% of field to cash at the WSOP Ladies Event)
3. I will pay you $1000 if Gabriela were to make the final table on Tuesday June 9 (9 players, or less if double elimination were to occur at bubble)

So what Tse has asked people in the media to give Tse the chance to bet against his former client as a means of revenge. For what exactly Tse isn’t saying, only hinting at in a way that only Oliver Tse can do:

I am offering this prop bet to make the following point: my agency will only work long term with squeaky clean ambassadors of poker and I expect my clients to conduct themselves to the highest standard when they are away from the poker table or off camera.

I will remove clients, no matter how famous they are and how much media exposure they are able to generate, from my agency’s active roster for conduct issues, including but not limited to committing acts of interference with my other client’s business transactions, i.e. backstabbing.

Now those are Tse’s words, quoted directly from the email, and not mine. For Tse to get up on his high horse about people with squeaky clean images and then do something that essentially slanders a player is paramount to Russ Hamilton calling somebody a cheater for sneaking a peak at their neighbors cards. Tse currently represents only Jerry Yang and Luis Velador and you have to wonder that since he’s apparently willing to disparrage clients that he deems unworthy what sort of future business potential exists for his company?

The other agent to emerge just this week was Dan Frank of Top Set Player Management. He’s brand new to the poker agent game and made the rounds through media row here at the WSOP introducing himself on Saturday while promising that there would be a big event involving his company the following day shortly after the Ladies Event began.

A quick look at the Top Set website lists only a few current clients and the one that most poker fans would recognize is Paul Snead, the player Tiffany Michelle called the clock on during the 2008 WSOP Main Event. Based on the way he was pitching the event you got the feeling this wasn’t something that he’d first cleared with WSOP officials. Jeffrey Pollack isn’t a guy that angers quickly - at least not in a public manner - but he’s very protective of the WSOP brand and its history. Anybody looking to upstage the Series or the Commish is probably asking for trouble.

Right on schedule Sunday afternoon Frank, with Snead in tow, led a group of models all wearing Top Set tank tops, short skirts and high heels around the Amazon Room, taking great efforts to be seen by everybody in the room, until they arrived at Table 93 where they stopped and dropped of Elma Gilman at her seat.

Who’s Elma Gilman you ask? No clue. And the Googles didn’t know either.

What did this have to do with anything? Not sure. As a PR or marketing stunt it was a swingandamiss. Moments after Pollack had every woman in the room give the Shuffle Up and Deal kick-off to symbolize that the Ladies Event began to every woman in the room in came Team Top Set pronouncing that the moment actually belonged to them. Apparently they’re bigger than the WSOP and more important than the bracelet that 1,060 women in the room were playing for.

As anybody holding top set is bound to think, that was quite the flop.

Not all poker player reps are this disconnected with how the industry works. There are good people doing good things and respecting the game and the players and they’re reaping the benefits from it. More importantly they’re respected by the game and the people within it. After their stunts this week the same can’t be said for Tse or Frank.

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Phil Ivey’s win in the $2,500 No Limit Deuce to Seven event on Thursday night was his sixth bracelet win and first place prize money was worth $96,367 in prize money. That’s a lot of money to the average poker player but to a player who plays the big game in Bobby’s Room it’s one hand of Pot Limit Omaha.

Depending on which variation of the story you want to believe Ivey also collected on between $3 million and $12 million in prop bets from the action-crazy crew he regularly gets action down with. The five-figure payday for winning then becomes an afterthought as it’s dwarfed by the side action.

Within minutes of his win a rumor surfaced that Ivey had actually left the entire $97,000 as a tip for the dealers since it’s just not a lot of money relative to his prop bets. As plausible as it sounds that somebody as wealthy as Ivey, who had just won a hefty seven-figure wager, would show his appreciation for the dealers by leaving that big of a tip it just wasn’t possible.

At the time the rumor first hit poker forums Ivey was already playing in another event, having been whisked there by Harrah’s staff. He never stopped at the cashier cage, never picked up his money and simply wanted to make haste on getting bracelet #7. Two Harrah’s floor personnel confirmed this as being the case.

That’s when the rumor mill became a variation of that kids game Telephone. You know the one; you whisper something into your friends ear, he whispers what he thought you said into the next person’s ear, etc. Until the end when the last person says the statement out loud and it’s totally different than the original comment. Within 24 hours the amount of the tip had grown to $200,000.

