Players of Poker

After an absolutely crazy final month that saw both the Red Sox and the Braves give up nearly double-digit leads in September to miss the postseason for the first two times in major league history, and an even crazier final few days when the Braves couldn't win a single game out of three against the Phillies and the Sox could nab just one out of three against the lowly Orioles, including multiple extra-inning games on the final day of the season that had teams in four corners of the country staying up late glued to the tv in the clubhouse, the 2011 MLB regular season has come to a close once again. While it is fresh in everyone's mind, I thought I would take a look at my 2011 over-under predictions for every team in the majors, and see if I once again managed to go just slightly over .500 with a full league's slate of predictions at the start of the regular season.


ARI Under 85.5. That's a loss. New manager Kirk Gibson deserves a ton of credit for leading this team over the Giants and their amazing pitching in the NL West. I certainly did not see this season coming for Arizona.

ATL Over 82.5. I got this one right, even though the Braves' season ends up feeling like a total loss. Even with 19 losses in September, Atlanta still finished with 89 wins in a positive season for a team that was considered the NL's second best team almost from start to finish this year.

BAL Over 70.5. Another loss here. I put my faith in Buck Showalter after a very strong end to the 2010 regular season for Baltimore, but the Orioles proved to be among the worst teams in the AL and missed even this low number by one game by season's end, even taking 2 of 3 from the Sox to end the year and ruin the Sox's season.

BOS Over 94.5. This is another loss snatched away from the jaws of victory, as it took Boston losing 20 games for its worst September in history as a franchise to keep them under this number by the time game 162 was all done and a bow put on Boston's miserable 2011 regular season.

CHC Under 81.5. Easy win and never even in doubt. The Cubs are among the most mis-managed franchises in sports today.

CHW Over 82.5. My second loss due to going with a head coach who let me down this year. At 79 total wins the White Sox came close to their number, but it goes in the books as another loss in what proved to be Ozzie Guillen's last year at the helm in Chicago.

CIN Over 79.5. I still can't believe I lost this one, but the Reds lost to the Mets 3-0 on the last day of the season to finish with 79 wins, making them an Under this year by the hair on their chinny chinny chins.

CLE Under 83.5. Although the Indians fared better than I expected when I made this pick, they still finished the season just under .500, good for a win that was not necessarily looking good about two-thirds of the way through the season.

COL Over 80. This is another loss for me, as I went with the momentum one too many times with the Rockies, who failed to produce one of their patented second half runs this year and ended with just 73 wins on the season.

DET Under 80.5. One of my worst picks of 2011. I went with the White Sox in the AL Central, but Justin Verlander and the Tigers ran away with things, easily eclipsing their number for the year.

FLA Under 79.5. A precious win for me. I've picked Over more often than Under with the Marlins over time, but this year didn't seem like the year for the under-supported team from south Florida.

HOU Under 76.5. Easiest Under in the league, and the Astros dumped what little talent they had amassed before this year's trading deadline.

KAN Under 74.5. Another easy Under for one of those perennial non-spending, small-market teams that just may never reach the postseason again.

LAA Under 87.5. This is one I'm proud of as I picked this line as basically being spot-on but just went with the Under based on the rest of their division improving somewhat. Finishing with a total of 86 wins on the season, it's a squeak but a win is a win is a win.

LAD Under 84.5. I thought this would be an easy win, but Don Mattingly finished up strong and eked out an impressive 82 wins by season's end. Still, it's another win with good reasoning on my part for the year.

MIL Over 81. An easy win for a team that improved measurably since 2010 but whose line was just too low from the getgo at just .500 baseball.

MIN Over 85.5. Another of my biggest misses of the preseason predictions, as I went with the manager here but the Twins came out and shocked the world by losing 99 games in their 2011 campaign.

NYM Under 89. The Mets were basically right where I expected them to be in 2011, as they clearly improved from the loss of well-known idiots at both coach and GM from the past few seasons in Jerry Manuel and Omay Minaya. And they never had any chance of finishing significantly over .500 with that team, making this another of the easiest Unders on the slate this preseason.

NYY Under 96.5. Although I only lost this prediction by a measly half a game in the end, it is one that surprises me almost as much as any others on this list. The Yankees had a much better year than I expected, and would have had the best record in baseball if not for the historic season had by the Philadelphia Phillies.

OAK Over 81.5. This was another loss for me as the A's pitching staff failed to shine and the team's lack of talent was as apparent as ever, netting the team just 74 wins on the year.

PHI Under 89.5. What can I say, I figured 87-88 wins for the Phillies given the loss of Jayson Werth and an improved NL East across the board, and even though the division took a giant step up, the Phils still busted out with a franchise record 102 wins and were easily baseball's best team from start to finish in the 2011 regular season. It's a loss I'll take any day of the week.

PIT Under 68.5. This line was laughably low coming into the 2011 season, and I finally got burned by going back to the Under well one too many times with this team. 72 wins and a terrible second half made for another big disappointment for this year's Pirates, but not big enough to keep me out of loss column once again on this prediction.

SDP Over 68.5. I just could not believe how low this line was, and I ended up winning as the Padres amassed 71 wins on the season, even though the team was surely worse than I thought they would be.

SFG Over 79.5. I won this number easily, as the Giants rode their tremendous rotation to 86 wins in this regular season, despite missing the chance to defend their 2010 World Series title in finishing 8 games behind Arizona in the NL West.

SEA Under 79.5. Here was an easy win, as the undermanned Mariners managed just 66 wins on the year and were never really in doubt for this prediction in 2011.

STL Under 84. The Cardinals used another strong contribution from Albert Pujols and a late-season surge to post 90 wins on the season, making the playoffs on the final day of the regular season and leaving my prediction twisting in the wind about two weeks into the final month of play this year.

TAM Under 87.5. I thought with the Yankees and Red Sox improving this season, the Rays would struggle to reach 88 wins. In the end, the Rays used a 17-10 finish in September to finish with 91 wins, exactly as many as they needed to make sure they reached the postseason and stole the rival Red Sox' playoff berth along the way, but giving my prediction a loss in the process.

TEX Over 77.5. Another easy win for the American League's best offensive team by far outside of New York or Boston. The Rangers picked up 96 wins on the year, going 30 games over .500 for perhaps the easiest Over of the bunch in this year's preseason predictions.

TOR Under 78.5. The Blue Jays did better than I expected in a very tough AL East, managing to end the year at .500 and making their gain my loss this year in terms of my picks.

WAS Over 65.5. Here was another easy win as the Nationals banged out 80 wins in the best season of the franchise's young history thus far, especially given the strength in the NL East.

So there you have it. And the final count? 15 wins, 15 losses overall. Right around .500 once again with the preseason over-unders. What else is new?

What a wild week in the NFL.

I'm not sure which is the most embarrassing aspect of the start of the 2011 Philadelphia Eagles regular season:

First, there's the o-line's complete inability to prevent quarterback Mike Vick from sustaining a different and serious injury every week of the season. I mean, I know this guy runs around like a maniac and I know he's kinda thin to be putting himself in some of the situations that he does, but let's face it: the Eagles' protection of the qb and the pocket has been laughable for many, many years.

Secondly, there is the team's woeful lack of preparedness for Vick's missing games, the most obvious outcome imaginable to most mere fans but yet somehow totally unforeseen by the Eagles brass, who for the second straight week have sent Mike "the Statue" Kafka out to the field to protect a lead. And then watched that lead quickly slip away as the Eagles offense -- which probably would be more productive if run by Franz Kafka than Mike Kafka -- cannot keep the opposition off the field for more than a minute or two of game time when it counts. The team went and signed Vince Young in the offseason to be Vick's backup, but where the shite is he? Get his ass on the field or get me a more viable option than Kafka for now 1/8 of our season, and counting as Mike Vick sustained a broken right (non-throwing) hand in the second half of this week's game against the Giants.

And then not to be outdone, let's not forget the Eagles' vaunted "dream team" pass defense. You remember, that incredible, historical collection of all-time great cornerbacks in Asante Samuel, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Free-Agent-of-the-Year signing Nnamdi Asomugha, right? Well, how's eight passing touchdowns allowed in the past two games sound to you? Asomugha has convinced me already in several instances how athletic he is. Now he needs to show me that he can, you know, stop the people he's covering from scoring touchdowns. Until that starts happening, and until the team can find a way to protect Mike Vick, it's looking like it could be a long season in Philadelphia.

Elsewhere, although I may not be 100% sold on some of the real upstart teams so far through three games, I think we can start to make some credible generalizations about some of the teams expected to be among the league's best and the league's worst. For example, the Cheatriots are obviously a great team, but that defense just plain sucks. Again. It's been some years since there was a strong unit playing on that side of the ball at Gillette stadium, and this year certainly will not see an end to that streak. The Cheats are going to win a lot of games in the regular season like always, but they can't stop anybody, period, right now giving up by far the most yards in the NFL, more than 10% more than even the 31st place team defense in the NFL, and some 180% more than the current defensive yardage leaders in the Dallas Cowboys.

Speaking of teams with surprisingly not-good defenses, let's not forget about my Eagles -- in particularly, surprisingly, against the pass -- and also, what about those J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets? Currently slated around the middle of the pack in yards allowed through three games (against Dallas, the Jaguars, and the Raiders, two of those games at home), the Jets have been particularly vulnerable to the run, where they currently reside in 31st out of 32 teams in rush defense thus far through three games of the season, and the team continues not to look good, even when it wins big. We're going to find out real quick whether the Jets are improved from last year and ready for another playoff run, as the team's next six games are at Baltimore, at New England, vs. Miami, vs. San Diego, at Buffalo and vs. New England, which I would venture to say the team would go 1-5 in if they play equally as good as they have thus far in three games in 2011.

