WSOP Champions: Where are they now, Part 1 In the glorious 38-year history of the World Series of Poker, 32 men have been able to take down the most desired prize in poker: the $10,000 Championship Event and the title of "World Champion" that goes along with it.
The stories of these men after they won the championship are almost as interesting as how they won the event in the first place. Over the next few weeks as we come up to this year's World Series starting on May 30, we'll look back in the history books to see what became of some of the greatest players in the game.
Unfortunately, eight of the men who have won the WSOP championship and been recognized as World Champion are no longer with us. Today we'll take a look at four of these players.
Johnny Moss (1970-71, 1974)
Already a legendary player before he was elected the first champion at the World Series of Poker in 1970, Moss came back the next year and won it outright on the felt. He was at the final table the next two years but didn't win.
In 1974, though, he made it back to the final table once again and took his third title, becoming the first man to win three Main Events at the World Series.
With his background and education in the gambling world of Texas, Moss was better known for his Draw game skills. Of his nine World Series bracelets, six of them were in draw games such as Lowball and Seven-Card Stud.
The nine bracelets he earned place him fourth on the all-time list behind contemporary players Phil Hellmuth and Johnny Chan and one of Moss' contemporaries, Doyle Brunson.
Moss played at the World Series from its inception in 1970 to 1995, becoming the oldest bracelet winner when he won his final bracelet in 1988 at 80 (a feat that was topped by Paul McKinney at 81 in 2005). In total, Moss cashed in 23 World Series events and was one of the inaugural inductees into the Poker Hall of Fame when it started in 1979.
When he passed away on December 16, 1997, poker lost its "Grand Old Man," one of the true legends of the early years of the World Series and of the game in general.
Walter Clyde "Puggy" Pearson (1973)
Born in the mountains of Tennessee, Puggy Pearson concentrated more on gambling than schooling. He dropped out of school after fifth grade, but more than made up for his lack of book learning with an education in the school of hard knocks. At 17, he entered the U.S. Navy and earned more money gambling than through service, setting him up for a lifetime of exploits both on and off the poker tables.
It is popularly believed that Pearson was the inspiration behind tournament poker and the World Series.
Puggy suggested to Benny Binion, the originator of the World Series of Poker, that there should be a high-buy-in, No-Limit Texas Hold'em freezeout event to determine who would be the World Champion and that it should come at the end of a schedule of events consisting of assorted poker variants.
It was, therefore, partly through Puggy's efforts that the WSOP Championship Event became what it is today.
Pearson kept Johnny Moss from winning another Main Event title in 1973 (Puggy's third WSOP bracelet that year). However, that proved to be the last of the four WSOP bracelets he would win.
Undaunted, he continued to play at the World Series of Poker until 2005, racking up three more final tables and five cashes along the way. He passed away shortly before the start of the 2006 World Series but will always be remembered as one of the forefathers of the game of poker.
Brian "Sailor" Roberts (1975)
Brian "Sailor" Roberts is a sometimes-overlooked legend of the game. In the early years of the development of poker, he was the third component of the Amarillo Slim/Doyle Brunson triumvirate that toured the Southeastern United States pursuing the game for a living.
After the threesome disbanded in the '60s, Roberts actually served time in prison for wire fraud. When he was released from jail, he headed for Las Vegas to legally pursue his vocation.
"Sailor" (so called because of a stint in the Navy during the Korean War) surprisingly had limited success at the tournament poker tables. Although he took down two bracelets (including his 1975 world championship victory), he was only able to cash one more time after that in a World Series event, when he reached the final table of the Main Event in 1982 and finished eighth. Obviously, Roberts' cash game skills were what kept him in poker.
Roberts was also one of the friendliest players in the game of poker. It wasn't uncommon for Roberts, after hearing fellow poker players lament their bad beats, to infuse their bankrolls with a healthy dose of cash.
When he passed away from sclerosis caused by hepatitis in the '80s, poker lost one of the pioneers of the game, proof that the adage "nice guys finish last" doesn't always apply.
