Hey guys,

Just a quick note tonight. We’ve started into a new weekly series about Doyle Brunson over on pokerlistings.com. Some of the hands will be familliar to regular readers, but the articles are re-written with some new information.

Also, I’m happy to announce that I’ve spent the last day watching the next WPT episode to air. That may sound confusing until you realize that this means I’ve been sent advance copies from WPT so I can proceed with a new Hand of the Day column that will be featured at www.worldpokertour.com, recapping the hands seen in the previous week. As you might have guessed, I’m pretty excited to be working with the World Poker Tour. We’ll have more announcements of this variety in the coming months.

The episode in question was the World Poker Open at the Gold Strike casino, and I think this is the best episode I’ve seen in a long time. Big names having a lot of fun at the table with a result that will leave the most cynical viewers satisfied. Be sure to check it out this wednesday.

That’s it for now. Hope everyone’s having a good wekeend. When you wake up tomorrow at noon with a hangover from hell, drop by and we’ll do what we can to clear your head. Nut rivers,

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

Hey guys,

Just doing a hyperlink text. Click here for a cool picture.

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

Hey guys,

Just a quick entry tonight. I wanted to make sure everyone had seen that we have a new blogger. Meng Ji was one of the first respondents to this site and I was immediately struck not only by his fascination with the game beyond the game, but also with his ability to express his thoughts on it. Do yourself a favor and check his first postings out at;

http://www.wisehandpoker.com/blog-meng/

You can find the link ha;fway down our home page on the right side of the home page.

On a more somber note, a World Series bracelet winner has passed away. AJ Meyer’s funeral is Sunday at 3:00 pm, as posted by Mason Malmuth on twoplustwo.com;

“Canyon Gate Country Club
8700 West Sahara
(Cross Streets Sahara and Durango)

If necessary, here’s the phone number of the country club: 363-0303″

Our condolences. If anyone would like to share some information about AJ, I’d be glad to post it.

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

I am not a cool man. I

So, in the last few days, we’ve received enough requests for off-site content to start looking at new writers. A few have been referred to us, a few more have answered our call and I’ve called up a few old buddies. One of them is an old friend from Vancouver, Pete Radonjic (pronounced Radonich).

Pete and I had a good time running up the phone bills as we got caught up. Back before I was serious about poker, I was serious about Magic: the Gathering, and Pete was one of the many card players I had the good fortune to meet in my travels. Along with a few more recognizable names, he’s made the transition to poker and he’s making a living playing the game.

Pete’s always been a community-oriented kind of guy, a habit that’s continued itself with his co-maintenance of www.604poker.com with Mike Thicke, (another guy we’ll be talking to and another M:tG player/writer turned poker pro), one of the reasons he was the first guy who came to mind when this search began. We got to talking about the website, what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do, and when the conversation turned to finding writers, Pete summed up one of poker’s biggest problems in a way I’d failed to prior to the conversation.

“The problem” he said, “Is that anyone who’s good enough at poker to write strategy about poker isn’t going to leave their $100/hour at the table to work for $30/hour”. Simple, to the point and profound. If you look at the poker community, the ratio of players to writers is incredibly steep, and even then, with a few exceptions the writers are players first who augment their income with the writing. If you love the game, the logic goes, why would you ever want to stop to write about it?

I can’t help but think this issue could become a major stumbling block to poker’s continued rise. There’s just not a lot of culture being produced considering what you’d think the demand would be. There’s this great mythos that no one knows and you just don’t hear as much about it as at least one pudgy, slightly-balding writer would like. Pokerplayer.com, pokerpages.com and cardplayer.com and the other old-school sites do their part, but the overwhelming demand for strategy articles makes it so even they have trouble paying writers for other content.

I’m not declaring poker over or anything and god knows the doomsday predictions have come and gone more than once, but I really worry about what happens after pokerdome puts all other TV money to shame and there’s no sturdy backbone to lean on. Of course, poker is a game that screams every man for themselves (as is evidenced by the communities’ thousand splinters), so I don’t know if its feasible that successful players would give of their time and sweat for the betterment of the game. Hopefully it’s a non-issue. Thanks for the fear, Pete

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

Another day, another great article to reference. ESPN’s poker coverage is sporadic, but the work they post is always quality, thanks in large part to our friends at Bluff Magazine, who supply them with just about everything not written by Steve Rosenbloom. Today, I finally got to read through the first three parts of Michael Craig’s exclusive look at the Beal vs. Corporation match.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Beal is a Texas billionaire who’d been dominant at just about everything he’d ever tried before turning his gaze to poker. Playing limit Hold’Em heads up, he trained himself to near-professional level, then took on a group of the biggest names in the game as remembered in Craig’s ‘The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King’, with the great equalizer being Beal’s insistence on playing at higher stakes than even the pros were accustomed to.

Beal’s made many trips to Vegas since the adventure began, with each seeing the stakes move higher. Craig’s article focuses on Andy’s most recent shot at the pros, which, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know I was glued to my computer for. The numbers being thrown around are astronomical and it’s kind of nice seeing the Todd Brunson’s, Ted Forrest’s and Jen Harman’s of the world almost take on the underdog role. Make sure you read all three posted parts, then be sure to go back when they post the fourth. You can find the articles here;

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=bluff_magazine&id=2412502

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

One problem with trying to keep up with the goings on in the poker world is sometimes I fall behind. The industry is dynamic, unpredictable and ever-growing, and while I

Hey guys:

It’s 4AM Sunday morning. I just put up the latest installment of the WPT Episode 1 story over on Pokerlistings.com and I’m about to do the Hand of the Day. Can anyone think of a better time to be working? Guess that’s the price of starting a business.

Just a reminder, we’re offering %40 signup bonuses to both PokerRoom.com and Ultimatebet.com, the latter of which is presently running the Bill vs. Phil promotion. For regular readers of this blog, you’ll know that I’m a Bill Filmaff fan, so I’m looking forward to seeing all that go down. Hope everyone’s having a good weekend,

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

So, Michael Mizrachi mentioned in an interview that he

I just wanted to build a little on my thought from yesterday regarding the changing function of the poker player in society. Something was pointed out by a regular reader and I thought it was worth mentioning.

The poker player used to be an attractive figure because of his/her rebellious individualism. Most of us accept certain realities in life; we must work to make money to pay bills. The poker player managed to break the equation, but there was a penalty. The negative stigma probably routed from the fact that disassociated the player from the normal citizen.

Now, the professional poker player represents just about everything we can strive for as individuals in a capitalist society; colossal wealth; glamour and fame; excitement, action, sex and doing something they love. Of course, this image discounts the reality of the work required to maintain a professional poker career, but image is everything.

The pro poker player is at the peak of society