And let's turn our attention briefly to the reigning superbowl champions in Green Bay, who are happy at 3-0 right now but whose defense is looking downright porous in their own right. Through three games (one against offensive juggernaut New Orleans, but the other two against the much more tame Panthers and the Bears), the Pack has ceded the 4th most yards in the NFL, including allowing 1078 yards through the air, which is 15% above the 3rd-worst pass defense and just a couple of first downs behind the hapless Cheatriots in this department. The Packers have allowed the 10th most points scored in the league thus far, resulting in nearly 25 points allowed per game, which will still win the Packers a lot of games this season but which is not close to where this team should be or wants to be.

And I also think the Falcons are worth mentioning, who mostly everybody had picked for another post-season birth this year but who so far are damn lucky to be 1-2 through three games in 2011. If Mike Vick doesn't go down with a concussion and leave the game in the thoroughly unprepared hands of Eagles' third-stringer Mike Kafka in Week 2, the Eagles' 10-point 4th quarter lead at Atlanta almost surely holds and that team is looking at 0-3 right now. And yet still the team has lost both of its road games so far, both to teams they were expected to beat in the Bears and now most recently the Buccaneers. The Falcons have currently given up the 8th most points in the NFL through three games, and the passing offense is currently sitting in 18th in the NFL, and the rushing offense at 19th, both of which were expected to be well above average on the season. The Falcons better shape things up in a hurry or they might be looking at Detroit taking away their playoff spot right quick in 2011.

And on the other side of the coin, like I said I may not be totally sold on the Bills' greatness overall just yet, but the offense in Buffalo is certainly clicking on all cylinders to start the new season. The team is currently rushing for the fourth most yards in the NFL, while passing for the 11th most for a combination of gaining the 3rd most yards in the league (431 per game) and leading to the single highest-scoring team in the league at 37.7 points per game through three efforts thus far this year. While the first defeat of the Chiefs doesn't look like much, the Week 2 win over the Raiders is already looking all the more impressive for the Bills, and the way they managed to get Tom Brady to make mistake after mistake this past weekend says it all about where this team is at at this point in the young season.

And no discussion of the year's big positive stories so far in the NFL would be complete without mentioning the Detroit Lions, who are so obviously for real that I don't think you could find anyone who is actually watching these games who would ever disagree at this point. The team has probably the best defensive line in football, and although they have not been all that in defending against the pass, the overall team defense has given up just 46 points in three games, good for fourth-best in the league thus far in the young season. And let's not forget that young, high-powered passing offense that has scored the fourth-most points per game so far this season while seeing young quarterback Matthew Stafford produce to the tune of a 110.7 overall qb rating through three games. Things are shaping up for quite a race in the NFC North in 2011.

Wow. With a day to really absorb all the latest news from Wednesday's amended complaint by the New York attorney general in the online poker ban case that, among other things, adds Howard Lederer, Jesus Ferguson, Rafe Furst and Ray Bitar to the charges, it already feels like just an amazing revelation, one that is far and away the story in the history of online poker as we know it thus far.

Long story short, yknow that bunch of the biggest poker pros we all know and (used to) love from tv -- "the Professor", "Jesus", Phil Ivey and several others -- who started full tilt poker several years ago now? Well, guess what? Turns out they were actually literally stealing money out of your and my accounts -- yes, your and my money -- and paying it mostly to themselves over a several year period, while simultaneously running the entire poker site as a massive ponzi scheme. For real. I've seen some other bloggers arguing that ponzi is not really a fair description of what happened here, but I have to differ with that view, as I'll get to.

To provide some summary details for those not inclined to read all the various press reports about the amended complaint, or the new complaint itself (which you can read in full directly from the source right here, if you're interested), here's the basic gist, with quotes directly out of CNN.com's front page coverage of this story on Tuesday, with the emphasis and brackets mine:

"The prosecutor said that, as of March 31 [2011], Full Tilt Poker owed about $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S. players. But the company only had $60 million in bank accounts to pay them back.

Full Tilt paid more than $443 million in player funds to the board of directors and other owners, with $41 million going to Bitar, $42 million going to Lederer, and nearly $12 million going to another board member, Rafael Furst.

The company paid $25 million to Ferguson, and said that it owed him another $62 million, according to the prosecutor's office, noting that much of the money was transferred to Swiss and overseas accounts."

So that's the basic gist of what happened. Over the past few years, full tilt paid 19 owners and board members more than $443 million, including 42M to the Professor, 41M to Ray Bitar, 12M to Rafe Furst, and owing over $87 million to Jesus Ferguson, having only paid out some 25M of that amount thus far. Forbes also reported that "another owner, described by the feds as a professional poker player, received at least $40 million in distributions, as well as millions of dollars more characterized as loans from Full Tilt that have only been partially repaid." This statement obviously refers to Phil Ivey, so that's another 40M+ guy to add to the list of beneficiaries of cash payouts from full tilt over the past few years.

And I'd like to call attention to the two passages above that I highlighted in bold. First is the statement directly out of the amended complaint itself that much of the money from these full tilt owners and board members was transferred to Swiss and overseas accounts. Not that this surprises me per se, but there it is pretty much right there in black and white -- these guys knew on some level what they were doing was illegal, or at least that the funds might be subject so seizure and return at some point in the future. While "blithely" (to use Preet Bharara's excellent choice of words) and repeatedly assuring players in the U.S. and around the world that our funds were "totally safe and secure" on their site, the owners of the site were busy shipping their money the fuck out of the country, to Swiss bank accounts and other countries where they felt the U.S. would have the most difficulty recovering the funds when the shit inevitably hit the fan like it turns out these guys pretty much all knew it would.

And secondly, I just want to note that the Forbes coverage refers to the $4 million in loans we've all heard about to Phil Ivey not as loans but as amounts "characterized as loans", suggesting that there is some question as to whether even that was a fair description or whether what we're really looking at is just another example of someone stealing funds to support I'm sure an excessive and certainly excessively gamblerific lifestyle, with no intention of ever actually repaying that money.

I also wanted to take a minute to discuss what really turned this from your typical run-of-the-mill corporate raiding story and into a true life poker ponzi scheme, as the US attorney alleges in the amended complaint. Read this passage, also from the CNN coverage, describing full tilt's response when over the past year or so it became increasingly difficult for full tilt to actually find payment processors willing and able to withdraw the funds from its depositors' bank accounts:

"In order to maintain its false image of financial security, Full Tilt continued to credit player accounts without disclosing its inability to fund those credits," the prosecutor said. "When players gambled with these phantom funds and lost to other players, a massive shortfall developed."

So there you have it. This happened to me multiple times by the way, where I made a small deposit onto full tilt during the final year or so it was in operation, played with those funds for several days, and then at some point a week, two weeks, even a month or so later I was informed that my deposit was never deducted from my account (which I confirmed, of course) and thus my balance was deducted for the amount I never really deposited into the site. But what if I had already lost all of that money? Where did it go? Answer: (1) into other players' accounts, and (2) into the owners' and board members' pockets. Plain and simple, that's what happened. For the better part of a year, full tilt was having massive trouble actually getting the cash from players' bank accounts, and yet it still allowed those players to deposit "phantom funds" onto the sites, play with it, and either win (and presumably withdraw it into real cash) or lose (and thus transfer their losses to other players' accounts, who then presumably would look to withdraw it and turn it into real cash). I mean, you could not make this stuff up. Every time you saw Howard Lederer or Jesus Ferguson or Phil Ivey on tv over the past several months before the U.S. online poker ban in April of this year, they knew behind that face that they were literally operating at a shortfall in their own players' funds available on the site, allowing gambling of fake funds.

Note as well that the complaint alleges that "this scheme continued even after the original complaint was filed and the criminal indictment unsealed in April." Recall that the complaint alleges that, as of March 31 [2011], Full Tilt Poker owed about $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S. players. But the company only had $60 million in bank accounts to pay them back. As also reported by CNN, "As time went on, the poker site had even less money to pay its customers. By June [so this is less than three months later], Full Tilt owed $300 million to players around the world but only had $6 million to pay them, according to the prosecutor's office." So even after the online poker ban went down on April 15, the company continued to draw down on its meager cash available for depositors, owners, for everyone, raiding the company's last remaining cash that could have conceivably been used to return at least some fraction of player funds, from $60 million down to a mere $6 million, while player fund liabilities dropped only from $390 million to still $300 million owed. What a fucking disaster.

The Forbes coverage also has some good tidbits to help elucidate some of the details of this amazing, eye-opening story (again, emphasis mine):

"Federal prosecutors claim that Full Tilt’s board members got rich because the company used player funds to pay them massive amounts of money that largely was transferred to their accounts in Switzerland and other overseas locations. Specifically, the feds allege that Bitar pocketed $41 million and Lederer got $42 million. Jesus Ferguson allegedly was allocated $87 million in distributions and received at least $25 million, federal prosecutors claim. Another owner [Ivey obv], described by the feds as a professional poker player, received at least $40 million in distributions, as well as millions of dollars more characterized as loans from Full Tilt that have only been partially repaid. The government claims Full Tilt continued to make payments to its owners of up to $10 million per month even after the company was insolvent."

[Note that Tuesday's Wall Street Journal coverage pegged this number at $5 million per month paid to the full tilt owners starting as far back as April 2007.]

And later in the Forbes article:

U.S. government lawyers believe that Full Tilt Poker started to face a growing cash crunch in 2010 because it could not collect funds from U.S. players due to the federal government’s efforts to disrupt the payment processors that facilitate the flow of funds in the online poker industry. Indeed, Bharara’s office says that by August 2010 Full Tilt’s payment processing network had been severely disrupted and that the company could no longer withdraw money from U.S. players’ bank accounts. So instead, the feds claim, Full Tilt continued to credit player accounts without disclosing its inability to fund those credits, letting players make online poker bets with $130 million of “phantom funds” that resulted in a massive shortfall when other players won the bogus money in poker games.