Hal Fowler (1979)
One of the most mysterious men to have won the WSOP Championship Event has to be Hal Fowler.
Considered the first "amateur" to win the Main Event, Fowler was nearly down to the felt during the 1979 tournament.
In what many consider the greatest upset in World Series history, he was able to fight back admirably and defeat a final table that also consisted of Chip Reese, Johnny Moss and runner-up finisher Bobby Hoff. (Admittedly, Fowler committed an amateur mistake by chasing a gut-shot straight draw heads-up that came home against Hoff's pocket aces.)
After that victory, Fowler wouldn't make another World Series final table. Although he wouldn't cash in another WSOP event, he did make three final tables in tournaments during the 1980s: once at Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker and twice, including a win, at the 1984 Grand Prix of Poker at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas).
Afflicted with diabetes that damaged his eyesight and legs and eventually took his life, Fowler never could recapture the glory of 1979 and his time as a World Champion.
These now-deceased men who became synonymous with poker excellence had varying degrees of success in the game after their WSOP triumphs. In the next installment of our look back at World Series Main Event champions, we'll remember the other four champions who are no longer with us.
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PokerListings.com Full Tilt awards more money to PL.com players This week it was intergross who came out with the largest chunk of the prize pool after toppling a field of 94 players.
Each of them earned their way into the freeroll by accumulating 150 player points during the week prior to the freeroll. For intergross, that meant picking up $960 without having to shell out another dime of his own money.
The 34-year-old is a self-described professional gambler. Usually he's a backgammon player, but he said poker is his new interest.
He's been playing the game for about six months now, and was attracted to it because of the potential for big money. In fact, even though he says he's just a beginner in the game, his biggest win so far is $10,000.
Still, he said he was "very lucky" when asked how he achieved his win in the Full Tilt Poker freeroll. intergross is getting plenty of practice, though, which could also account for his win.
He says he plays poker online every day, and every day he's playing at Full Tilt Poker, which he considers one of the best poker rooms. He also checks out PokerListings.com on a daily basis, and says he finds the best information online about poker there.
Now intergross plans to use his extra $960 to play in other tournaments and continue playing poker professionally.
The final-table results of the freeroll were:
| Place | Name | Prize |
| 1st | intergross | $960 |
| 2nd | dglizda | $585 |
| 3rd | coke1978 | $420 |
| 4th | beloumi | $330 |
| 5th | Zephyr Indigo | $240 |
| 6th | tymmyk4 | $180 |
| 7th | stormin618 | $120 |
| 8th | sb007ck | $90 |
| 9th | SaintGabriel | $75 |
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PokerListings.com Future of the poker industry: Part 2 Last week we sketched out an analogy between the development of professional golf in North America and how poker could follow in that game's footsteps. Now it's time to look at various poker-world stakeholders and what each has to do to help poker progress from a freewheeling gambling enterprise to an officially sanctioned sport.
Today we'll examine two components that have to come together for this to happen - the casinos and the multitude of poker tournament schedules that populate the poker world.
Casinos, like most businesses, operate on a competitive, bottom-line model. Their purpose is to earn as much revenue as possible. Poker doesn't usually form a major part of their revenue stream.
Prior to the reemergence of poker in 2003, many casinos, not only in Las Vegas but around the world, were closing their poker rooms. Post-2003, though, the rebirth of poker had many locations scrambling to renew their commitments to the game.
#img: las-vegas-strip_8566.jpg: left: More poker on the Strip.#
The casinos realized that they could attract more players by spreading poker in addition to the more lucrative games.
According to the American Gaming Association's 2007 Survey of Casino Entertainment, Nevada poker revenue was $68 million in 2003 and increased almost 150% to $160.8 million by 2006.
New Jersey, another mainstay of poker in the United States, saw a similar upswing, generating $37.1 million from poker among total 2006 casino revenues of $77.3 million.
Even with that growth, the proportion of earnings from poker is a fraction of total gambling revenues.
