The last couple of days, I’ve been pretty busy writing stories for CardSquad, including one about the demise of one of Vegas’ greatest dumps, The Klondike, which I think has enough crossover appeal to mention here:

Right after we placed our order, a man and a woman sat down at the
table next to us. I forget what she looked like, but he was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, and was a smelly,
unshaven mess. From their conversation, it was unclear whether he’d been released, or escaped. Either way, the waitress
(who was so drunk at eleven in the morning, we were concerned about open flames) didn’t seem to care. Because we were
all in our very early twenties, neither did we. The as-yet-unawakened writer in me furiously scribbled down every
possible detail of what was clearly a moment in time we’d never want to forget.

There’s more, so follow the links if I’ve successfully piqued your interest. There’s also a story about this really cool thing PokerStars is doing today and tomorrow: revealing hole cards during a television-style replay of the final table of January 8th’s $500,000 guaranteed tourney. I don’t know if it has as much crossover appeal as the Klondike story, but it’s such cool news, I’m mentioning it anway, because this is my damn blog and I can do whatever I want, goddammit:

It was quite a sight, to walk into
any of the WiFi-enabled areas of the resort, and find players packed in, elbow-to-elbow, in some cases playing
battleship-style, in others, sweating each other after one of them had been eliminated, in all, hoping to claim first
place, which was worth over $125,000.

The lobby of my tower was filled with recognizable professional
players, like Evlyn Ng, Alex Todd, Michael Mizrachi, and others. There were also fearsome online pros, and a few
donkeys like me. The energy was just as electric, and the stakes just as high as they were down the hall in the live
poker room, where the main event of the PCA was still underway. The only difference? Players could smoke in the lobby,
while the poker room was smoke-free.

Also, the WWdN Invitational returns tonight, at 8:30 PM EST. I let Nolan name this week’s game, since I didn’t play last week, and was therefore unable to be the victim of a 3-outer river suckout.

What: WWdN: Nolan Rules! Invitational
Where: PokerStars.
When: Tuesday, January 17th, 2006. 8:30 PM EDT
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 18186252
Buy-in: $10+1

Finally, some really exciting news: I talked about the WWdN tourneys with a friend of mine while I was at the PCA, and asked him if he’d consider playing with us one day. He couldn’t commit to a specific date, but told me that if I remind him each week, he’ll eventually have some time to play with us. His name is Greg Raymer. You may have heard of him. (ohmygodohmygodohmygod)

See you all tonight!