The iPod Shuffle Edition
In LA for New Year’s Eve, the Entities who comprise Wicked Chops Poker were discussing (in between whippits) what songs the others would be most surprised to fi nd in each respective Entity’s iPod. The fact that Will Smith’s “Will2K: Willenium” was playing in the background as this conversation ensued has nothing do to with the rest of the article. But it is worth noting regardless. Turns out Chops will roll up the windows in his car and sing the hell out of “Since U Been Gone”. Oddly (or sadly) enough, “Since U Been Gone” was The Addict’s surprise fi nd as well. Damn, that’s one catchy tune. As for Snake, it was “Rosanna” from Toto. What was shocking about that wasn’t so much that “Rosanna” is a bad song (it’s actually a great one and prompted an immediate download by Chops), but that it was mixed in amongst all of Snake’s sitar-fl avored Indian music. If you think Evy Ng rocks on Guitar Hero, just watch Snake shred Sitar Hero one day. Let’s just say he makes Vilayat Khan look like Nikhil Banerjee.
Anyway, the point is something unexpected always comes up on the iPod Shuffl e. Most people’s iPod Shuffl e just jumps from random song to random song. But that’s what makes the Shuffl e so interesting. So we’re going to write an article just like an iPod Shuffl e, with no real rhyme or reason. Hopefully it’s half as enjoyable as hearing “Raga Asa Bhairav” followed by “Rosanna” in Snake’s rotation.
Best poker song ever
It only feels appropriate that if we’re going to intro this article talking about iPod Shuffl es, we’ve got to discuss what the best poker song ever made is. We posed this question on our website recently, and there wasn’t a runaway winner. We feel the winner should be the wildly underappreciated “The Poker Rap” from TheDudeMan. We pimp that song so much people are probably going to start thinking we dropped it, but unfortunately we didn’t. There were a few votes for Kenny Rodger’s “The Gambler”. There were approximately no votes for Prahlad Friedman’s “Poker Is Fun” (a.k.a. “You Shoulda Practiced Avoidance”).
What we’ve been able to determine from voting/personal opinion is this: there really aren’t any good songs about poker out there (aside from “The Poker Rap” of course). Not one single poker song would even make it on our iPod Shuffl e list (save for “The Poker Rap”). You would’ve thought that somewhere between 2004 and 2006, when every single douchebag in the poker industry was trying to hock “I’ve Got the Nuts” T-shirts with squirrels on them or launch some witty line of card protectors, SOMEBODY out there would’ve created the one great seminal poker song. Beck? Radiohead? Tom Sartori? Snoop? Tupac (since he’s still alive)? None of them stepped up to the plate. It never happened. Which sadly means that maybe it never will. Unless of course Sully Erna is reading this article. And if you are, Sully, get on it already. It’s not like we’ve heard a new Godsmack joint in awhile.
Three changes we’d like to see at the WSOP this year
The 2009 WSOP schedule was released with some interesting changes/additions ($40,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event, a $1,000 buy-in event, etc.). On that note, here are three interesting changes we’d like to see at the WSOP:
Fewer events. Fifty-seven bracelet events in fi fty days? A WSOP bracelet is becoming more watered down than a Michelob Ultra Light dumped into a swimming pool.
Shorter fi nal table delay. Four months is just too long to wait in between getting down to the fi nal nine and duking (Vanessa Rousso?) it out for the Main Event title. There’s a fi ne line between “building anticipation” and “letting the air out of the balloon” and four months is right about where that line is.
Swimsuit only ladies event. Listen, if you’re going to degrade women enough by having a Ladies Only event (“Hey, since you can’t win an event outright on your own, here’s your own special little tourney! Remember, call down your bottom pair until the river!”), then you might as well require them to wear swimsuits. Imagine the spectator turnout! We may even produce a “Guys on the Rail” picture page on our site if this event were to ever occur, just to be fair.
Vanessa Rousso, who went to Duke, also went to the Caribbean for a SI swimsuit shoot
Speaking of swimsuits (this iPod Shuffl e is starting to feel like it was strung together by Apple’s Genius application), Vanessa Rousso will be appearing in this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. The caveat here is that her appearance is via a paid advertisement from PokerStars, but she still had to make the cut for inclusion, which means her body must have been just as rocking as her mind. Wow, did we really just type that? Hold on, gotta wipe the vomit off the laptop monitor. There. Ok. Sorry. Anyway, as we’ve always contended, the more we can get poker players into the mainstream, the better. And there will hardly be any poker player more exposed (literally/ fi guratively) than Vanessa Rousso this year.
Wicked Chops Player Power Index
It’s been a full year since we updated our Wicked Chops Player Power Index. So the list sorely needs an update. For a reminder on the WCPPI, it’s a highly scientifi c equation generated by our proprietary computer named RANDY that ranks poker players based on the following criteria: 1) Do we (Wicked Chops Poker) like the player? 2) If we don’t like the player, is there something funny we can say about the player? 3) What is that player’s recent pop culture relevance? 4) Has that player signifi cantly appeared in the news/media recently? 5) Has that player performed well in recent tournaments?
Here is the likely one and only WCPPI ranking for the year (unless we get stuck for another article and have to dredge up some cockamamie fi ller for it again).
Annie Duke (Score: 901) – Annie Duke, a woman, took about six months off of playing poker to get herself more famous. But with a rumored top two (and possibly fi rst-place) fi nish on The Celebrity Apprentice, it’s safe to say there will hardly be a bigger name in all of poker in 2009.
Daniel Negreanu (Score: 899) – With well north of $1 million in 2008 earnings, it was another solid year for Negreanu, who has topped our WCPPI more than any other person. Assuming his rumored appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine makes the cut, and if he makes a run (as we think he will) at poker’s all-time career money winner crown this year, Daniel may fi nd himself back in the top spot come December, if we actually update the list then.
Vanessa Rousso (Score: 744) – Remember what we just wrote about the SI swimsuit issue?
Clonie Gowen (Score: 721) – Lost amidst all of the suing she’s doing is that Clonie Gowen, a woman, had an unbelievable tournament year in 2008 (for a woman). Not lost amidst our list here is that RANDY has three women in our WCPPI top fi ve. We knew RANDY was a bit of a horn dog but this is ridiculous.
Wicked Chops Poker (Score: 708) – While BLUFF didn’t clearly specify this in their Poker Power Twenty list, the real order of importance – i.e. who is the MOST powerful – goes from 20 to 1, not 1 to 20. This is because number 20 is actually 20 times more powerful than number 1. And who held that honor? Wicked Chops Poker. So if BLUFF Magazine ranked us number 1 (via ranking us number 20), then we have to make our own list, right?
That’s it for our iPod Shuffl e article. Look out next month for our fi rst-ever reader mailbag column. In the meantime, go download some Vilayat Khan and air-sitar until your fi ngers bleed.