Looking just at Nevada, in 2003 the percent of revenue from card games was .7%. That number has since nearly doubled to approximately 1.3% in 2007, according to Nevada Gaming Commission and State Gaming Control Board reports.
But more organization and cooperation between the casinos could help increase the revenues from poker or at least capitalize on the popularity of the game by attracting more players to their establishments.
Two of Las Vegas' most notable casinos have already found ways to make poker work for them. The Bellagio has one of the most popular poker rooms on the strip, and is regularly filled to the rails with players and spectators.
#img: binions_2390.jpg: right: Home of the World Series of Poker.#
Binion's Gambling Hall has found a way to use its poker history to draw in players who inevitably overflow to other table games and the slots as well. Yet some casinos still struggle to attract poker players.
The closure last year of the Las Vegas Hilton's poker room illustrates poker's tenuous profitability for the casinos and shows that, to move into a more viable future for poker, the casinos need to standardize all aspects of poker in the casino setting.
When it comes to tournament poker, different casinos have their own "house rules" that bedevil the players. Blind structures, payout percentages, even the rules regarding play of individual hands can differ, even sometimes from one local casino to the next.
To eliminate these inconsistencies, casinos as a whole would have to agree to an across-the-board standardization of their rules.
As highlighted in Part 1 of this series by Chairperson Wendeen Eolis, this is one of the goals of the World Poker Association. Not only would standardization help players compete on a more level playing field; it would also help burnish poker's image.
However, it may be a challenge to get competing casinos to work together. Individual golf courses chose to band together and organize the PGA Tour, because they saw an opportunity not only to promote the big names that were playing but also to raise their own brand recognition.
Courses such as Augusta National, Pebble Beach and Pinehurst became almost as recognizable as the players. The course owners saw their patronage and membership skyrocket, because people wanted to play on the same greens that the pros had played on.
Through garnering sponsorships and promotion for the players as well as for their properties, the casinos could build their brand the same way individual golf courses did in the early years of professional golf.
Another obstacle to overcome, though, would be getting the dominant poker tours to cooperate.
#img: the-final-hand_17514.jpg: left: Tours aplenty wherever you want to go. Sometimes too many.#
Between the World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker and its Circuit tournaments, the European Poker Tour, the Asia ((Pacific Poker)) Tour and other regional and individual national tours, the tournament poker schedule can be a harrowing road.
In the first five months of 2008, there are 20 championship events among the WPT, WSOPC and EPT that range in buy-in from $5,000 to $25,000.
Taking into account the preliminary events for these tournament schedules alone, a conservative estimate might be that there are approximately 500 tournaments in that short time span.
Add the regionally popular events and their schedules, such as those offered in Los Angeles, Tunica, Atlantic City, Paris, Spain, England or on the Pacific Rim (to name a few), and the daunting scope of tournament poker becomes apparent.
"It is so difficult for all of the pros to keep such a rigorous schedule year round," said Matt Savage, who travels the world as the tournament director for some of the most prestigious tournaments around. "Fans are getting slighted because the pros are not able to make all tournaments and the fans want to see the top names."
You only have to look at January of this year to see how difficult it was for players to determine where they wanted to be. The Aussie Millions main event ran Jan. 14-20. Before it was even wrapped up, the WSOPC main event in Tunica kicked off Jan. 19 and ran until Jan. 22.
Just a day after the start of the WSOPC main event, the WPT World Poker open also began in Tunica. While the location was handy for players already in town for the WSOPC, the timing was not convenient for players wanting to try their luck in both main events.
Four days after the end of the WPT World Poker Open, another WPT main event started up in Atlantic City at the Borgata. It ran Jan. 27-31, and just at the tail end of that, the EPT German Open kicked off Jan. 29.
For poker to evolve to its fullest potential, the various tours have to come to some agreement to better coordinate their schedules, especially those of their premier events. Limiting the physical distance between events would be better for all involved with the sport as well.
Professional golf, with its yearlong schedule of tournaments and venues, has achieved such geographical efficiency by staging only one major tournament per week at various national and international locations.
