May has been a good month for me in nearly every aspect except for getting work done for Wise Hand Poker. I am back in my hometown and have had fun getting back together with the high school friends. I need to start making more time for writing though.

I was going to finish the biography on Stu Ungar and write a review on it during school. I was too busy and didn’t finish the book. I was going to do it once I got back here; I have managed to finish one whole chapter in the three weeks I have been home. I should have that done though soon. I am also supposed to be working on a project for the site. I spent an afternoon on it a few weeks back and haven’t done anything with it since. I am going to have to make some time for these things.

The WSOP starts tomorrow. Unfortunately, I will not be in Las Vegas to watch everything go down. Being the poor college student that has to beg for money, I can’t afford to spend my summer in the Mecca of poker. Next year I will probably try my get an internship or something with a poker site/magazine to cover the WSOP. All of you that are headed for the WSOP or the other tournaments in the next few months like the Bellagio Cup, I wish all of you the best of luck!

At least I think I am!

I’m here in Vegas as a tournament reporter for PokerPages.com during the entirety of the WSOP. I’ve been here since Sunday for meetings and other preparations, and with the days off, I’ve been enjoying Vegas - seeing friends, lounging at the pool, enjoying some good food, etc.

PokerPages put us up in some great digs just south of the Strip. It’s a luxurious condo - two bedrooms, two baths, nice balcony, furnishings, even a washer and dryer in the condo. And the gated community has a gym, basketball and tennis courts, and two pools. I’m so impressed that the powers-that-be chose such nice accommodations for the reporters!

The WSOP starts tomorrow. Though I’ve definitely enjoyed my down time, I’m looking forward to getting to work tomorrow. There may be a few kinks to work out through the first few days of coverage, but there has been ample planning to make sure things run smoothly. A great team of people have been assembled to handle every aspect of our coverage, and they’ve done a phenomenal job thus far.

What should we expect from the WSOP?

There will probably be a lower turnout than last year but no less enthusiasm from the players who will be there. Throngs of people will march into the tournament room tomorrow at noon with bright eyes and lofty goals. Fewer amateurs may be the result of the UIGEA, but the WSOP bracelet hasn’t lost one ounce of its prestige. Excitement will be flowing, as already evidenced by conversations in poker rooms all over Vegas. It’s the talk of the town, and it’s only 24 hours away.

I think there will be some previous bracelet winners who step up to the plate and grab another, but I don’t predict that any one player will swoop down and create a Madsen-like stir. The fields will still be strong, and it will be extremely difficult for any one player to win more than two bracelets.

There will certainly be less partying than last year. Without the online sites sponsoring parties at the local clubs, everyone will be on their own to plan and attend various events. I think most players will take the opportunity to concentrate on poker, though there will still be a party now and then. It will definitely be a different vibe from last year.

The biggest change for me is that instead of floating around the Rio doing interviews and limiting my Vegas visits to 4 or 5 days at a time, I’l be behind media lines with my laptop this year for nearly all of the 45 days, seeing all of the action and describing it to readers as I see it. I’ quite anxious to hear that first “Shuffle up and deal!”

I’ll be posting blogs here at Wise Hand Poker about my experiences. If any readers are in town for the WSOP, I hope you get the chance to come by and say hi.

Good luck to all of the players (and members of the media)!

Hey guys,

It’s 6:30AM and it looks like I’m pulling an all-nighter. I still have some articles to do now, have laundry to do at 8AM, packing to do at 10AM, get picked up to go do some errands at 11AM, head to the office for 1PM, leave for the airport at 3PM and fly at 5:30PM. All this after a full day that, granted started when I awoke at 2 PM.

Of course, none of the exhaustion will matter soon. I’m spending the next two days more or less fasting to ice my bet with Gavin Smith, so the exhaustion and starvation-induced weakness should get me some damn good sleep. On June 1, we start WSOP; from then until the final day on July 18th, I’ll be moving forward with blinders on.