The management of Full Tilt Poker, the feds say, “operated Full Tilt Poker with the hope that only a small number of players would try to withdraw funds at any one time, and that Full Tilt Poker would regularly receive additional deposits in amounts greater than any withdrawal requests.”,

Now if that last paragraph right up there ain't ponzi, then I don't know what is. For a period of several months, the owners and operators of full tilt poker intentionally, knowingly and willingly ran their company as a ponzi scheme, paying out those who withdrew funds from the site with the deposits of others, knowing all too well that the company was facing a potentially 9-figure shortfall in amounts deposited and in action on its site but which it could not collect and had no plan to be able to collect at any point in the future. And just like any good ponzi scheme, it was all premised on never more than a small percent of the site's users actually demanding their own money back at any given time. As long as those withdrawl requests were tiny in relative terms, having $60 million of cash on hand while supposedly "holding" $390 million of your customers' money worked out just fine. But when the shizzle hit the fizzle over the past year, there was never close to enough money to make the players whole. Oh, and meanwhile, the owners and directors paid themselves some $440 million out of those exact same corporate accounts that by April of this year contained only $60 million, and just $6 million by June.

Look, these guys raided your funds. My funds. Our money. It's like the CEOs of Tyco, Adelphia, and any other number of large company executives who have been busted over the past several years for using their company's funds to support a life of personal excess in almost every conceivable way. Only, this is much, much worse even than those examples. When the Tyco CEO took corporate funds to spend on expensive New York City call girls on business trips, at least he was taking funds that belonged to his company, and that were generated as revenues in exchange for his company's goods and services provided to customers. In this case, the full tilt guys took our money, not theirs and not full tilt's. This was not revenue in any sense of the word for full tilt. They were like a bank, merely holding on to our funds so that we could use them as we saw fit on their internet site. That's it. So while Dennis Koslowski and others in corporate America diverted money from their companies to fund ridiculous, extravagant lifestyles, in this case, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Jesus Ferguson et al stole cash directly from their customers to fund similar endeavors. There's just no other way to spin it.

Oh, and by the way. I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but there seems to me to be a good chance that some of the crew of Lederer / Ferguson / Bitar / Ivey end up doing some jail time from all this, given the recent revelations. The corporate CEO's go to jail, and trust me when I say what they did is not close to as bad as what the full tilt owners are alleged by name to have done in this case. Why shouldn't these fucking pigs go to jail for a long time? Because they play a game as their professional jobs that's been frought with lying, cheating and dishonesty for the past couple hundred years? Because Howard Lederer came and blew smoke up the poker bloggers' asses at Caesars' poker room in Las Vegas at the summer WPBT gathering back in 2006, all the while he was literally stealing our very cash right out of our bank accounts and living high off the hog off of it? Seven or eight years ago, I most definitely idolized each one of Ivey, Lederer and Ferguson to some degree, without a doubt. Right now, make no mistake, I would bang the gavel myself and order them each to serve 30 years in the mutha fuckin slammer. And I probably wouldn't hesitate to cast them down with the sodomites either.

Finally this past weekend I had time to put the finishing touches on this post, which for the record was written over the couple of weeks leading up to the start of the 2011 NFL regular season. And what a wild Week 1 it was, which will quickly become apparent when you see some of my picks for the postseason this year in the NFL.

NFC East: Eagles
NFC North: Packers
NFC South: Saints
NFC West: Cardinals

NFC Wildcard: Cowboys, Bears

NFC Almost's: Falcons, Lions, Rams

AFC East: Cheatriots
AFC North: Steelers
AFC South: Texans
AFC West: Chargers

AFC Wildcard: Jets, Ravens

AFC Almost's: Chiefs

So, that is a total of four new playoff teams I am predicting in 2011, two in the NFC (Cardinals and Cowboys, replacing the Seahawks and the Falcons), and two in the AFC (Texans and Chargers, replacing the Colts and the Chiefs). Four out of twelve ain't bad, but over the recent past that's still not as much annual turnover as the NFL has seen in its slate of post-season participants, so there are likely some more surprises to come this year. I just think the Seahawks have fallen behind both the Rams and the Cardinals given the moves of this past offseason, and for some reason I decided to hitch my prediction this offseason to Tony Romo, the greatest step-down-in-the-clutch artist in the NFL today, over Matty "Ice" Ryan. Pure. Genius. And in the AFC, I am expecting the Chiefs to impress again this year but they are going to have trouble winning their division again due to a much harder schedule and not being overlooked by their opponents this year, while the Colts are in my mind finished without Peyton Manning at the helm.

I'm not typically one for making detailed post-season predictions for later rounds here without even knowing who is playing who, who is injured, etc. But I will say that I think the Cheatriots look once again to be the class of the AFC if they stay healthy and are likely to show up in the superbowl again this year, while the picture in the NFC is a bit murkier, between the Eagles and the Packers. I'll take the Packers over the Cheatriots in the superbowl in a repeat for Green Bay. Since, just like the Red Sox over the Dirty Decade in Boston, the Cheatriots have never won a damn thing since they haven't been allowed to cheat.

Amazingly, it's already time for the NFL season to start up again, as we head into the second half of 2011 with great expectations for both the baseball and the football team among us Philadelphia sports fans. As I have done over the past few years -- never yet to a sub-.500 record, in any sport, I might add -- I am going to make my predictions using the Vegas over/under lines for the win totals for each team in the NFL. Given the small number of total games in the NFL regular season as compared to a sport like baseball, most of these lines are really difficult to pick, and sometimes a half a game makes all the difference in the world between a bettable and a not-bettable number, but as usual there are some of these that I think are pretty easy steals, for a lot of the same reasons as usual with respect to public perceptions about certain teams. So, without further adieu, in alphabetical order by team city:

2011 NFL Regular Season Win Totals:

Arizona Cardinals: Over 6.5 wins. This is one to start off with that I think is very easy. The Cardinals improved on several fronts in the offseason, they added Kevin Kolb at quarterback where they have had a huge, gaping hole ever since Kurt Warner retired, they have the best wide receiver alive today, a new runningback, and the worst divisional competition perhaps in NFL history. This should lead to at least 7 wins for the Cardinals, who I expect to challenge for the NFC West title in 2011.

Atlanta Falcons: Under 10.5 wins. This one was close enough that I really had to pore through the Falcons' 2011 schedule, but no matter how many times I go over it, I just don't come up with more than 10 wins. With games at the Bears, Colts, Texans Saints and Buccaneers on the schedule this year, plus home outings against the Eagles, Packers, Saints and Bucs, I'm thinking we're looking at more like 9-10 wins for Matt Ryan et al in the coming regular season.

Baltimore Ravens: Over 10.5 wins. The Ravens are an awesome team on both sides of the ball, and they should not be hurt too much by the departure of tight end Todd Heap to the Cardinals this offseason. Plus, their division plays the putrid NFC West, which should be enough to put the Ravens over the edge to 11 wins in their 2011 campaign.

Buffalo Bills: Under 5.5 wins. Buffalo will likely be one of the NFL's worst teams, and with uncertainty at quarterback, a worse wide receiver corps, and the Jets and Patriots to deal with within the division, I'm not quite seeing 6 wins in 2011.

Carolina Panthers: Under 4.5 wins. I'm a big Cam Newton guy in terms of his talent as I've written here before this year, but Carolina has got a ton of holes for a rookie qb to have to overcome in his first season in big leagues. 3-4 wins sounds about right to me for this team that plays in one of the toughest divisions in football in the NFC South.

Chicago Bears: Under 8.5 wins. This is one of those amazing NFL lines where a team that went to the NFC Championship in 2010, and really did not lose much in terms of its skill players, is predicted to go only .500 in 2011, making it look a lot to me like one of those "too good to be true" NFL lines that you almost have to play the opposite way of what is obvious. Although the defense was excellent in 2010, the offense was pretty horrible, and I've made no bones here about not being a Jay Cutler fan generally. With the Packers looking to repeat and the Lions on the come, I'll guess we're looking at more like a .500 season for the Bears this coming year.

Cincinnati Bengals: Under 5.5 wins. The Bungles are definitely in breakdown mode, having lost quarterback Carson Palmer to (bitter) retirement and wideouts Chad Johnson and TO to free agency for this coming season. Marvin Lewis has got to be in his final season of failure and ineptitude, but until that guy is gone, I'm not seeing this team winning 6 games in a division with Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and an improving Browns squad as well.

Cleveland Browns: Under 6.5 wins. Although I think in reality it is likely that one of either the Bungles or the Browns goes over these two low numbers, I just can't see it as I look through the Browns' 2011 regular season schedule. For a team with no quarterback whatsoever to speak of, having to finish their season vs. Baltimore, at Pittsburgh, at Arizona, at Baltimore, and vs. Pittsburgh is enough for me to put the kibosh on the team nabbing 7 or more wins in 2011.

Dallas Cowboys: Over 9 wins. The Cowboys are going to be one of the biggest hit-or-miss stories of 2011 in the NFL, with new head coach Jason Garrett finally getting his shot to see what he can do with a full NFL regular season and a full season of Tony Romo at quarterback. The 'Boys play in a tough division, and in truth this one smells like a chop to me at 9 wins, but something tells me that weakened Redskins and Giants teams might enable Dallas to squeak into double digits in a nice comeback year for America's Team (for Douchebags).

Denver Broncos: Under 5.5 wins. This is maybe the most spot-on line of the entire league's worth of predictions for 2011 in my view, as the Broncos are going to struggle mightily without a set idea of who will play quarterback for them, even in a weak AFC West. The Chargers and Chiefs look superior to this Broncos team, however, and let's not forget the Raiders who went undefeated within the AFC West last year for the first time in more than a generation. I'm thinking 4-5 wins for Josh McDaniel's old team in the 2011 NFL regular season.