Seriously folks? The actual tip, as confirmed by some Harrah’s employees, was $3,000. And while that’s not the $100,000 that the rumor mill thought it’s still on the high end of the tipping scale for tournament winnings and fairly standard for Ivey.

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Just before the dinner break Saturday night Phil Hellmuth got into a pot and during the hand turned into the classic Poker Brat that TV cameras have come to love. He even felt the need to Tweet about the hand:

“Demidoff open 800, I smooth call w Ac-Kc on button, S blind reraises, D folds, i have 20k, he 13k, i talk, then fold! Face up He goes crazy”

There’s only one problem. If you read that Tweet you’re made to believe that it was the amazing laydown and show that had the small blind going “crazy”. The small blind, David “Bakes” Baker, did indeed lose it (and had every right to be upset) and even went as far as to say “Would you just shut the fuck up?”. However, it wasn’t directed at the 11-time bracelet winner and self-promotion wiz. The hand played out a little differently than Hellmuth would have you believe based on his 140-characters or less message.
Hellmuth did get most of it right. Demidov did in fact open for 800 and Hellmuth followed that with a call. Baker certainly put in a raise and Demidov folded. Once it got to Hellmuth the two players were heads-up and he went into Poker Brat mode.
“This isn’t fair buddy. You’ve got me in a tough spot,” said Hellmuth who then asked the small blind how much he had left. Baker didn’t flinch. “You have to tell me buddy.” Baker again didn’t move and when the dealer motioned for him to count he informed the dealer it was his responsibility to count the chips.

“I don’t have to count it. You can count it down for him.” With that the dealer counted down the chips and Hellmuth was back asking questions.

“What do you want me to do? What do you think I should do here?” This is where it gets bizarre. The player in the big blind, who had folded when faced with a raise and a re-raise said “just fold it”.

Phil replied “Just fold it?” and the big blind player confirmed his opinion, “yeah, just fold”. Hellmuth turned over A-K suited and put it into the muck. That’s when Baker lost it and turned his frustration towards the big blind.

“Would you just shut the fuck up? Seriously, shut the fuck up already. You weren’t in the hand.”

So sure, Baker went “crazy” but contrary to the way Phil tells the story it wasn’t because of the laydown and it wasn’t directed at Phil. The anger came from one player breaching poker etiquette and WSOP Rule #59:

“Players are obligated to protect the other players in the tournament at all times. Therefore, whether in a hand or not, players may not a.) Disclose contents of live or folded hands, b.) Advise or criticize play before the action is completed, or c.) Read a hand that hasn’t been tabled. While in a hand, players may not a) discuss hands or strategy with any spectator, or b) seek or receive consultation from an outside source. The one-player-to-a-hand rule will be enforced. Players who violate this rule are subject to penalty in accordance with Rules 31, 53, and 54.”

For years the TV cameras have gone out of their way to make sure Hellmuth gets his share of the spotlight and they’ve probably done some creative editing to make Hellmuth out to be the Poker Brat and he’s done nothing to shy away from that. His Tweets are apparently no exception.

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Twitter is changing the way that poker fans can follow their favorite players during poker tournaments. You’re now able to get instant updates right from the table. But there’s one Justin Bonomo fan who might wish Twitter never existed.

You see she was sitting at the same table as Bonomo during Event #7 ($1,500 No Limit Hold’em) and after a player made a comment about Bonomo, she starting rattling off his statistics like she’d spent a little bit too much time looking at his Bluff player profile page. Only problem is, she never acknowledged that Bonomo was at the table and could hear the entire conversation. Wouldn’t look at him, nod at him or ask him to verify any of the numbers she’d memorized.

So Bonomo reached out to all of his followers on Twitter for some help.

What’s the proper etiquette when 2 people at the table are talking about you and your accomplishments… But not talking to you. Awkward…

The 23 year old pro just sat in his chair bemused by the whole thing rather unsure of what to do in this spot. Offer an autograph? Introduce yourself? Tell the table you’re somebody else and make some snide comment about the lady losing her marbles? Bonomo chose a different tact. He just kept tweeting about her.