Quickly before I get back to the more serious work, I submitted my first ESPN.com article yesterday. Well, the second version of it, at least. The first was long, meandering and convoluted at 1700 words. I cut 500 out in the second going, making it a little more efficient, but a little less fun. Let me know what you think of it when it gets up on the page. I’m anxious for a little feedback on what’s likely one of the most important articles I’ve written as career milestones go.

Speaking of meadering, I’m obviously all over the place here. I’m going to end this before I start posting embarrassing nuggest from my date last night or my appreciation for fine dining at the Skydome. See what I did there? Meandering. Have a good day.

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

While up late one night I caught the beginning of a movie called “First Knight”. Filmed several years ago, it is set in mid-evil Camelot with Richard Gere playing the part of Lancelot, a fearless sword wielding ladies man. I had no interest in watching the movie, however, the opening scene caught my attention. Bear with me as I take you through it, as I feel it illustrates a good point when applied to Poker.

Scene: Lancelot (Gere) is in a mid-evil village with his sword in his hand. A crowd is gathered around as he challenges any of the villagers to a sword fight.

Lancelot: “Once in a lifetime, you meet a man so fearless. No man can touch him…while you’re waiting for him, you can practice on me (villagers laugh). For as sure as the sun will rise, there’s a man who’s better than me. He could be here. It could be today.”

A camera pans over to a man who is being goateed by his family to challenge Lancelot. He points to him and says:

“It could be you.”

They then engage in a sparring match in which the man can not even come close to striking Lancelot. He toys with him before eloquently dashing the sword out of the man’s hand with ease. Looking on with amazement, the challenger says:

“How did you do that? Was that a trick?”

Lancelot: “No. That’s the way I fight.”

Challenger: “Could I do it? Tell me. I can learn.”

Lancelot: “First you must study your opponent, so you know what he’ll do before he does it.

Challenger: “I can do that.”

Lancelot: “And wait for the critical moment.”

Challenger: “I can do that.”

Lancelot: “And you must not care whether you live or die.”

The challenger just stares at Lancelot with silence. No reply “I can do that” to that suggestion.

I love to find poker advice in unlikely places. I won’t dumb things down and explain why this concept is important while playing poker (especially no limit), but I challenge you to think about it, and apply it to your approach to the game, because it is truly what separates the winners from those who are afraid to lose.

I encourage everyone to look beyond the poker books, strategy columns, forums and even hours of playing to find useful advice in unlikely places.

My job may seem pretty cushy. I mean, all I do is chat with poker players, watch them play and jot it down, am I right? Thing is, the moment I stop to catch my breath I get pile-ups the likes of which you wouldn’t believe. Today, I’m sharing my burden with you.

I woke up at noon after a late night last night. Now, it’s 5PM and I’ve just written and posted new Hands of the Day on wisehandpoker.com and pokerlistings.com. I’ve been taking it easy until now, but that ends after this here blog. Take a look at what I’m planning on tackling over the next ten hours or so:

- Wise Hand of the Month - 800 words

I know it all sounds the same, but this is a feature I write monthly for Bluff Magazine. The topic this time around will be Phil hellmuth’s tenth bracelet win last year, when he defeated Juha Helppi. I’m chatting with Phil in half an hour just to refresh my recollections of the thing.

- Major storylines of this year’s WSOP - 1200 words.

My first article written exclusively for ESPN. Working with WSOP, WPT, Bluff et al has been great, but ESPN represents another level. I mean, I can call Peter Gammons a co-worker now, right? OK, that may be a stretch, but I mean, that’s the kind of guy my work will be compared to. No pressure. Of course, my work now and this summer will determine any future relationship I might have with the ultimate source for sports. No pressure indeed.