Prior to the first major event of the pro golf season, The Masters in Augusta, Ga., the PGA Tour has its "Southern Swing," where four tournaments leading up to The Masters are played in the southeast United States.
This is also done prior to the historic AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am; the tournaments that come before it are in the western United States and in Hawaii, reducing travel expenses and other miscellaneous costs to enable even the lower-level pros to compete.
#img: clonie-gowen-and-some-guy_18094.jpg:right: Who are these people railing Clonie?#
This type of organization and scheduling allows more pros to attend each event, which in turn draws more fans willing to go watch and perhaps play the course, spend money in the pro shop and more.
If the professional poker tours and casinos cooperated, they could work out schedules that would allow top players to take in every major event rather than picking and choosing. In turn that would draw more fans who might drop money at the tables or into slots when they're not railing the tournaments.
But there is another part of the poker world that's key to such a transformation, and it is perhaps the most important. In Part 3 of this series on April 3, we'll take a look at what has been the lifeblood of the game since its creation: the players.
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PokerListings.com Lee Markholt Earns His First "W" Until this event, Lee Markholt has cashed 14 different times in various WPT events, with never having made a final table. Lee set a precedent by winning the first hand on the final table, and kept the pressure turned on as he worked his way to the win.
261 players entered the $7,500 buy in tourney making the prize pool a healthy $1,873,275, with the winners share just short of half a million including his $25,000 seat for the WPT championship event.
Lee held the chip lead over Devo going into the final hand. Both players flopped top pair on a #4s-#3h-#2s board, with Markholt's Jack out kicking Devo's 8. The turn brought the #Jd giving Markholt top two, leaving Devo drawing dead.
Lee couldn't have called Bryans final all-in bet any quicker before turning over the winning hand.
The tournament field was filled with pro's with names such as Phil Ivey and Michael Mizrachi both finishing just shy of the final six, making the short stacked David "The Dragon" Pham the biggest name to be seated at the final table.
The final table:
| Place | Player | Amount |
| 1st | Lee Markholt | $493,815 |
| 2nd | Bryan Devonshire | $271,625 |
| 3rd | Zachary Hyman | $149,862 |
| 4th | Jason Potter | $103,030 |
| 5th | David Pham | $93,664 |
| 6th | Jeff Dewitt | $84,297 |
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PokerListings.com PokerTek Obtains $3 Million in Loans PokerTek, Inc., licensor of automated poker tables, announced a needed infusion of cash this week. PokerTek's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed taking out a $1 million loan from UBS in exchange for a lien...
Women's Poker Spotlight: Shannon Elizabeth, Dancing On Just the mention of her name makes the young men drool. We've seen her on the silver screen and at the poker tables, and now Shannon Elizabeth has taken yet another chance in a career that's been speckled with risk...
Hollywood Poker puts up WSOP packages The premium class package promotion kicked off this week with the first of two weekly satellites that will run through June 15. The first satellite was on Tuesday and they will run each week on Tuesdays and Sundays, awarding a $16,000 Main Event Package each time.
The Main Event Package includes:
- $10,000 buy-in for the WSOP Championship
- 12-day, extended accommodation at the Venetian Resort, Hotel and Casino
- $2,500 for travel expenses
- Transportation
- HollywoodPoker Clothing and Merchandise
The satellites have a $300+$20 buy-in and begin play at 8 p.m. (EDT). For that same buy-in, players at Hollywood Poker can also take a shot at winning a $13,000 Side Events Package.
Starting Saturday, March 29, and running each Saturday through May 31, the poker site will host a tournament at 8 p.m. (EDT) during which players have a shot at a $13,000 prize package that includes:
- $8,000 for WSOP side tournament buy-ins
- Eight-day, extended accommodation at the Venetian Resort, Hotel and Casino
- $2,500 for travel expenses
- Transportation
- HollywoodPoker Clothing and Merchandise
There are also plenty of qualifiers for the satellites, offering Hollywood Poker players a chance to get into the satellites for as little as $1+20¢.