Detroit Lions: Over 7.5 wins. The Lions are suddenly one of the sexy picks heading into the 2011 regular season, with young quarterback Matthew Stafford teaming again with Calvin Johnson to spark the offense on a team that is clearly on the come this year. Even though the public is so in favor of the over here, I will still take it as well, as every time I walk through the Lions' 2011 regular season schedule, I always seem to come up with 8 wins, and that's being conservative about a couple of games that I could easily see Detroit pulling out to boot.

Green Bay Packers: Over 11.5 wins. It can be hard for some people to take an over when the line is 11.5 wins, but not for me. The Packers are the clear class of the NFC North, and really of the entire NFC along with perhaps the Eagles, and they have basically the best quarterback in the league right now. If this line were 12.5 I would surely not take the over due to the team's inconsistency over the past few regular seasons and their lack of skilled runningbacks on the roster, but at 11.5 wins for this team, I think they will manage to eke out a small victory by season's end.

Houston Texans: Over 8.5 wins. With Indy's Peyton Manning seemingly fixing to miss potentially many games in the AFC South this year, that puts this bet over the edge for me into an Over. Houston has not had a ton of success before this point, but this seems as good a year as any for Matt Schaub and his potent offense including Arian Foster and Andre Johnson to combine with an improving defense to nab a better than .500 record on the season. Perhaps could a division title even be in the works?

Indianapolis Colts: Under 9.5 wins. This one is purely a Peyton Manning pick. Replacing Peyton -- probably the quickest release of any qb in the NFL over the past generation or so -- with Kerry Collins who just loves to hold the ball for as long as possible, is I think going to be a disaster for this team that has won at least ten games for what, 85 years in a row? Unless Peyton comes back early in the season, which I'm just not feeling right now given the news we are hearing on an almost daily basis, I think the Colts will have a very hard time winning 10 games in 2011.

Jacksonville Jaguars: Under 6 wins. I'm not sure how they did it last year, but this number looks temptingly low to those who followed the Jags' .500 season closely in 2010. That said, when I look at the schedule for 2011, there is just a huge stretch of games in the middle of the season where the Jags could go winless, especially having just cut their former quarterback David Garrard within a week before the regular season begins. A push would not shock me here, but if the team is not going to tie their number, then I think they're going a game or two under.

Kansas City Chiefs: Over 7.5 wins. This is another sexy pick for 2011, in that most pundits out there look to be picking the Chiefs for a down year after the franchise broke out of the doldrums in 2010 by winning the AFC West hands-down. I'm going against the grain, and with head coach Todd Haley, and picking another year of at least .500 football in KC.

Miami Dolphins: Under 7.5 wins. Here is another team with another head coach that nobody respects, even though Tony Sparano has managed to win more games than expected in each of the past two years with a clearly undermanned Dolphins squad. After screwing Sparano over this past offseason by actively shopping his job while Sparano was still hired, I'm predicting this year Sparano responds with a slightly lesser performance and a sub-.500 record in an always-tough AFC East. Not having anybody to throw the ball isn't going to help much either.

Minnesota Vikings: Under 7 wins. I am not hesitating with this pick. Donovan McNabb is going to be in a world of hurt trying to make something happen in Minnesota without anyone on offense other than the great Adrian Peterson. Even despite Peterson's clear dominance, we have already seen in recent years what can happen to this team when they do not get competent quarterback play, and D-Mac is very unlikely to be the guy in my eyes to help this team out of the hole they have dug themselves in 2011.

New England Cheatriots: Over 11.5 wins. I'm not looking at the schedule. I am simply taking the over with the Cheats to win at least 12 games this year. You figure one loss to the Jets in the regular season, but otherwise it's going to be hard any week to look at the schedule and peg New England for a loss. Even if they won't be able to record and steal their opponents' play calls.

New Orleans Saints: Over 10 wins. I think the Saints are poised to rebound somewhat after a bit of a down year following their amazing 2009 superbowl run. With the Saints having to go 9-7 or worse on the year for me to lose this bet, I simply cannot avoid the value of the Over with this pick. Add just a tick to this line, and at 10.5 I would really have to think about things, but at 10 flat this seems like another obvious prediction to me.

New York Giants: Under 9.5 wins. I don't know. Something about this year's Giants just seems like the team is going to take a step backwards. Eli Manning is decently proficient moving the ball, but the team lost Steve Smith to the Eagles which should hurt his production a little, the runningbacks are getting older, and like I said just something about the way this team has run the past couple of years has me thinking pessimistically for 2011. At 9.5, the value on this line seems clearly Under in my view.

New York Jets: Over 10 wins. I was all set to pick the Jets to go under this year, but then I looked at their schedule and I actually think they might back their way into a solid regular season for a change. The team that has made a career these past couple of regular seasons of playing down to the level of their competition gets very lucky with the schedule this year, as the play the AFC West but managed to land the Chargers and Chiefs at home, while they travel to the lowly Broncos and Raiders fairly early in the season. They also play the tough NFC East, but although the Eagles game is in Philly near the end of the season, they otherwise also lucked out with both the Cowboys and the Giants at home. The favorable schedule seems to me to be destined to lead the Jets to double-digit victories in 2011.

Oakland Raiders: Under 6.5 wins. I looked hard to find 7 wins on the Raiders' 2011 schedule after the team ran roughshod through the AFC West in 2010, but try as I might, I'm just not seeing it for this team that is still questionable in a lot of the skill positions on both sides of the ball, and who probably got a little worse overall in the offseason. The kicker for me is the final stretch of the regular season, where Oakland faces off vs. Chicago, at Miami, at Green Bay, vs. Detroit, at Kansas City, and vs. San Diego to finish things off. Something tells me the Raiders won't survive that run of opponents with quite 7 wins overall.

Philadelphia Eagles: Over 10.5 wins. This line I don't even really understand. I mean, the Eagles basically win more than 10 games almost every year -- at least before they bench everyone at the end of the season when it really doesn't matter -- and this season saw the team improve dramatically in particular on the defensive side of the ball where the Eagles' clear weakness was in 2010. Although I have my doubts about Mike Vick's ability to remain on the field through the majority of another season given the way he plays and the team's still shaky offensive line, 11 wins should be very doable for this team that appears to be the cream of the NFC along with the Packers in 2011.

Pittsburgh Steelers: Over 10.5 wins. The Steelers might be getting a little old in their receiving corps, but otherwise Pittsburgh is as strong as ever -- they have an amazing gameday quarterback, a great running game, and always one of the league's best defenses to boot. 11 wins should be a cakewalk for the Steelers in 2011.

San Diego Chargers: Over 10 wins. I can't believe I'm picking the Over with a Norv Turner team, especially when I go through the schedule and I keep coming up with 9 or 10 wins. But the Chargers' defense was so, so solid last year, and Phillip Rivers is so, so solid with the ball in his hands on offense, I'm going to go with my gut here and expect at least a push by the time the dust clears in 2011.

San Francisco 49ers: Under 7.5 wins. I'm a big John Harbaugh fan, and I expect the Niners' new head coach to take this team places over the next several seasons. But probably not this year. As I look at the team's schedule -- and their paltry roster, in particular in the skill positions on offense -- I keep counting up and not getting over 7 wins, max. The final seven games back to back of vs. Arizona, at Baltimore, vs. St. Louis, at Arizona, vs. Pittsburgh, and then at Seattle and at St. Louis to end the season, looks to me to be a bit much to overcome for this already low-talent team to finish the season at .500.

Seattle Seahawks: Under 6.5 wins. Amazingly, last year's NFC West winner is predicted to go well under .500 this season, and yet I still think it is too optimistic. The Seahawks played over the heads to even back embarrassingly into the playoffs last year, and the loss of Matt Hasselbeck should be enough to tip this team over the edge into the 6 wins or fewer club in 2011.

St. Louis Rams: Over 7.5 wins. I'm going out on a limb here and picking the Rams to contend for the NFC West title along with the Cardinals in 2011. I don't think the Rams are necessarily winning 11 games or anything, but I loved the team's progress last season, I'm a huge fan of Sam Bradford and the St. Louis wide receivers, and I love generally head coach Steve Spagnuolo's approach, both on the offensive and defensive side of the ball. I think at least a .500 effort is forthcoming this year for the recently former worst team in the NFL.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Over 8 wins. I was all set to go under again with the Bucs this year after last year's breakout performance, but the schedule simply does not support the team winning under 8 games. They play the AFC North, but they lucked out and have the Colts at home early in the season when Peyton will likely not be playing, and they also got Houston at home while they travel to play the lowly Titans. The Bucs also play the NFC North, but again they picked up the Lions and the Bears at home, while the late-season game at Green Bay was probably going to be a loss either way. And, unlike so many of the other teams on this list who end the 2011 season with a brutal stretch, check out the Buccaneers' last six games of the year: at Tennessee, vs. Carolina, at Jacksonville, vs. Dallas, at Carolina, and at Atlanta. I'm seeing another over-.500 season for Rahim Morris and his boys in Tampa Bay.

Tennessee Titans: Under 6.5 wins. No matter how I slice it, I keep coming up with no more than 6 wins as I walk through the Titans' 2011 regular season schedule. I have a lot of respect for Chris Johnson of course and the impact he can have on a football game, but this team is going to have its work cut out for it, playing the AFC North including the Ravens, Steelers and Browns all in the first five weeks (two of them on the road), and the NFC South including games at Atlanta and vs. the Saints in the second half of the season.

Washington Redskins: Under 6.5 wins. Like the Giants, I am predicting another down year for the hapless Redskins, probably the single worst franchise in the NFL over the past decade or so. Although getting rid of McNabb at qb should not hurt the team, being left with the choice of Rex Grossman over John Beck does not do much to inspire confidence in this NFL fan. With the Eagles and the Cowboys I think improving from a year ago, it's going to be tough times I think for the Skins to amass 7 wins in 2011.

So, that is 15 Overs and 17 Unders, for a slightly pessimistic take overall on the Vegas lines for 2011. Now, can anyone still bet sports online securely from a U.S. location?