- Barry Bonds - 1200 words

I’ve had an article about baseball player Barry Bonds brewing around my brain for the last few months. My induction to ESPN has allowed me the opportunity to write the article for submission. No promises of publication, no promises of pay. Thing, is, this is an opportunity to broaden my horizons. Baseball was my first love, and to have a baseball-based article on the biggest stage on the Internet…I mean…words don’t describe what that would mean to me. Do I HAVE to do this? No, but god knows I won’t have time once I get to Vegas, and this is one itch I really want to scratch.

- Chapter 1 - 5000 words?

Yeah, you read that right. I’ve been approached to do a book on the World Series of Poker, so I need to put together a chapter for sample purposes. I don’t need to write the whole thing fresh; the book would involve writing abotu the major hands like in the Hand of the Day, so for the sample I’ll be using HotD’s instead of re-writing the whole thing, but there’s a lot of other stuff I’d need to do to make it all happen. Like the bonds article, this is more about expanding my horizons than immediate payoff. In a world where having your name on a book insinuated authority, I’ve never written one. That’s just one of the many reasons I’d like to add ‘author’ to the old resume.

Just another day at the computer. Anyone want to trade workloads?

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

Some of you may remember that seven weeks ago, I made a couple of bets. First, I bet Mark Newhouse that I could lose 20 pounds in a complicated wager. Then, I bet Gavin Smith $5,000 I could lose twenty-five.

Things started well, with fourteen pounds coming off in the first four weeks, but since I returned from the WPT World Championship, I haven’t weighed myself. I’ve kept up the excersizing and have kept to a healthy diet, though there have been time s where I ate a little more of the healthy stuff than I should have. Still, I have to admit I was a little nervous not knowing where I was at with a week to go before my final weigh-in.

Today, I took my mother out for a belated Mother’s Day dinner. A life coach specializing in weight loss, she’s been helpful thorugh the whole thing, offering advice but at the same time not getting too involved, as mother’s tend to like to do. She’d ask how things were going without prying too much and I’d fill her in. When she asked this week, I told her that since I don’t own a scale, I wasn’t too sure of where I was at.

Well, when she met me outside my apartment for dinner, she had a scale for me. I immediately dropped it on the pavement, adjusted a pound for clothing and stepped aboard. It seems that in the seven weeks, I’ve now lost twenty-four pounds, one shy of the required total with six days to work it off. Good times.

I called up Newhouse to break the bad news to him. Assuming I make the twenty, he’ll have to quit smoking for the Series to avoid paying me $1500. On top of the cash, he’d also have to write a daily diary on this very site for a month, with the penalty of missing a day $500 each time he does so. I don’t want that money…I’d rather see him write. Mark’s a smart kid with a lot of charisma; I think it would be a lot of fun to see what he says once he’s up on the soap box.

I’m not going to break down and have pizza or donuts in the few days to come. Granted, there will likely be a buffet of both, plus massive quantities of chocolate, burgers, fries, and whole buckets of lard and sugar waiting when I step off the scale on day 1 of the World Series, but until then I’m going to be good. I’ll probably fast that final day and avoid drinking water for the last few hours; maybe get a haircut for an extra ounce or two and shave my body if it’s looking that close. Regardless though I want to thank the guys for the bets; I’m pretty sure they only made them to help inspire me to better health heading into the World Series marathon.

It’s 6:10 AM now and I haven’t slept yet, so it’s probably best that I do now. I’ll do a quick workout before bed. Thanks to everyone who’s checked in on my progress these last seen weeks. If you want to see it continue after the first, maybe you can offer me another bet for inspiration:) Have a good one,

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

Honestly, in all the time I’ve been involved in the poker industry, I’ve never played in a real home game where money and skilled players were involved. There have been fun games with my girlfriends, but those were more for instructional purposes than anything, as most of them barely knew how to play poker at all. And the people I know in the poker biz who are involved in home games play for much more money that I’m comfortable with.