Players can also trade in the bounties they win in the Celebrity Bounty Series through June 1 for qualifier tickets to get into the satellites, and the winners of the weekly Hollywood Poker Celebrity Classic will also win entry into one of the WSOP premium package satellites.
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PokerListings.com Montel Williams makes European poker debut The famous talk show host will play for Team USA, which will be captained by Robert Williamson III. The team will also feature Jamie Gold, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Freddy Deeb and Chad Brown.
"I am thrilled and honored that I have been invited to be a part of Team USA for the Poker Nations Cup," said Williams. "My teammates are extraordinary as I have played against many of them in the past year and now look forward to teaming up with them in our quest to defeat poker pros from around the globe."
Williams burst onto the poker scene at the 2007 WSOP Main Event, where he held the chip lead for the majority of one day.
No stranger to poker, however, Williams first played the game when he was in the Navy, and often saw entire paychecks on the line during his tour of duty. Since then he has organized numerous charity poker tournaments for multiple sclerosis, with which he was diagnosed in 1999, according to Wikipedia.
This year's Poker Nations Cup will include teams from Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Holland, Germany and the United States. The tournament sees one PartyPoker.com VIP qualifier on each team playing alongside five world-class poker professionals from the same participating nations.
Each player pays a buy-in of $5,000, making for a total prize pool of $280,000 ($100,000 is added by PartyPoker). Over six heats, each player will compete once to score points for their team, and individual match winners scoop $20,000 for themselves for their efforts.
All six teams will then compete in a "tag" final where each team captain's judgment is vital, as it is up to them to make tactical substitutions and strategic "timeouts." The size of the team chip stacks for the tag final depends on the points gained by the players in six heats. The triumphant nation will be the last with a player standing.
There will obviously be no qualifier from the United States because PartyPoker doesn't accept American players due to U.S. online gaming legislation, so Williamson III thought Williams would be an excellent candidate to make up for the lost player.
The team of defending Swedish champions will once again be captained by Bo Sehlstedt and feature Mats Rahm, William Thorsson, Johan Storakers and Anders Henriksson. Online qualifier Johan Ocklind will join them as they attempt to repeat as champions.
The luck of the Irish will have to be with Team Ireland if they want to upset the Swedes, but they do have a great roster headed up by Captain Padraig Parkinson. He is joined by Donnacha O'Dea, Marty Smyth, Ciaran O'Leary and Liam Flood. The aptly named Darren O'Brian will join the team as a qualifier.
The British team will be captained by Hendon Mobber Rolande de Wolfe, along with recent Irish Poker Open champ Neil Channing, Ian Frazer, Surinder Sunar, Joe Beevers and qualifier Francis Durbin.
The Dutch team will have to rely on Marcel "Flying Dutchman" Luske, who will act as their captain, for some power poker. Joining Luske will be Eric van der Berg, Daan Ruiter, Thierry van der Berg and Quirijn van der Peet, the qualifier. Luske still has one more selection to make but rest assured there are plenty of Dutch pros looking for a spot.
Finally, the German team will be comprised of Captain Michael Keiner along with Andreas Krause, Benjamin Kang, Sebastian Ruthenberg and Thomas "Buzzer" Bihl. Thomas Potzal is the German qualifier.
With a diverse group of players the PartyPoker Poker Nations Cup is sure to be one of the most international tournaments in recent memory.
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PokerListings.com Bloch speaks out on poker benefits, ban Bloch, a former member of the team, sets the record straight on his Web site: He wasn't involved with the movie in any way, shape or form. He does admit to working on a blackjack script of his own with friend Jeremy Levin, but that project came to a halt when Bloch and Levin couldn't come up with a "creative, exciting, yet believable" conclusion for the story.
The writers of 21 solved the problem with an Ocean's 11-style plot twist that, according to Bloch, "reinforced the team ethic" and "ultimately won me over."
In a recent phone conversation, I asked Bloch how important that team ethic was to his and his fellow MIT card counters' success.
