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.

After two awesome months, I’m moving the WWdN Friday game at PokerStars to Tuesday, where it will henceforth be known as "The WWdN Friday Game On Tuesday."

Just kidding. It will be "The WWdN: [Donkey who outdrew me because I am so awesome] Invitational."

I’m moving it to Tuesdays in anticipation of SciFridays coming back, and so people who don’t want to give up their Friday nights to play poker with the most awesome group of future WSOP champions (and Poker Geek) ever assembled can still do so on Tuesdays.

The West Coast Warm-up will still happen at 7:30 PST on Thursdays, and is currently seeking a new name, since it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to warm up for something that happened on Tuesday, unless you’re warming up several days in advance, which is a silly way to spend your entire weekend.

So cut-n-paste this as necessary, and spread the word around:

The WWdN Friday game at PokerStars is moving to Tuesday, beginning December 20th. The game will play each week, except in the event of major holidays, starting at 7:00 PM EST. The buy-in will remain at $10+1.

A major announcement related to the Friday-but-now-on-Tuesday tournaments will come out tomorrow. Feel free to speculate wildly, in the hopes that the Associated Press picks up the story and runs with it. Also feel free to tell me I smell good and have nice hair. But don’t expect any funny business, because I’m not that kind of date.

I wanted to do something creative and cool for the booklet that comes with Just A Geek The Audiobook, so I bought a Molskine notebook, and hand-wrote an introduction, the chapter and track listings, and a bunch of liner notes in it. There may also be a few things like the surfer "S", a Van Halen "VH", an actual game of Tic-Tac-Toe that I played with my wife, and some of the other stuff that you typically find on a Pee Chee folder in seventh grade. The idea is that Just A Geek is sort of a journal (all about Star Trek, if you believe the cover and marketing), and I think that this booklet ties in with that theme quite nicely. It’s supermegatotallyawesome that I have the creative freedom to layer one creative mini-project over another creative mega-project.

I’ve finished the art work several times, but when I go to scan it and e-mail it off to the appropriate people, I end up with one of those "Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I just added . . ." moments, and the project keeps growing and growing, so now I have to edit out some of the stuff that it would be "cool if I just added . . ." so I don’t have to kick up the cost of the damn thing by twenty bucks to account for my unrestrained creativity. (Unless you really want to purchase the "holy shit I can’t believe I paid this much for an audiobook, but Wil Wheaton thanks me for helping him buy a boat" edition.)

I also have to write my trip report from the WPBT Winter Classic in Las Vegas this past weekend, and turn in a Games of our Lives column today, and I hope to record a new episode of RFB before the kids get home from school . . . so I guess I should probably stop blogging and get back to work.

Oh, the whole reason I sat down to write this was to point at this week’s Games of our Lives, Satan’s Hollow, which I think is pretty funny:

Gameplay: It’s 1982, so of course you have to enter Satan’s
Hollow in a spaceship. To pull this off, you build a bridge across a
river of fire by picking up pieces from the left side of the screen and
dropping them onto the right side of the screen. You have a shield that
will protect you (for about .08 seconds) from the gargoyles and demons
dropping World War II-style bombs. When the bridge is completed, you
cross into the game’s eponymous locale and face down Satan himself. If
you avoid his magic pitchforks and destroy him, you won’t save mankind
from eternal damnation, but you will earn bonus points and an extra
laser blaster for your space ship.

Before you complain that none of this makes sense, please remember
that the number-one song of 1982 was "Centerfold" by J. Geils Band, and
the number-one film was Tootsie.

One final thought before I really get back to work: You know who’s cool? Enoch Light.