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What We're Thankful For |
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November 2007
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Family. Friends. Our health. Turkey. Canned cranberry sauce. Girls with big boobs. And, oh yeah, poker. Thats right - with Thanksgiving right around the corner, it's time for our annual "What We're Thankful For" article.
The WPT Category
Steve Lipscomb. Since it makes no sense to have a blog on the World Poker Tour site, Steve regales us with his personal and political insight regularly through his blog on TV Week (http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/ world-poker-tour/). At fi rst, we admittedly didn’t pay much attention to it. Not that we didn’t care, but we just didn’t have the time. But after readers began forwarding us links to various articles, Steve’s WPT blog has become must-read material. From his perspectives on what we can learn about capitalism from Communist China to stories about a Hillary Clinton fundraiser at “a swanky, high-powered Beverly Hills home,” Lipscomb has proven to be a modern day Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine all rolled into one. Except replace “Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine” with “Larry, Curly, and Moe.”
TV Tournaments + Layla Kayleigh and Kimberly Lansing.
While we often occasionally give Lipscomb grief about almost everything that comes out of his mouth, he has completely nailed two things: 1) hiring hot, cool girls to work for his organization, and 2) quality TV programming. And at the end of the day, that’s really all that should matter. WPT broadcasts keep getting better and better. Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten are the best commentators in the game. And on that note, they made a great move in hiring the fantastically attractive Layla Kayleigh as their new host. Teamed with on-location tournament reporter Kimberly Lansing, the WPT has given hetero males across the country a great reason to continually tune into their events.
The Tournament Reporting Category
Live WSOP and WPT blogging.
Poker tournament reporting went through some dark days from late 2005-2006. The writing was either a) not accurate, b) not interesting, or c) not timely enough. However, kudos to all warring factions that cover poker these days. Since around the 2007 WSOP, reporting quality has seen a major improvement across the board. This past WSOP Europe was a defi nite high point, as we actually started looking forward to what the reporting team had to say and checked back frequently for color and perspective.
The Poker Personality Category
Pro video blogs (vlogs). We’re not big fans of reality programming, but for some reason we really enjoy the on-going Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, and David Williams vlogs on RawVegas.tv. Of course, one of those reasons is because one of the Entities helps produce said vlogs. But throwing that aside, all three of these top names in the game approach poker and their general lifestyle from a totally different perspective. And most importantly, they’re willing to open up and show their lifestyle and how they approach tournaments. On a related note, we’re also thankful for Daniel Negreanu’s appearance on the RawVegas.tv show A.D.D. It Up, where his acting was so believable, many people in the forums thought it was outtakes from a real instructional video being filmed and not a web-based sitcom.
David “The Dragon” Pham*. There’s an old rule in comedy (maybe) that goes: Persistence is funny. Simply put, you can make any joke funny if you stick to it and repeat it enough. Whenever we write about David “The Dragon” Pham, which is often since he’s one of the best tournament players in the world right now, we always place an asterisk by his name and note that he’s “Not a real dragon.” Sure, it wasn’t funny the first 100 or even 200 times, but by about the 300th time, it got to be really funny. Maybe.
The clubs.
From the Davidson Matthew Club (people with first names for last and last names for firsts) to the Robert Freaking Varkonyi Apocalypse Club (people whose success in tournaments are sure harbingers of an impending end-of-days) to the newly instituted Temp Hutter Club (people who were wildly successful at the beginning of the poker boom and have since fallen off the map), it is these groups that, whenever we are bored with covering poker or have run out of jokes, keep us going and give us new material. And for that, we are truly grateful. Now someone please pass the gravy.
* Not a real dragon.
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