For many months, I have been on the lookout for a game, and I may have found one. It’s not a regular thing at this point. In fact, the one that took place last Friday night was the first time this group tried a co-ed poker night. Typically, the men get together regularly, but they finally decided to invite the ladies. And the group consists of all Lion’s Gate company employees (or former employees). I got invited through my close friend, Evelyn, who used to be an attorney for Lion’s Gate Films. She pushed for my inclusion in the event because she knew that I’d love to go, and the host, Nonaka, and I hit it off when we met on a previous occasion.

There were about 12 or 13 of us at Nonaka’s house, which was perfectly set up for parties and such. Good food and drink, and the folks were very welcoming and friendly. Some participants weren’t very familiar with the game, so everyone was divided into two tables - those of us who are fairly experienced, and those who weren’t.

My table was definitely experienced but not overly serious. We had a good time, though we all knew what we were doing - no explanations, no questions about hand rankings. Yeah!

Something happened that is really sticking with me. Two people were involved in a hand, and with strong betting, the pot was pretty sizable. After max bets on the river, Player #2 showed her cards for a straight, and Player #1 folded, commenting that all she had was a decent pocket pair in her hand. She mucked, not realizing that the trips on the board gave her a full house. Another player pointed that out, and she was just sick about it. She certainly knows how to play poker; it was simply an oversight, and a big one that cost her a ton of chips.

Player #1 was tilted. She was so upset about not seeing the full house that she went on a bit of tilt, losing the rest of her chips, rebuying once, and not ever really gaining enough confidence to play significant hands during the rest of the night.

This reminds me of a situation on the NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship when Kristy Gazes was up against Chad Brown. Quad sixes came on the board, and Kristy bet into it strong, not realizing that the kicker would matter. Her kicker was weak, and Chad had the ace for the best kicker with the quads. She was obviously frustrated with herself and went on to lose the match.

Everyone is entitled to mistakes. It just comes with the territory, and sometimes, a player might misread a hand or forget the most basic of rules.

My suggestion is to show the cards if you’re involved in a big pot. When it’s all said and done, turn over those hole cards, unless you’re fully aware that you bluffed it all the way. In the case of Player #1, the other players would have seen the full house, and she would have been awarded the pot.

In addition, if something happens that puts you on full-blown tilt, walk away. Get up and walk around the tables, get something to drink, get some fresh air outside… whatever. Just take a breather and try to come back fresh. Obviously, Kristy Gazes couldn’t have done that in a heads-up match being filmed for TV, but most situations allow you to take your tilt away from the table. To remain seated and try to laugh it off simply doesn’t work in most cases.

All in all, I had a great time at the home game and walked away with more than double my original buy-in. I hope this game is a regular one, at least after the two months I’ll be in Vegas for the WSOP!

I wrapped up my second year of college last Friday and now taking it easy for a week. I did some poker research yesterday and realized how much the World Poker Tour makes people become known. I didn’t even watch the WPT the first two seasons; yet, I still recognize nearly every winner of a WPT tournament. Some of the big name pros complain about how much money the WPT makes off their names, however, your name isn’t well known yet, the WPT could make you a lot of money.

I discovered something very bizarre today. I was looking at my sit-n-go stats on an online database and found some new things it had added. I am allowed to break it down to month-by-month and day of the week. The month one good be very useful as I can see how I have been doing each month. The day of the week I thought was ridiculous, until I looked at it. My return on investment is 90% on Tuesdays, which is very good. My next best day is 30%. I cannot think of a reason for this, but I might have to start playing a lot more sit-n-goes on Tuesdays. According to this database, I have won over half of my profit on this one day of the week. Unfortunately for me, I am in a slow-pitch softball league on Tuesday night this summer. I guess I will have to try to improve my stats for the other days.

I recently have decided that I think sit-n-goes are a very good test for a poker player. I like tournaments, but they require a lot of time and you lose a lot more times than you win. Cash game players are never forced by growing blinds to risks. Sit-n-goes force you to make those tough decisions and don’t take as much time a full tournament does. I am not really putting them above tournaments and cash games, but they have won me over for the time being.