"It was very important that we trust each other," Bloch said.
"In most businesses you can pretty easily check up on your employees and figure out whether they're doing their jobs right and whether they're stealing from you. With (team) blackjack, we can test people and make sure that outside the casino they're playing well, but we can't watch everything that everybody does. So we really have to trust people. Feeling like you're part of a team really helps with that."
During his time with the team, Bloch only recalls the group having to discipline or ban two people because of trust issues.
"Given that there were dozens of people involved, that's a pretty low number. That says a lot."
Lessons from the games we play
#img: andy-bloch_17744.jpg: left: Poker is now Bloch's game of choice.#
These days Bloch's team is Full Tilt Poker, not MIT, and his main game is poker instead of blackjack. I asked him if there is any crossover in the skill sets required for success at each game. Bloch says there is, but the crossover is not so much in the specific skills as it is in good habits.
"The biggest thing you learn from blackjack is bankroll management," Bloch said.
"With the MIT team, we always figured out our bets in proportion to our bankroll at the time. In poker, you should always play according to your bankroll. You don't go jump into the biggest game in town where you might not have an edge and play against the toughest players. You want to know what your edge is and structure how much you risk."
So if we can take lessons from blackjack and apply them to poker, can we apply lessons from poker to other aspects of life? Could we even use poker as a teaching tool, in a manner such as that proposed by Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson and his Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society?
"I think there's a lot of things you can learn from poker, and most of them aren't being taught in other ways," says Bloch. "Poker is a simple game, but you're constantly faced every hand with having to make decisions based on imperfect information. We teach people in math class or your other subjects by giving perfect information. What do you do in a world where you don't know everything? How do you figure out what to play and what not to play?"
And then, of course, there is the human element of the game.
"(In poker) you're playing against a specific opponent - you're not playing against nature or the computer," Bloch said. "If you want to play your best you have to figure out how they play and adapt yourself to that. So it's a game of reading people and not being readable yourself, and that's very important in the world."
"There's definitely hope"
Despite all of poker's positive aspects and potential as a learning tool, the game's opponents are hell-bent on making it illegal for the public to enjoy the game on the Internet. Poker enthusiasts prone to believing the sky is falling, especially in the wake of the UIGEA, might want to take note of Bloch's expert opinion.
"There's definitely hope," said the ever-analytical Bloch. "I think things are going to change."
First, he says that most people who enjoy online poker play for either play money or small stakes because for them poker is "like going to a movie - with the chance that you might actually make some money." Having the majority of online players playing for relatively tiny sums of money could make any further limitation of the people's rights seem absurd.
#img: andy-bloch_1515.jpg: right: Most online players are there for entertainment, playing with nickels and dimes.#
"There's 10¢ buy-in tournaments," says Bloch. "How can playing in a 10¢ tournament be a crime? That just seems to me completely ridiculous that that would be a crime. That's something the federal government or state governments shouldn't be involved in. We have better things to worry about."
Bloch's second reason for hope is that the arguments for regulations to protect American consumers are compelling.
"The major sites are very careful, and are trying to be as responsible as they can be," Bloch says. "But if they detect someone with a gambling problem, that person can go play on another site." If there were a regulation scheme in place, he says, a person who needed help with a gambling problem could exclude themselves from every licensed and regulated gambling site.
With the Poker Players Alliance now boasting a membership of nearly one million and implementing a new grassroots organizing campaign, Bloch feels good about the chances of having online poker regulated and licensed within the United States.
Bloch's final argument is more philosophical. A game of poker, he says, is essentially a contract with others over a somewhat uncertain event, and any contract that isn't harmful shouldn't be banned.
"To me it seems to be one of the most basic rights of contract or business that the government is not going to look in and say, hey, this contract you have isn't valid because we consider this too much an act of luck."
"There are no externalities involved, other than the amount of money you win or lose," Bloch said. "That's true with any contract. So if they can make gambling illegal, they can make anything illegal. And I thought we had a constitution that prevented that."
