Carly gets a letter from the DMV:

Dear California Driver

Dear form letter!

Drivers with crashes and traffic convictions on their records are
at greater risk at causing future crashes. Your recent record of bad
driving (see below) places you at increased risk of causing crashes,
injury and death. We do not want you to suffer those consequences and
we want you to avoid them.

Okay. First of all, it was hardly a crash so much as it was a fender bender, but we all know the story on that one
(and yes, my insurance company was faulted. Hooray!) Second of all, it
was a speeding ticket that I got seven months prior to that little
mash. Before that, I had maybe one other ticket in my entire California
driving career. That’s it. And now I’m on the list of Drivers With the
Potential to Cause Vehicular Manslaughter?

[. . .]

While you may be a good and safe driver most of the time, your record reflects at least momentary lapses in driving judgment.

No shit. That’s why they’re called “accidents” and “I’m sorry,
officer, I didn’t know how fast I was going.” What can I say? This year
was a bad year that I don’t intend to repeat.

At highway speeds, a moment of carelessness might become a
tragedy. Good, caring people who make careless decisions while driving
can cause injury or death.

I know, mom.

In our effort to urge you to drive safer, we are offering you a
choice. You can choose to prevent further action from the DMV by
avoiding additional traffic convictions and by not causing any crashes.

Oh my god… it’s genius! I never thought of that before! Thank you,
DMV, for pointing out the obvious! If you hadn’t have said that, I’d be
driving over medians and plowing into school kids right now!

It’s kind of pretty awesome that Californians can now enjoy the irritation and idiocy of the DMV, right from the comfort of our own mailboxes. It’s twice as kind of pretty awesome that Carly can make me laugh this hard.

We sat outside on the cafe’s patio, and talked about the things writers talk about. We made notes in our respective Molskine notebooks. Though clouds obscured the moon much of the night, the air was cold and dry.

My friend is far more successful than I am, and I should feel awkward, like the rookie we both know I am, but our relative levels of success don’t matter to either of us. We both share a passion for creating, for telling stories, for putting you where we are, and keeping you interested enough to turn the page.

As I emptied my second mug of chamomile, a group of young Mediterranean men walked out onto the patio, and filled a table behind us. They broke out a backgammon board, and started to play. Across from them, a group of older Mediterranean men smoked cigars and sipped espresso. The young men shared complicated handshakes and slammed their dice cups onto the table, while the older men said very little, and thoughtfully blew clouds of fragrant blue smoke at each other. I wrote in my notebook, "They looked at each other; into the future and into the past."

Two girls in their early twenties sat at a table next to us, and gossiped. I wrote, "She just realized how big it all is, and she is terrified."

Groups of teenagers drifted in and out. All drank huge coffee drinks. Some smoked cigarettes. Many wore Ugg boots, an equal number wore flip-flops. Most intermittently talked on cell phones. I wrote, "They are happy to be here. If you asked them where they were, they would tell you, ‘not at home!’"

My friend and I traded stories until the exhausted cafe workers closed the umbrellas and began to stack chairs. I would have written something in my notebook, but that was our cue to leave.

We gathered up our things, and said good bye. I drove home ’round midnight.

Today is the first Tuesday edition of the Friday Game. Since I didn’t play last week, and was therefore unable to be knocked out by someone, I decided to make good on a threat I issued at the WPBT Winter Classic, and named this week’s game after the blogfather himself, Iggy.

What: WWdN: Bonus Code IGGY Invitational
Where: PokerStars.
When: Tuesday December 20th. 7:00 PM EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 16742725
Buy-in: $10+1

We are already in our ninth week, which just blows me away. It rules the most that these tourneys continue to draw as many players as they do. Like PokerGeek said, "It’s the world’s biggest homegame."

Last week, I mentioned that a major announcement regarding the tournaments would come out, and sugggested that wild and rampant speculation should immediately ensue. Well, the speculation wasn’t particularly wild or rampant, which I’ll chalk up to holiday exhaustion, rather than a soul-crushing lack of enthusiasm, but here’s the news:

Every player who wins one of the Tuesday Night WWdN Invitationals will be freerolled by PokerStars into a WWdN Tournament Of Champions Sit-N-Go, where they’ll get to play against me for some serious money. A PokerStars table seats nine players, so every eight weeks, we’ll play a WWdN:ToC where I will join the eight weekly champions to crown the Super Mega Totally Awesome Champion. Since we have eight winners already, I’ll work with PokerStars to schedule the first WWdN:ToC in the very near future.

I will be live blogging tonight’s game at CardSquad, so if check it out if you’re into that sort of thing. I hope to see lots of players tonight!

I read in a couple of blogs last week that some
poker pros are unhappy with the release the World Poker Tour requires
them to sign before they can play in WPT events.

So I called up Chris Ferguson, who I’d heard is unable to play in WPT
events due to the scope of the current release, got some comments from
him and wrote an article about it for CardSquad.

These days, when you sign up for a poker tournament, in addition to
plunking down your buy-in and flashing your ID, you often have to sign
a release. In fact, for any televised tournament, including World Poker
Tour events, if you refuse to sign the release, you won’t be allowed to
play. This has created some tension between the World Poker Tour and some of the top tournament players in the world, who who can’t — or won’t — agree to the WPT’s terms.

[. . .]

[T]he
player the WPT may miss the most is 2000 World Series of Poker Champion
  Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. I
caught Chris a few minutes before a tournament last Thursday, and he
told me, "The release has gotten worse over time, and I simply can’t
sign it." He explained that the WPT release is so broad, it asks for
rights Chris is not legally able to relenquish. "I have business deals
that prevent me signing this release," He said.

Some Internet commentors have been critical of the pros, suggesting
that they wouldn’t be in this position if television hadn’t made them
famous, but Chris said, "I’m not asking for money, just the right to
control my image outside the program." He reminded me that in
tournament poker, the players put up all the money for the prize pool,
in addition to paying for the rake. "In no other sport do participants
put up [as much money as poker players do] for the events," he said,
and that’s a major point of contention for some players, who feel that
they are taking all of the financial risk while the WPT profits from
their tournament participation.

Commenting is currenty hosed at CardSquad (probably because they are
associated with me, and we all know how technology breaks whenever I
get too close to it — NASA calls me before an important space probe
launch, just so I won’t do something crazy like think about it) so feel
free to comment on it here.

The story has also made it to digg,
even though it doesn’t say anything about the Xbox, haxxoring
[whatever] or contain a top ten list. So check me out! I’m totally
doing journalism . . .ish . . . things.

I’m grows up and grows up and grows up! Yeeehhhaaahahahahaaa!

My WPBT Trip Report is currrently under
construction [insert totally awesome 1996 .gif of a man with a shovel
on a yellow diamond here. It’s retro-ironicool!] but I came across a
photo that so perfectly captures my Friday night at MGM, I had to post
it right now.

This comes from Flickr, via CujoFan’s blog. You will note that, even though I had position on Paul Phillips, he still managed to make me his bitch, which is probably easy when I’m playing near my gulp limit, and he’s playing below his "guess what I found under a couch cushion" limit.

I guess it goes without saying that Paul is a remarkable poker player . . . but until you’ve sat with him, and watched him completely pwn a table, you have no idea how scary good he actually is. Paul has said that he’s just about finished playing poker, which is a real shame. He could utterly destroy just about any WSOP field he enters, and I’d like to see him take at least one bracelet before he retires.