For those of you watching ESPN's WSOP Main Event coverage as it runs on Tuesday evenings, did you see the hand they showed the last part of this Tuesday night when one player 6-bet small preflop with pocket Jacks? My eye was literally twitching when I watched someone make as bad of a play as that, and then my entire side started aching as I watched the other player move all in with pocket Queens, and then I passed out when the guy with the Jacks instacalled. I mean, it's one thing to call an allin reraise preflop when you're fairly short and there's not sufficient chip utility out there to play a 3- or 4-bet pot before or after the flop. But in this hand, the guy had 6-bet with pocket Jacks from something like 2.1 million to something like 3.5 million, opting specifically not to move allin (a horrible play with Jacks, btw, in particular if you're just going to instacall if your opponent pushes in his entire stack). Despite the idiocy and horribad fishiness of this hand on both sides, the bottom line is that, in my experience, if someone 6-bet raises you preflop, and they're doing it not even moving all-in but instead a smaller amount that seems more callable, and you have Queens, you are probably about 25% to win the hand if you call, plain and simple. In that scenario, you'll be up against pocket Aces probably about 85% of the time, pocket Kings 14% of the time, and an incredibly fishily-played AKs or some other garbage the other 1%. That the other player would be so unmitigatingly terrible at no-limit holdem as to get it allin in that spot with a hand as bad as pocket Jacks, is such an outlier that it doesn't even show up in the percentages. I think that might literally be the only time in the history of poker that somebody in a big, big spot (1300 players left in the Main Event, not down to two tables in the Mookie) 6-bet raised small preflop, and only had pocket Jacks. I said it above and I'll say it again: when you get 6-bet small preflop in no-limit in a big spot, it's pocket Aces pretty much every single time. That is equally true about a four-bet, for that matter, but for six bets it's a complete joke.



How either of those monkeys got themselves through 5000 other players in this event is beyond me, because if one thing shows what an inexperienced, amateurish nlh player someone is, it's not folding a hand like pocket Jacks or pocket Queens for all your chips when you are obviously, obviously beaten preflop. Play enough nlh and you'll run Kings into Aces, let alone Queens or Jacks into Kings or Aces, more times than you ever thought possible. Seriously -- KK vs AA sounds to many players like the rarest of long shots, but when you actually sit down and play a million hands of holdem, you just can't believe how many times setups like that can and do occur. And in this case, that small 6-bet raise should have been the absolute last possible straw to tell the pocket Jacks and the pocket Queens guy that they are hopelessly behind and they should GTFO of the hand right then and there. Queens vs Jacks for a small 6-bet and a call preflop. God, you could hardly dream up a worse-played hand between two absolutely hopeless poker clowns.



This all reminds me of a hand described on Goodnight Moon's blog a few weeks back involving Toph Moore, the 21st place finisher in this year's WSOP Main Event. As Moon describes the hand:



"At 80-160k blinds, Anton Makiievskiy, a strong young Ukrainian player, raised early and Toph called in position with the AJ of hearts. Toph had Anton outchipped roughly 12m to 10m. The flop came out KJJ rainbow. Anton fired a standardish continuation bet of 450k on the flop and Toph raised to 1.1 million. Anton then made it 2 million to go, and Toph clicked it back to 2.9 or 3 million. This all took a while going back and forth with both players carefully considering, but then Anton quickly moved all-in for about 9.2 million, and Toph quickly called. Anton had KJ and the board ran out blanks."



The majority of the commenters about this hand on Moon's blog generally seemed to think that it is simply results-based thinking to be focusing on this hand, that it was an all-time great cooler and there is no way anyone should ever even consider getting away from AJ on the KJJ board in this spot, which occurred late on Day 7 of the Main Event, well into the money positions already. Like Moon, however, I do not think I agree with this over-simplified analysis, and it really comes down again to the number of raises, and what the smallish size of the raises says about the hands in question.



Of course, Anton is a highly aggro player and thus his standard c-bet on the KJJ flop means precisely nothing. When Toph raises him to $1.1 million, though, that's where the hand starts to get interesting. To me, a raise on flop, absent any other information or relevant details, generally signifies a good but not necessarily monster hand. Most players will at least consider checking, or check-calling on the flop if they have a monster, not wanting to scare away their opponent, whereas a flop raise more often than not defaults in my mind to signifying a good but beatable hand, usually a top pair good kicker type of hand, or on occasion a solid draw on a semi-bluff. The raise sizing for Toph here seems more or less normal, and thus my first thought on the KJJ board when seeing Toph raise the 450k c-bet to 1.1 million, is that Toph thinks he is ahead but is not totally sure. Maybe a KQ type of hand, maybe a medium pocket pair, something like that, and that's what I would expect Anton to put Toph on once Toph slides in that 1.1 million chip raise.



When Anton re-popped this hand to 2 million, the alarm bells first start going off in my head. I mean, you can't fold AJ in that spot to the reraise to 2 million chips, because Toph's raise on the flop is generally going to signify a good but not monster hand, and thus, with Anton knowing that, he could easily be trying to put a move on Toph on the understand that Toph is not super strong, and the small size of that raise could be consistent with either a flopped monster wanting to draw Toph in, or someone making a move with nothing great, but not wanting to lose too many chips if forced to fold to a reraise there. But still, re-raising in that spot at a huge inflection point in the world's biggest poker tournament, that definitely got my dander up, even holding the AJ for top trips in Toph's hand.



Toph responds as I probably would in his spot, which is to bump it up again, and he opted for what amounts to very nearly a minimum re-reraise, to around $2.9 million or 3 million chips. That's as small a raise as you can get, and as I mentioned above, when you're seeing a 3-bet or 4-bet (or 6-bet, see above) that is itself a minimum raise, you are looking at the stone cold nuts almost every single time. In this case, Toph did not have the mortal nuts but the third nuts, losing to KK (high boat) and KJ (under boat), but the fact is that Anton could not perceive a reraise there from 2M to just 3M -- given effective starting stacks of around 10M -- to be anything other than extreme strength. It screams such obvious strength that I don't even like the bet from Toph, who I think should probably have just moved in rather than making such an obviously-strong min-re-reraise there, but in the end of course it would not have mattered.



What does matter is that Anton then takes this clear and obvious showing of strength from Toph, and quickly pushes allin. And this is where the analysis on Moon's blog breaks down in my view. I mean, if I am Toph in that spot, I am pretty sure I would fold my AJ face-up, confidently knowing I have to be behind, and just move on disgustedly to the next hand. I mean, it's not close. AJ on a KJJ board looks super pretty, and the fact that it is trips with top kicker is very attractive, I won't deny. But as I mentioned above, this isn't even one of those one-outer type of scenarios where it's just so mathematically improbable to be beaten that you just have to call -- rather, in this case, as I mentioned Toph isn't sitting on the nuts, or the second nuts, but rather the third nuts, albeit a very pretty-looking third nuts -- but once he puts in that silly min-re-reraise to 3M, and his opponent responds to Toph's obvious showing of extreme strength by quickly moving all-in, if you think about it could it be more obvious that AJ is facing one of those two superior hands?



I know this is a huge, huge fold, but the truth of the matter is that I don't think Toph should have min-raised there, but since he did, Anton's response could not have screamed any more that he was ahead of the third nuts. Do you think any kind of a decent player is going to reraise that flop with a hand like JT (maybe, at best), and then follow that up by re-re-reraising allin after the most obvious monster-hand bet that Toph has ever made in his life? With a Jack and a medium-strong kicker? I am just not seeing it, and neither should have Toph, who in my book should have made the biggest fold of his entire poker career, and done so confidently knowing he had to be hopelessly behind given the action in that spot.



It took me a long time and hundreds of thousands of nlh hands under my belt before I started accepting the frequency with which absolute setup fuckings happen to anyone who plays this game. But several years ago at this point, I learned to accept that if all possible signs point directly to my opponent having one of the two or three mathematically improbably hands that could beat my strong hand, he almost always does. Despite the craziness of folding AJ on a KJJ flop this late in the biggest tournament in the world, as I read the hand history the very first time through, I knew the AJ was behind the minute I saw Anton's instant five-bet push following Toph essentially screaming at him with his 4-bet that Toph has AJ. In my game, when you basically get in someone's ear and scream at them that they're beat, and they insta-allin you, it's time to start thinking like PLO and assuming that whatever the stone nuts is, it is out there against you.

Wow, what a bunch of masochists we all are. Seriously guys. Hasn't even one of you out there reading this wondered why exactly Phil Ivey -- the world's greatest poker player and perhaps greatest gambler -- "owes" full tilt $4 million? This is being widely reported by every major poker media outlet in the world, and has been for a good few months now as Ivey's alleged "White Knight" deal (which not coincidentally also involves the forgiving of Ivey's personal $4 million debt) is still said to be under negotiation to save the company in some form and -- hopefully -- to secure U.S. players the return of their funds that had been commingled into full tilt's own accounts. And yet, I keep waiting and waiting and waiting, and not one single person I can think of in the poker media has even questioned why, or how this could be. Pretty much all of them have lost their own money even on full tilt's site, and yet still, complete and total radio silence. The relationships, the history, and ultimately the downright adulation that these people still feel for all those poker pros you see on tv has blinded the media to providing any real coverage whatsoever of probably easily the worst scandal in the history of online poker. Sorry folks, but superuser doesn't even come close to stealing our money for their own and living high off the hog off of it. It's just not close.



Think about this. Phil Ivey is quite simply the single greatest poker player in the world today, I don't think many people would really dispute that fact at this point. The guy is a huge action junkie, he takes prop bets left and right, and he wins millions live and millions more online every year from this game. So, for starters, why does Ivey even need a $4 million loan from full tilt? And why did full tilt give him $4 million of their money, even assuming he did need it for something? Or, let me correct myself there -- why did full tilt give Phil Ivey $4 million of our money? And make no mistake -- that's exactly what commingling of players funds with full tilt funds means. They took the money we deposited with them, and then they just mixed our deposited funds in with all their money, using it for their own corporate purposes. Such as, apparently, "loaning" Phil Ivey $4 million.