This lady is super nice, but she keeps talking about me to the other players at the table as if I can’t hear her and never makes eye contact

He sent out one more tweet about her before busting out of the tournament.

Just to clarify, she knows I’m right here and has had nothing but praiseful things to say. Very kind.

If you want to follow more of Bonomo’s Twitter activity you can check out the Bluff Poker Twitter page.

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I grew up a huge sports fan. Basketball, baseball, football, hockey … you name it, I watched it. I also read a ton about sports growing up and throught that became well aware of the legends from the good ol’ days. One thing I hated was old timers games. Good god, watching guys way past their prime trying to skate up and down the ice or run the fast break was painful and a pretty good lesson early on that time catches up with everybody.

So it was with a little bit of trepidation that I arrived at the Rio Sunday as the Champions Invitational was about to unfold. Seeing the likes of Amarillo Slim, Brad Daugherty, Jim Bechtel and the like playing poker would be, I feared, a lot like watching 41 year old Earl Monroe driving the lane at the NBA Schick Legends game in 1985. If that moment was your only time seeing Monroe play basketball you’d be hard pressed to understand the greatness that once existed there. I didn’t want people, myself included, to see the former champions who no longer play competively today and think. “that’s it?”.

Then something happened. The 20 players started showing up for a group photo. The respect and camaraderie shared amongst them was impressive to see. This was the first meeting of this club ever and having a birds eye view on it from media row was awe-inspiring. Berry Johnston, 1986 champ, sitting with Joe Hachem and both were smiling from ear to ear. Then Greg Raymer left the $40,000 No Limit Hold’em event to come over and be a part of the moment and the group photo.

Think about that for just a second. A former World Champion, playing with 7 other players only 20 feet away for a first place prize of nearly $2 million happily walks over to the freeroll he was entered in and shakes some hands, poses for pictures and signs the autographs of the railbirds that were five deep at the time. He didn’t begrudgingly do it - he was obviously thrilled to be a part of the event and more importantly the club.

WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack then introduced each player starting with the most recent. No joke, as the game’s legends were introduced to the crowd there was some goose bumps to be sure. For today at least we were all reminded of the way these players were and the game was when they took home poker’s most sought-after title, a Main Event bracelet.

So if the $50,000 HORSE event is, as Pollack often refers to it, the All-Star game of poker then today’s event was the Legends Game. And rather than be reminded that some of the champions who helped dig the Glitter Gulch have aged and maybe aren’t as sharp as the kids who got their titles thanks to endless hours spent on the information superhighway we were given unequivocal proof that these men are still players, still legends and most importantly, still Champions.

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For the media the World Series of Poker is like summer camp. You see friends you haven’t seen in almost a year. You see enemies you’ve forgotten about. And for the first few days everybody is happy to see everybody. Then the work sets in and it’s like riding an ex-girlfriend a bike. Covering the Series from my seat every year is a ridiculous amount of fun. There’s good stories, bad stories, crazy gossip and of course the off-the-wall stuff that just makes you laugh. Over the next seven weeks I hope this blog brings everybody a little bit of each of those.

The 40th Annual World Series of Poker kicked off Wednesday with Event #1 ($500 Casino Employees No Limit Hold’em) and while it lacked the star power of the other events it’s still a great opportunity to reward some of the hardest working people in the business - the dealers, floor people, tournament directors and all types of staff. Spotted amongst the 866 player field was Harrah’s VP of Sponsorship and Licensing Ty Stewart. Not long after we snapped an action photo of him he lost with Queens vs. Aces and he (presumably) busted shortly thereafter. Hopefully he doesn’t hold me responsbile for that.

The only event starting today is the $40,000 No Limit Hold’em event to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the WSOP. The 201 players in the field put the total prize pool at around $8,000,000. All the big names are in the field today and typical to form, Phil Hellmuth is a no show despite having already registered. He’ll be here though and he’ll be sure to let everybody know when he arrives.

On the way into the Rio this morning I noticed the 1970 Corvette that the winner of the WSOP Champions Invitiational parked out front. It’s a gorgeous car in that red that only looks good on a Corvette. The only problem was that whoever parked the car there decided to leave the keys inside leaving two Harrah’s employees with a coat hanger and the task of breaking into their own car. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Hopefully whoever wins the WSOP Champions event gets the actual keys and not just a lifetime supply of coathangers.

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