It’s time to say goodbye. My time at Wise Hand Poker has come to a close and this will be my last blog for the site. I’m about to take some big steps forward in my life, my writing, and my career. But, I feel it’s important to take a moment to reflect on the footprints that have taken me to this present point in time.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my tales from the road. I tried to reveal a lot of myself to you readers in each and every one of my blogs. I learned a lot about myself in the process, and hopefully you learned a little something about yourselves as well.

I will be moving on to another poker media company. A big challenge lies before me, and I know I can draw confidence from the experience and lessons I learned while writing for Wise Hand Poker. It was a tough decision to leave, but hopefully my departure will open some doors for the talented pool of writers that call Wise Hand home.

Just a year ago I had your typical “office” job. I was a human resources assistant at the San Francisco Chronicle that wanted to write, wanted to see the world. An internship last summer at the World Series of Poker got my foot into the door of the poker industry. It was an amazing summer, but after it finished I was left wondering, “What now?”

I got a phone call one afternoon a few weeks later. Gary Wise wanted 52 tips on Texas Hold’em the next day. I got to work with the fervor of a young writer that knew opportunity was knocking. A month after that I was still writing poker strategy articles for Wise Hand when Gary called again. This time he wanted me to join the World Poker Tour coverage team for the Festa al Lago at the Bellagio. That is when my wild ride really began, and I have never looked back. It’s been a lot of fun.

I will still play my part in this strange world of poker, covering a writer’s dream lineup of characters and personalities. I will never forget my time at Wise Hand Poker, and I thank Gary as well as everyone else here for the opportunities and encouragement they have provided. I also thank you for coming along on this journey through words. They may have become a little tangled at times, while I searched for my voice, but I feel I’m starting to discover its song.

“It is a poor man who dies with his music still inside him.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks for letting me sing.

Sincerely,

Ryan “Force” Lucchesi

Today would have been Johnny Moss’ 100th birthday. The man was one of the pioneers of poker and paved the early road for where the game would go. Though he didn’t know it at the time, he would become sought-after for tales of his early exploits, widely-respected for the experience he brought to the game, and a legend in poker’s history.

I must be honest here. When I’ve read stories about Moss in his “wild west” days, though the history itself is fascinating, I never wished I had been there. Stories of gun-toting cowboys don’t exactly intrigue me. Even so, I surely respect the man for holding his own, surviving sketchy situations, and following his passion for the game throughout his life.

From what I’ve read about Moss, part of me was offended by his nonchalant attitude. When asked if he ever killed a man, he responded, “I don’t know if he died.” That’s not the kind of story that garners much respect from me. Sure, he was candid, but his lack of concern for humanity had much to be desired.

The respect I had for Moss came from his pursuit of poker, his disregard for popular opinion, and his dedication to the game that lasted until his final days. He seemed to have a zest for life and living it on his own terms. When he found that he had a passion for poker and the ability to do it well, he never looked for a job that would be socially acceptable; he found respect within the poker community, and that was enough for him. I also admired his desire to keep poker clean, doing his part - albeit with a gun in hand - to discourage cheaters from tarnishing the game.

In many ways, I wish I had become involved in the poker community long before I did. As a writer, I would have relished the opportunity to share a meal with Johnny Moss and delve into a different side of his past.

Truthfully, had I been given the chance to talk to him, I think I would have been offended by many of his answers and opinions. He was a straight-forward man from the old school, and I’m sure that his cowboy attitude and antiquated thoughts about women (and others) would have sent me into a tailspin. However, I think there would have been some endearing qualities about him, and with some more probing questions, I might have been able to get behind the rough exterior to find a kind, nostalgic old man with a very different story to tell.

The bottom line is that poker would not be where it is today without the passion that Johnny Moss brought to poker. For that, he is celebrated today.