Do you think Humberto Brenes ever owed pokerstars millions of dollars? What about Daniel Negreanu? How about UB, those scoundrels...d'ya think Phil Hellmuth owes UB $7 million or something? You think they lent Annie Duke a couple hundy large to complete an addition on to her house? Me thinks not.



And yet somehow, this that you are reading right here is the very first place to ever question or even mention the ludicrity of this $4 million debt from Ivey to full tilt. Somehow, I loaned Phil Ivey 4 million bucks even though I don't remember being asked about that decision, and I certainly know I didn't get to review any of his financial information or to sign off on his intended use of my funds. Last time I checked, I don't loan money to professional gamblers to throw on roshambo bouts, 18-foot puts on the greens, weight loss contests and WSOP bracelet bets against the rest of the best players in the world.



Or do I?



Along those same lines, I sat in silence for a good three weeks on this story as well, hoping against hope that at least one of these poker media outlets or bloggers would jump on this story with even a small fraction of the tenacity that was used to investigate and resolve the UB superuser scandal, but I simply cannot leave this post in "draft" mode any longer since it's obvious that, once again, the poker media is perfectly happy letting full tilt walk all over everyone, themselves included, because I guess they're just too busy staring agog like little schoolchildren at the very people who have stolen the cash right out of their pockets. But did anybody see the story a few weeks back when Todd Brunson tweeted that he had run into Howard Lederer in Las Vegas and that after telling Lederer how short he (Brunson) was on cash, Howard offered to pay Brunson what Brunson had locked up on Full Tilt at the time of the U.S. online poker ban? You're telling me the major poker media outlets never heard this story? Yeah right. Well, apparently it's true. Here are Todd Brunson's tweets of the events, which again happened just a few weeks ago on July 19 in Las Vegas:



"Look who I just ran into.. I told him the wsop killed me and I was cash short...... http://lockerz.com/s/121600156"

ToddBrunson



"He asked how much I had on tilt and I told him 150k.. He said come with me. We went to his car and he opened his trunk and paid me!!!!!!"



At first I figured this had to be a joke, especially given the complete dearth of coverage (let alone uproar) about it among the big poker sites. But nope, apparently it is all true -- the poker media is still just too busy planning how to blow the full tilt pros to spend any time letting you know that this happened. Brunson ran into Lederer in Vegas, took a picture to prove it, and when Brunson complained about being short on cash, Lederer apparently paid Brunson the $150,000 he had locked up on full tilt, right in cash out of the trunk of Lederer's car.



Now, putting aside the obvious questions on why on god's green earth Howard Lederer is driving around with more than 150 grand in his trunk (will somebody please carjack this asshole, PLEASE?!), wouldn't you think it would bother someone at wicked chops, at poker news, one of the big poker bloggers, anybody enough to mention that while little old you and me sit around waiting (forever?) to get (all? some of?) our money back that has been locked up at full tilt since April 15, the big dogs who know the founders of the site personally -- yes, those same founders who commingled your funds with their own -- are getting paid out by their friends the site's founders, in hundred-large chunks?



Wouldn't you think that it would have occurred to somebody in the media -- anybody at all -- to stop to think for a minute that maybe, if Lederer has $150k of full tilt funds sitting in his fucking car trunk that maybe, just maybe, that money could be disbursed to everyone whose money full tilt has stolen, and not just to the personal friends of the founders? Might one even suggest that this type of behavior by Lederer is more or less the exact same thing that got him into trouble in the first place, taking our poker deposit funds -- yours and mine -- and treating them like his own personal fucking ATM? I mean, can you imagine how many of us little people could have been paid out in full with just that $150,000 of my money and your money that Todd Brunson gratuitously got from Howard Lederer, just for happening to bump into him in a restaurant in Vegas?



I say again. Can you imagine if the posters on 2+2 were actually running with story like they did the UB mess a few years ago? Can you imagine if Haley was out there reporting on this complete and utter pile of bullshit every single day like she was back then with UB? Don't you wish Amy and Tim were glomming on to this story as surely as they did the WSOP missing chips scandal a couple of years back? And why aren't they? Why isn't anyone?



Seriously guys. WTF. It's getting very close to where we actually deserve what we get from full tilt here.

Hello? Helllllooooooooooooo? Is there anybody out there?



Where did everybody go who just one day ago was telling you that the market rallied 600 points in an hour on Tuesday afternoon because the Fed pledged long-term support for the market? Boy, that long-term pledge of support sure disappeared in a hurry, didn't it?



Where did everybody go who denied that Tuesday's Fed statement made the FOMC sound overly negative, and overly powerless?



Where did all the talking heads, analysts, and current and former fund managers go who advised you to buy on the dip all day on Monday? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?



Right back under their rocks is where they went, that's right. Only to re-appear in a month or two and tell you they've predicted this whole move downward all along. But then, that's the shtick that makes any public market analyst survive nowadays, isn't it.



The markets plunged again on Wednesday, erasing all of Tuesday's massive 4% gains in the U.S. and then moving more than a full percent lower than that, bringing the Dow's total five-session tumble to a stunning 1176.50 points, representing a decline in just one week of 9.9% of the full accumulated value over the entire lifetime of the Dow Jones Industrials Average, and I can say from the perspective of a very involved market observer, it has truly been a thing of awe to behold. Even more ominous than the fact that Wednesday saw the markets give back significantly more than all of Tuesday's gains, is the fact that the market sold off hard all throughout the final 90 minutes of trading, and finished Wednesday's abysmal session literally right at the lows of the day.



Make no mistake -- what we're witnessing right now is one of the most impressive momentum struggles between the bulls and the bears that we've had on Wall Street in our lifetimes. Of course the absolute peak of the 2008 financial crisis was even a little worse than what we've endured over the past several trading sessions, but after Wednesday's huge slide, I think it's fair to say that we've officially moved into "historic" territory with this incredible fiasco over the past week in the stock market. It's not quite to "apocalyptic" yet -- in fact, amazingly it's nowhere near "apocalyptic" yet by a longshot -- but in truth, a 10% decline in exactly one week is close to as bad as the whole market at large ever gets. With the situation in Europe seeming to deteriorate almost daily, and with the GDP numbers for the first half of this year finally making clear to Americans for the first time the farce that has been manufactured by the current administration through growing use of government-printed money over the past two years, combined with what I have been telling you was a Fed statement on Tuesday that somehow managed to make the FOMC sound simultaneously as scared and as powerless as I have ever seen them sound, this is far and away the market bears' best opportunity to garner the support they need to force huge downward spikes in the market since the financial crisis finally bottomed out in March of 2009.



It's been two and a half long years for the bears, it really has. Even by bear market standards. The move from Dow 6,600 in March 2009 to Dow 12,810 on April 29, 2011 was one of the single most ferocious bull cycles in the history of the DJIA. Think about that -- the world's leading market index surged a full 94% over the span of just over two years. It was basically impossible to make money shorting stocks, or doing anything other than sitting squarely on the long side in equities, for over 25 months in the U.S. In truth, mostly every bear out there has been pulling his or her hair out for over two years as equities have inexorably risen, seemingly without any valid justification to support such strength, a sentiment expressed by many financial bloggers and other talking heads in the industry repeatedly ever since the market started recovering from the financial crisis.



And now, finally, the confluence of negative events I mentioned above have given the bears their first chance to flex their muscles since March of 2009. And given what the past 25 months have been like on Wall Street, the muscle of the bears can be great indeed, as we saw well back in 2008 and as we're seeing again now in a big way. The bottom line is that these negative guys, and the momentum guys, and the logarithmic trading guys, they all come out of the woodwork in times like this, and they do so in incredible numbers and with incredible strength in their push. We see it every few years like this, even though most market participants seem to be surprised all over again each time the cycle repeats itself. The bulls put up a strong effort around midday on Wednesday after a large opening drop following Tuesday's short-lived rally, bumping up the Dow more than 200 points off the morning lows, but the bears circled the wagons for another sick push in the afternoon, and the final 90 minutes of trading on Wednesday was about as bad as you ever see the markets get. And once it was clear that this selling momentum had started kicking in and that traders were setting their sights on a run at the day's lows, it was like a tidal wave of sell orders flushing over Wall Street.



Given what things look like at this exact moment, the bears' insatiable thirst for blood in the market has clearly not yet been quenched.

Well that was fun in the stock market on Monday, wasn't it?



Let me start by just personally extending kudos to S&P for finally -- for the first time in several years at least for sure -- actually doing their fucking job and telling the truth, and for showing why they have always been considered and always will be considered far and away the most credible ratings agency in the world today. And especially for refusing to kowtow to pressure from no one less than the President himself not to downgrade U.S. debt as is obviously warranted at this time. In a way, I think we should probably be happy to be retaining even an a AA+ rating from S&P, and I am not the least bit surprised to see our debt only only downgraded but put on negative watch for further downgrades even from here.



I mean, it's highlarious to sit and listen to the President on national tv (for some strange reason today) as well as Treasury Secretary Geithner rage against S&P about how unwarranted the rating cut was and how mistaken S&P's judgment is, etc. When in reality you, me and everyone else in the country all know that, literally less than one week ago, this country was straight-up one or two days away from a debt default. Period, end of story, we were one or two days away from some form of debt default, a fact that was made extremely public by both sides of the debate on a repeated and consistent basis and in a very deliberate manner. Longtime readers will note that I have always been all about owning the consequences of your decisions here on the blog, and when the President and the GOP leadership both repeatedly make the decision to broadcast to the world how we are going to default on August 2, we won't be able to make a $60 million interest payment due on August 3, etc., then shut your holes and don't complain when a ratings agency whose sole job is to determine how likely your country is to suffer some form of a default on its debt, decides that maybe you are no longer worthy of the highest possible credit rating indicating the highest possible confidence that no default is ever forthcoming.