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PokerListings.com Player freerolls to his biggest win at Pacific As the latest winner of the monthly $5,000 freeroll for PokerListings.com players at Pacific Poker, jimmy44 picked up his biggest poker win to date. Previously he'd pulled in a $1,000 win at a multi-table tournament, whereas his freeroll win put $1,500 in his bankroll.
All it took for him to earn a spot in the freeroll was to accumulate 20 points during the previous month before the freeroll.
That was a cinch for jimmy44 as he visits Pacific Poker a few times per month to play $100 No-Limit and some freeroll multi-table tournaments.
"I like [Pacific Poker] quite a lot," he said. "The software could be ... improved [a bit], but it has a good mixture of players (i.e. very loose) that suit my game."
The Brussels, Belgium native estimates he plays poker about eight hours a week, however, and he's been at it for about two years.
"Up until two years ago, I had only played Five-Card Draw poker with my cousins when I was 10," jimmy44 said. "Then a bunch of friends asked me if I would like to spend one evening playing Texas Hold'em, and I said yes. Since then I've been playing Texas Hold'em No-Limit."
Jimmy44, who works as an IT project manager for his day job, seems to have built some pretty good poker skills in those two years. Perhaps some of that comes from checking out PokerListings.com, where he also signed up to play at Pacific Poker.
"I visit PokerListings very often, at least once per day," jimmy44 said. "The [Question of the Day] is very interesting, and it's also very nice to know the cash-game traffic at any moment. Furthermore, it has some nice poker strategy pages."
Those strategy tips came in handy for the monthly Pacific Poker freeroll.
"The freeroll playing field was OK (in a freeroll, the play is never very hard)," he said. "I was lucky to win some all-ins. I won because I was very aggressive when we were down to five players. The rest of the players started to be too tight. You should never do that at the end of a tourney."
According to jimmy44, on the final hand he looked down to find 3-2 of spades. He was on the button with 145,000 in chips with the blinds at $750/$1,500.
"I raised $4,500, and my opponent called in the big blind," jimmy44 said.
The flop came #6s-#5s-#8d, giving jimmy44 the possibility of an inside straight and a flush draw.
His opponent, Kiguro2 from Italy, bet out $6,000, and jimmy44 flat-called.
"I could have pushed on the turn, but I had been pushing him around before, so I decided to simply call as I had position," jimmy44 said.
The turn brought the four of diamonds, filling jimmy44's straight. Kiguro2 bet $9,000 and jimmy44 pushed all-in and got a call.
Kiguro2 showed 7-6 (no spades), giving him the higher straight, but the turn brought the king of spades to give jimmy44 the flush and the win.
When asked what he plans to do with his newfound $1,500, jimmy 44 said, "I will take part of it to my bankroll so that I can play $200 NL, and the rest I'll withdraw to buy some gifts for my family."
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The United States House of Representatives will hold a hearing on Wednesday about how the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act should be enforced.
Unibet lost an appeal in a Netherlands court this week, in which the online sportsbook and gaming site was deemed to be infringing on the market of the Dutch state lottery, De Lotto.
GigaMedia Limited, which develops and licenses online poker and casino software, said in a statement that it was not worried about the possibility of a ban of online poker and gambling in Canada that may be on the way. Canada has been considering laws — similar to what the United States has in place regarding online gaming — to stop online gambling operations in the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has said a $189,000 study on the possible impact of casinos in the commonwealth will still be conducted — even though the state legislature has tabled a bill that would have licensed three casinos in Massachusetts.
The New York Daily News says a “well-known, high-stakes” poker player utilized the services of Kristin Davis, who has been linked to former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. 
Lee Markholt had cashed 14 times before on the World Poker Tour, but he never made it to a final table.
The United States is planning to propose a settlement that would end a bitter trade dispute regarding online gambling between the U.S. and Antigua and Barbuda.
Just last week, the Massachusetts House of Representatives shot down a bill that would have licensed casinos in the state. A timely study may have some rethinking that decision.