Poker 2K7:
Then we went back and read our blog. And actually, a lot hit the fan this year in poker. Most of it bad. Some of it good.
Here are our favorite stories from poker from 2007.
Online Poker Takes Some BadBeats.
The shake-out of the UIGEA started steamrolling at the beginning of the year. In January, Neteller co-founders John LeFebvre and Steve Lawrence were arrested in Los Angeles and New York, respectively. Then Neteller dropped its InstaCash option for US players and locked up funds, leaving WCP fave Isaac Haxton stuck some $800k or, as we like to call it, “our yearly hooker money.” Online sites that had remained in the US market, like DoylesRoom.com, dropped out. Rumors even spread which turned out to be false, thankfully that Doyle himself was arrested. The Department of Justice ordered some of the world’s biggest banks to hand over all emails, telephone records, and documents connected with gaming sites.
Then, potentially the most damaging of all online poker stories hit in October: Absolute Poker was busted for possibly cheating players out of hundreds of thousands of dollars as their internal employee(s) were viewing user’s hole cards and playing against them. Great, just the fuel the US American government needed to crack down on online gaming.
As bad as it got, there were at least a few positives. After being arrested towards the end of 2006 and charged with online gambling, ex-Sportingbet PLC chair Peter Dicks (more on him later) saw all charges dropped against him. Party Poker hired a US ad placement fi rm to start marketing their .net site again. And after deciding to hang it up, DoylesRoom.com threw its cowboy hat back into the US market. Granted, the only thing that could overcome all the negatives listed above would be some clever techie inventing a legal form of online poker that also gives head as you play, but at least the news wasn’t all bad.
Didn’t Jamie Gold Get Sued?
Seemslike a long time ago since Crispin who we hope to God doesn’t have a lisp, as “Crispin” is one of the worst lispy names out there and oh yeah, we see you saying “Crispin” with a lisp right now totally busted, dude Leyser sued Jamie Gold for half of his WSOP winnings. Well, finally in February that lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed sum. Now only if Jerry Yang did something half as controversial as getting sued, people would actually still give a crap about this year’s WSOP Main Event.
Speaking of Court Dates…
One thing we always tell our current/first wives is that we’ll eventually leave them for a younger woman. It’s inevitable. That’s what guys do. And unfortunately for women, it seldom goes the other way around. Unless you’re David “El Blondie” Colclough. Colclough, 43, dumped his younger wife Rhowena, 27, after he found her shagging a 26-year-old “friend.” Now if it had been a “girl” friend, we imagine Colclough would’ve probably let it slide, since girl-on-girl action is super hot, even if it’s your wife. But, alas, it was with a dude, and Colclough had to muck his marriage.
And Speaking of Non-Marital Bliss…
In April, poker player William “The Manipulator” Gustafik, 44, was found stabbed to death at the Panorama Towers, a luxury high-rise that David Williams and Antonio Esfandiari call home. Gustafik was married to Jill Rockcastle and, as is the case with so many domestic murders, it was not shocking that his wife, Jill Rockcastle, did it. In a letter written by Rockcastle explaining why she committed the murders, she admits the crime was at least partly due to “buy-ins into Vegas poker tournaments, including the Bellagio 5-Star World Poker Classic and the WPT World Championship.” Okay. Well, that’s one way to get your point across. Another way would be NOT TO KILL THE GUY AND JUST LEAVE HIM INSTEAD.
Speaking of Killing People…
In August, some Brit ex-pat living in Thailand named Tom Grant launched a website claiming that he befriended Phil Laak seven years ago, bailed him out of some trouble, went into an import/export business with Laak, and then after a snafu, claims that Laak sought to have him and his wife killed for $30,000. Grant then extorted some money out of Phil to “kill” the story. And like that, he took the page down and no one has really talked about it since. Which should teach all of you that if you ever want to score a few quick bucks, the answer to all of your problems is a little something called extortion.
Speaking of Asians Almost Dying…
The biggest and best story of this year’s WSOP was not Jerry Yang winning, but fellow Asian star Vinnie Vinh going AWOL not once, not twice, but thrice. On two different occasions, Vinh left Day 1 play as event chipleader. On two different occasions, Vinh failed to show up for Day 2 play, eventually being blinded out to 20th and 22nd place. During the Main Event, Vinh bolted after the Day 1 dinner break, yet still managed to make it to Day 2 as a short-stack, although he was quickly eliminated. However, as we noted previously, Vinh’s chair’s performance was the greatest in WSOP history by an inanimate object since Rhett Butler finished fifth at the 2006 WSOP Main Event.
Not Speaking of New Hot Girls in Poker.
While Steve Lipscomb became a source of never-ending entertainment with his TV Week blog (http://www.tvweek.com/ blogs/world-poker-tour) where he touted the virtues of communist China’s “capitalism” and why we should essentially squash freedom of speech during Presidential elections, the man showed he still knows how to hire hot girls to work for his company. Two of the best moves the WPT made all year were to bring on gorgeous online tournament reporter Kimberly Lansing and new TV host Layla Kayleigh. Other welcome new faces include WSOP ME hotties Dee Dozier and Maria Ho, as well as the ever-transforming and still getting more and more crazy/ hot Brandi Hawbaker.
And Finally…
As the poker world and family grow, it becomes more and more important to invent cliques and clubs to more easily group everyone to keep track. This year we saw the founding of the Davidson Matthew Club (people with first names for last and last for first); the Temp Hutter Club (also known as the “Whatever Happened to” Club); and the Anurag Dikshit Organization (which watched as Peter Dicks annoited a new president, poker player Simon Mycock, in the organization’s headquarter city, which is the capital of Turks and Caicos, Cockburn Town.)