Because, you know, last week everyone and their mother associated with the U.S. government told the world loudly, clearly, and very deliberately that we were going to, you know, default on our debt on August 2 or 3. There was a stalemate on both sides heading right up to the weekend immediately prior to the scheduled default, and in fact the two sides eventually settled the debate generally by kicking the can down the road (sound familiar? It's unbelievable, isn't it?) until December to determine which programs will suffer cuts, and how much, to help stabilize the deficit in this country.



Anyways, somebody tell me again how President Obama goes nuts all week a couple of weeks back about how we're going to default on our debt on Tuesday, we're going to miss interest payments on Wednesday, etc., and then is back on tv a week and a half later questioning how S&P could possibly decide that U.S. government debt is not worth of what is essentially known as "risk-free" status among the major ratings agencies. That is just about the most thoughtless thing I've heard in the entire Obama term thus far. We're obviously not a triple-A rated country anymore in terms of our sovereign debt, and those of you Americans out there who actually have some scrotum should probably be focusing a lot more on what the fuck Moody's and Fitch could mother fucking possibly be looking at in recently re-affirming the U.S.'s triple-A "risk-free" status for its sovereign debt. As one more reminder, this is the debt that was very publicly a day or two away from literal default less than a week ago. The entire issue is really just unbelievable if you have your head screwed on straight.



Oh, and here's one other topic while I'm discussing the markets. This story makes my mother fucking blood boil -- that AIG is apparently going to sue Bank of America for some $10 billion for fraud related to subprime mortgages leading up to and during the financial crisis. And don't get me wrong -- Bank of America are a bunch of shitbags, and that bank -- the country's largest I believe -- could very well be leading the market and the sector lower as people are sure to start really considering that the bank might require another bailout or at the least a solid round of capital-raising in order to right the ship.



But this is AIG -- the company that essentially invented the notion of writing insurance contracts on other companies' debt defaulting over the past decade, accepting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance premiums to insure the debts of companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia, etc. on the blind, thoughtless assumption that none of these banks would ever actually fail, and that AIG was thus merely being paid "free money" at zero risk to the firm of ever having to pay out those insurance obligations in case of the disaster. This is the same company that, when all of those entities I mentioned above did experience defaults or even bankruptcies or near-bankruptcies, AIG of course couldn't even come close to actually paying out what it owed under these insurance policies, and who thus required a $180 billion bailout package from the U.S. government back in 2008/2009, much of which was paid directly by the way to Wall Street banks straight out of the government's coffers.



And now this same true piece of garbage company wants to recover $10 billion from shitbag Bank of America, for "misleading" AIG as to the nature of the mortgages bundled into securities that AIG accepted millions in fees to write insurance polices on. So AIG employees recklessly chased millions in fees and agreed to write countless insurance policies that the firm could not possibly ever pay off in the event of an obviously realistic set of circumstances (since they actually happened), and now they want to recoup from their clients AIG's losses on those insurance policies? Are you fucking kidding me? AIG, are you out of your fucking mind? The whole mother fucking point of offering up insurance on mortgage securities is the process of doing the due diligence to determine whether or not you are willing to provide the requested insurance, and at what price your actuaries have determined you are willing to offer it. That's the whole fucking point.



I mean, I could understand the claim that Bank of America probably made about a billion statements that turned out to be completely and utterly wrong about its expectations with respect to the value of the mortgages packaged into securities insured by AIG. Every company in America, on both sides of these transactions in fact I am sure, was more or less totally wrong about their expectations for the underlying mortgages in just about any debt portfolio five or six years ago. But how a company with the sophistication level of AIG -- the preeminent insurance company on earth as of before the financial crisis, bar none -- can willingly choose to participate for premiums that it agreed to, as an insurer of last resort in an entire securitization system that was truly hopelessly flawed, ultimately do its due diligence and decide to accepte hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to insure these mortgage securities against default at the prices agreed to by AIG in each and every case, accepting those premiums in exchange for promises to insure those securities and then now try to claim that they were somehow "tricked" by Bank of America with respect to what was in the securities that AIG had investigated before quoting its price to begin with, is beyond me.



And the thing that pisses me the shit off the most, by a mile, is that the U.S. government right now owns 77% of AIG. No, strike that -- Americans own 77% of this company right now, even after a large sale share earlier in the summer to reduce the holding from originally 92% after the company's ridiculous bailouts in 2008 and again in 2009. We own this fucking company!! And we're going to stand by and allow them to try to file downright frivolous claims that by definition would eliminate responsibility for AIG's own due diligence as the leading and most sophisticated insurance company in the history of the world? Literally! Why the shit would we ever allow that? We own this fucking company, big time. You and me brotha, we own this shit.



President Obama: if you're interested in getting someone with a head on their shoulders to at least consider voting for you in the next election, I want to see you on the fucking television, wagging a finger right at the camera, and telling AIG that they either withdraw this refluckulous claim today -- like, right fucking now -- or you are shutting them the fuck down once and for all like the filthy fucking crooks that we all already know they are. And then, let's hope they call your bluff and don't withdraw the claim against Bank of America, so you can shut those assholes down and put every one of those 63,000 full-time AIG employees out of business. You know -- our fucking employees. Mine and yours. How dare those sanctimonious shitpieces at AIG, who are only even employed at all right now by the mother fucking grace of having a two consecutive pussies as president who are just too damn afraid to stick it to the people who deserve it most, now demand the return of $10 billion because they didn't even fucking try to do their jobs and actually size the potential liabilities under the default insurance contracts they wrote. But it's not AIG's fault, right? They were "tricked" as part of the financial crisis by the very clients they were agreeing to protect. How unbelievably AIG of them.



What a load of bullshit. I would happily accept a big loss on our $180 billion investment in AIG at this point if it means putting the company's entire 63,000 full time workforce out of business. Tomorrow.

If there was one thing that stood out to me during my many travels with my family over the past month -- other than the increased security at the busier airports, of course -- it would have to be the effect of wearing my regular Phillies apparel in multiple airports along the east coast. Ten years ago, #1 I'm not sure I would have been caught dead wearing any Phillies apparel other than your standard baseball cap in public, and #2, if I did, I could have walked through the nation's airports basically unnoticed. I mean, how often do you really pay attention if someone walks by you wearing, say, a Colorado Rockies t-shirt, or a Padres cap, etc.? Especially given the total lack of historical success out of the Phillies prior to the team's current incarnation, believe me when I tell you, I spent 20-some years of my life as a long-suffering and apparel-wearing Philly fan across the board, and nobody ever said boo to me about anything I ever had on my back, my head, or anywhere else attached to my person, be it at an airport or otherwise.

Fast forward to last month, and as the Hammer Family muddles through a very long security line at JFK International Airport, Hammer Wife and I are trying to get everything back together after our bags, computers, shoes, belts, younameits all come out of the scanner while simultaneously keeping tabs on and quieting down three young kids including a very young one who can't be trusted not to do something crazy at any time depending on what is attracting him at any particular moment. At one point my 2-year-old grabs one of his sisters' shoes and starts running with it, stopping just before running under the line barrier and back into the security line all over again. Trust me when I tell you, having to go and retrieve him, and I'm sure being forced to wait with him all the way through that whole security line again, was about as daunting a thought as I could imagine at that particular moment, and then I saw the big burly TSA guard standing right near where my boy was dangerously close to really screwing things up. I ask the guy if he could please just stand in front of my boy for one second while I come and collect him -- he was only maybe 10 feet away from me at this point -- and the TSA guy takes one look at my Phillies shirt, sneers up the corners of his mouth just a little bit, and says "Not for a Phillies fan, I won't." And he was serious. Luckily I managed to grab the kid before he got away from the security-cleared end of the line, but it wasn't with any help at all from the TSA guy, who told me he was a Mets fan. After a quick condescending laugh at him, I told him I feel bad enough for him already and I could get my own kid. But the simple fact is, ten years ago, there's no way anyone in New York would ever have even mentioned me being a Phillies fan. That fact would have been of no consequence whatsoever to a Mets fan 10 years ago, even when the Mets were bad themselves. The Phillies were a lifelong embarrassment, and pretty much the last franchise in all of professional sports that would have caused any agita, jealousy and negativity whatsoever in the mind of any other city's or sport's team fan.

A week or so later, we're flying back out of the airport in south Florida, and once again I am sporting some Phillies apparel, this time my old red hat that I've had for going on a decade or more now, and this time in Marlins country. The hat is ratty and gross, but it's mine and I love it, and I pretty much always bring it on vacation in case I need the extra protection or convenience that it affords the wearer. The Hammer Family rolls in to the airport with exactly nine bags, only two of which are being carried by anyone other than me, and I am taking a beating in the 100 degree heat. Mercifully I see one of the airprot's luggage hand trucks unattended, and I am just starting to put my luggage down on it when a skycap walks up from across the room and says those are only for skycap use. I look at him, sweat pouring down my face, back aching, and with true desperation in my eyes and ask can I please just borrow this to lug my bags to the security line about a mile away in the airport, and that I will personally bring it right back to him in 15 minutes or so when I get the bags there, and I take a minute to point out to him how utterly deserted the airport is at that hour and how many other hand trucks there are available for him and his team to use. The guy takes one look at me -- the sweat, the pain, the desperation -- and says, "Sorry, no Phillies fans are using any of my carts today." And that was it. I carried seven bags about a half a mile across a couple of terminals because I was unfortunate enough to once again be wearing a Phillies hat in the land of another, this time different, NL East team. What on earth a Marlins fan really has against the Phillies specifically I'm not sure I understand -- I mean, the Marlins are after all in last place in the division, they lost 17 games in a row this year, and the Phils have never really taken on the Marlins head-on in any of these past few years of Philadelphia sports success -- but I guess that's just it: the Phillies' success is what does it. What will soon be five consecutive years of NL East domination -- the only other team in division history to win five straight other than the Braves dynasty of the 1990s -- must just be too much for the fans of every other team in the division to take.

A couple of weeks later, we are at our first night at the beaches of Delaware (Washington, DC beach country, mostly), and I went out to pick up dinner at the Hammer Family's favorite local restaurant, and I'm once again wearing my Phillies shirt that in fact was a recent gift from my brother in law who was there getting dinner with me. When I get there I realize they have not included the dressing that my sister in law had specifically requested with her salad as part of the order, so I ask them to include it, and the guy behind the counter mouths off to me that he normally doesn't give dressing to Phillies fans. Now, unlike the first two instances above, this Nationals fan did eventually give me what I had asked for, but not before getting in his own barb against my beloved Phillies team. After he took the time to ask me where was that right-handed bat in our lineup since the Jayson Werth trade, I could not resist pointing out that the Nationals management has been asking themselves that same question all season long, and we parted ways both with smiles on our faces.

Three examples of NL East rival fans mouthing off at me in the span of under a month, just for the team that I liked? To a Phillies fan? If you needed anything beyond Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee both accepting less money to play at Citizens Bank Park to show how far the Phillies franchise has come over the past half a decade or so, that is pretty much it.

Well, so much for the building interest level of the WSOP Main Event that I was talking about last week. Monday was like D-Day for all the notable players and stories remaining in the event, as basically every last one of them was eliminated as we played down from 57 to 22 players remaining out of the 6500+ field that started about a week and a half ago at the Rio in Las Vegas.

First it was Andrew Brokos of Thinking Poker, who was one of the first bustouts of the day on Monday in the low 50's, and a big bummer to me as I long for the day when someone I consider to be an actual poker blogger (as opposed to a pro who also keeps a blog, etc.) wins a gold bracelet somewhere, somehow. Then Erick Lindgren, probably the last widely-recognizable pro remaining and one of the just a couple of full tilt red pros to cash in this year's Main Event, busted in the low 30s a few hours later, leaving us with no really recognizable names left in the field of still four tables remaining at the time.

But even then, there was still at least one interesting story left to me -- Erika Moutinho and David Sands, a boyfriend and girlfriend who not only both cashed in the Main Event, but both ran deep deep deep to the final 30 players and who even sat right next to each other at the ESPN featured table throughout Monday's play. To think that a couple would both survive this deep in such a huge poker tournament is truly unbelievable, and that they got to sit with each other and enjoy this once in a literal lifetime experience just strains all credulity, but it happened. I could not believe what I was seeing, actually -- these two played a few key pots against one another, but for the most part they were whispering to each other what cards they were holding whenever they folded without having to show. Right in front of everybody. I was salivating at the thought of all the media coverage this destined-for-fail pairing was going to bring if they could survive down to the final couple of tables (and obviously at the final table, if that could even be imagined), while at the same time frowning at the tournament director for allowing what was very overtly the sharing of hole card information after the respective hands were played, but which when I have played at the WSOP requires one to tell the entire table what they had if they reveal their hole cards to any one or more players. But somehow, because these two were seated next to each other and allowed to whisper with abandon in between playing hands, I could not believe what I was seeing. Not that I have the perfect answer to this conundrum, but yknow Jack Eiffel, you could have maybe just seated them at different tables -- or at least not directly next to each other -- in the interest of promoting fairness and equality for all the players involved.

In any event, eventually both boyfriend and then girlfriend ended up busting pretty close to each other in the 20s, eliminating what to me was the very last thing worth caring about in the WSOP Main Event this year. Especially since the advent of the ridiculous "November Nine" such that we won't even know which of the unknowns is the eventual winner for another several months here at this point, Monday just took the last scraps of air for me out of this year's World Series of Poker. It's unfortunate really -- I mean, I know some people get off on seeing a bunch of noobs playing it out on live tv for the $8 million first prize, and of course I will be happy for whoever survives to pull off that feat this fall in Vegas, but in reality, there's very little more boring to me than the thought of watching nine total and compelte unknowns whom I never cared about before this tournament and won't care about after this tournament, slinging poker chips around with mostly preflop allins. I'm not saying the WSOP needs to change anything or that this is any kind of an unacceptable outcome, but rather than my level of interest in the WSOP Main Event just fell off a cliff on Monday as the last of the stories fell by the wayside once and for all. Let's just say that I won't have wsop.com on auto-refresh anymore starting today, as there'd be nothing for me to even follow along with that is of any moment to me whatsoever.

And thus ends for me the first WSOP without myself there in participation since 2006. I actually made it through ok, all things considered; no bouts of withdrawal, no urge to jump on a plane and call my wife from the air when it was too late to turn around. Playing that tournament at Foxwoods a couple of weeks ago helped to ease the pain a little bit, and I am planning on a similar outing sometime in August or September as well, probably down to the Borgata to play in the Fall Poker Open or maybe back to Foxwoods to get a little more of my poker on later in the year. But not playing at the WSOP in 2011 was ok in the end, and I certainly do not regret my decision not to throw away a couple grand on a tournament that I am nowhere near practiced-up enough to play my best in. Here's to making it back out to the desert for my annual summer reunion in 2012, when some 15 months of no online poker in the United States is I can only assume set to produce lower fields than the record numbers we saw across the WSOP this time around as players made that extra effort to take their existing rolls out to the WSOP given the shutdown of online poker in April 2011.

I have to admit, over the past several years, these have been some of my most fun days from an internet lurking perspective. For television, those first few days of March Madness every year is the event, the one that has me glued to the tube for hours on end, just watching and taking it all in. Well, in terms of things that aren't televised live like college basketball games, that thing is the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.

The first time I remember really following along with the Main Event coverage live on the web was when Greg Raymer made his incredible back to back run so deep in the big one. I must have followed Raymer's stack and hand histories like a hawk for several days as we wound down from the early rounds, to the money, and especially as we worked our way down to just a few hundred, and then eventually under 100 runners remaining. I remember obsessively railing another incredible deep run from our very own blogfather Iggy in the Main Event a few years ago, one that had me finding a whole new set of websites where I could look up individual players' chip counts on a fairly realtime basis. In the more recent past -- mostly with the advent of the ridiculous "November Nine" schedule -- there haven't been quite as many big storylines to follow, and yet every year I'm out there lurking to get the latest on Phil Hellmuth's rantings, Darvin Moon's huge bluff, or the latest story about Dennis Phillips's fan club. And then of course last year, it was Phil Ivey and, to a lesser extent, Antonio Esfandiari who really captivated my attention and made themselves something I really cared about for a few days in the middle of June.

Well the Main Event is back again now, and I am following along, as usual. We had the usual array of bustouts early in the first four levels on Day One, but there are a number of people I have some interest in whose stacks I will be keeping an eye on for the time being, while they're still alive in the tournament anyways. Former Main Event champion and investment banker Robert Varkonyi, a guy who played right next to me at the Taj Mahal in AC a few years ago and again in the tournament I played at Foxwoods just a couple of weeks back, is alive and kicking, with 118,000 chips as of this writing. After his father's uninspired first-day bustout, Todd Brunson has basically the same stack, and another former ME winner and very dangerous player in Carlos Mortensen is also in action on Day 2b with 85k in chips at the moment. E-Dog Erick Lindgren, a guy I've always liked, is very short with under 30k but he's still alive and kicking here about halfway into Day Two, so that's another guy worth watching at least until he either doubles up or gets crippled. For those who love HSP, Patrik Antonius has a nice stack with around 220k in chips, and Steve Dannenmann, who has himself has two deep runs in the Main Event in the past few years, is looking solid with 135k in his stack as well, to go along with around 50k in chips for Darvin Moon. All of these guys are worth watching for me here on Day 2b, in addition to Thomas Fuller, whose blog I've enjoyed reading for quite some time, and who I'm following pretty actively on the twitter feed as well, and Terrence Chan, author of another blog I've enjoyed for years. Both are nursing fairly short stacks at or around the starting stacks, which as Day Two draws on are going to start looking awfully small in comparison to the size of the stakes likely being played at their respective tables. Edit: Moon won some pots in the last hour, and has now nearly doubled his previous stack to over 60k. Go Moon!
Further edit: Moon went on a great post-dinner run, made some big folds, turned a flush and flopped a set, and ended Day 2b with 145k in chips, nicely above average. Wtg Moon!!

Adding to the Day 2b action are those who survived strong from Day 2a yesterday, which list includes online pro Shaun Deeb with nearly 300k in chips, and his father Freddy who is also alive although on a much smaller stack at the moment, and there's Peter Feldman -- Nordberg from the old full tilt days whom I used to love to follow and whom I watched win a WSOP circuit event a few years ago, also sitting on over 275k in his stack. Miami John Cernuto finished Day 2a over 180k chips with still plenty of room to move, and Andrew Brokos, another very prominent longtime poker blogger, is sitting on 137,900 chips after two days of play. Former Main Event champion Tom McEvoy -- whose books on omaha I have read several of over the years -- survived Day 2a with 143k in chips, and I am also following along with Eli Elezra -- another HSP regular -- who has just over 151k in chips.

Any one of the people I mentioned above would be an interesting story that I would definitely be following along with over the coming week of increasingly higher-stakes play at the Rio. And, there are a whole bunch of other players not listed above in whom I would also take an avid interest if they start making a deep run. Despite the staggering proliferation of poker over the past decade both in this country and around the world, and in spite of the several years of mass availability of the game from a great many online sites in most counties in the world, and even with the WSOP continuously selling out by increasing the number of bracelet events year after year in a blind push to growing the gross participation in the WSOP without regard to damage being done to the overall brand, the Main Event continues to stand out as the one big poker event of the year that everyone wants to keep track of, and I am certainly no exception.