Wicked Chops Poker

Listen, given our ridiculously high opinions of ourselves, the entities that comprise Wicked Chops Poker should be the last people in the world who knock someone for having a ridiculously high opinion of himself. However, this will not stop us from knocking someone who has a ridiculously high opinion of himself.

We’re not saying Jamie Gold is a narcissist, but he’s about one more selfcongratulatory quote away from becoming so entranced by his own beauty that he lies at a riverbank staring at his reflection and wasting away for eternity.

Regardless of the outcome of Crispin Leyser’s lawsuit for half of Jamie’s $12 million pot of gold, we have a feeling Jamie’s ego will turn out just fine. Below are some of our favorite Gold on Gold comments from various interviews:

“I flopped a few sets here; I flopped a full-house there, and that’s when I started to destroy people.”

“I’ve always been kind of a math genius. I got a perfect score on the SATs when I was in the 5th grade.”

“I was getting people to lay down straights and flushes. It was like a Jedi mind-trick.”

Referring to Allen Cunningham, “…he had no idea how to beat me.”

“I bluffed more than anybody else had ever bluffed successfully in a tournament.”

…”it was the greatest display of poker in the history of poker.”

“I’m a famous agent. Every one of my clients is a celebrity.”

But unlike Gold’s flacks, who in our last column we described as “asleep at the wheel” in managing the negative backlash he’s faced since his win, Lee took the offensive. No less than 24 hours after his home was raided by Bexar County police, the sixth place finisher in this year’s Main Event got right in front of the cameras to tell his side of the story, restore his good name…and repeat over and over and over again how much he loves San Antonio. Seriously, the guy loves that place.

Not that it matters much. With the mountain of evidence reportedly against Lee, he better hire O.J.-quality lawyers (or hope for a jury that remembers the Alamo) to make sure he doesn’t go from being (allegedly) the biggest bookie in San Antonio to the biggest bookie in cellblock six.

We’re sick of poker player “power” rankings. We don’t “get” them. If we actually took the time to examine the mathematics and formulas behind poker ranking systems, we’d probably find those equations utterly confusing. Nobody ever accused us of being accountants.

So to counter everyone else’s player ranking system (except, um, BLUFF’s, because theirs is solid stuff), we’ve developed our own ranking system based on the following scientific criteria: 1) Do we 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 significantly appeared in the news/media recently? and 5) Has that player performed well in recent tournaments?

To determine our rankings, we entered data on the above five factors and ran it through a totally fictitious computer program we’ve made up out of thin air called “RANDY.” RANDY then runs that data through complex algorithms and spits out results, ranking players on a scale of 1-1,000, with 1,000 being the highest possible score. Below are the results RANDY spit out for our first ever WCP Player Power Index.

1. Daniel Negreanu (Score: 1,297) – Negreanu was the clear-cut numero uno on our list. He’s won a WSOP Circuit event this year, and he went deep in the WSOP Main Event. He’s the most entertaining guy at any table he sits down at and can read people’s hands like his name was Sylvia Browne. His video game STACKED was featured on MTV, his video blogs on Full Contact Poker are immensely popular, and his opinion on the seven pro players who filed a lawsuit against the WPT was salient and spot on. Negreanu is at the top of our list until further notice, which could possibly be next month.

2. Jamie Gold (Score: 923) – Between his $12 million WSOP Main Event win, the ensuing lawsuit for half of those winnings, and his search for America’s hottest mom (his new reality TV show), Gold’s name has been like Savior Faire lately.

3. Phil Hellmuth (Score: 922) – 2006 has been the year of the Poker Brat. Hellmuth wanted that 10th WSOP bracelet more than Iran wants nuclear weapons. After a crushing heads-up defeat in WSOP Event #9 and another final table appearance in Event #24, Hellmuth showed the heart of a champion by remaining persistent and pulling through that record-tying 10th bracelet in Event #34. Earlier in the year, he was named host of Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown, ensuring him major pop culture relevance. In fact, Hellmuth would’ve ranked second on our list, but RANDY docked him some points because of his new pompadour hairdo.

4) Robert Varkonyi (Score: 877) – Part of RANDY’s computations when considering a poker player’s tournament performance is comparing said player’s recent results to his/her results of the past few years. So when Robert Varkonyi made it to Day 2 of the WSOP Main Event – as one of the big stacks, no less – RANDY ended up crashing repeatedly, forcing us to reboot multiple times. Simply put, it was a feat so great considering Varkonyi’s past lackluster performances, there wasn’t a scientific or mathematical way for RANDY to compute the results. We almost lost poor RANDY. We actually had to invent new algorithms so RANDY could continue running our rankings. Thanks a lot, Robert Varkonyi.

5) Clonie Gowen (Score: 844) – With her recent photo spread in MAXIM magazine, Gowen, one of poker’s true beauties, scored a record high number in the pop culture category of the ranking system. However, if Gowen wants to remain in the top 5, we recommend more photo shoots, possibly with a little more skin.

Set for release on November 17th, 2006, the latest James Bond flick, Casino Royale, capitalizes on poker’s popularity by using our favorite sport as a major plot device. Bond, played by Daniel Craig, learns that a character named Le Chiffre, who we can only assume is French and therefore evil, is planning to finance a major terrorist plot by staging a high stakes poker game. However, in the original script, it was a game of baccarat – not poker – that would leave the world’s fate hanging in the balance. Fortunately, studio heads at Sony Pictures must’ve realized that it wasn’t the 1950s anymore, and unless their goal was to target the highly coveted 62 to 97 year-old demographic, switching to poker was the smart way to go. And really, after dumping Click, Little Man, and Zoom on the public this year, giving us a little, “Bond, James Bond” at a poker table is the least they could do.

However, we suggest that you don’t go see the new Bond movie for what will surely be poorly conceived and contrived poker scenes. Do go see the flick though for knockout new Bond babe, Eva Green (above), who first caught our attention as the perfectly gorgeous French actress in the art-house-film, The Dreamers, in which she spent two full hours demonstrating an aversion to clothing. Eva teaches us that sometimes there are just more important things in life than poker. Like really, really hot girls.

Yes, there is more to life than poker, and on the so-called “internet,” there’s no shortage of time-killing, worth-your-read websites out there that have nothing to do with bad beats and suck outs. So take a break from your favorite poker site every once in awhile and check out a few of our daily bookmarks. This month we recommend GorillaMask.net, a site whose tagline is, “Killing Productivity, Monday-Friday,” and it gets the jobs done with the best daily listings of all that’s good on the internet – from a guy’s viewpoint, that is. Word to the wise though: Most of the linked sites aren’t “safe” to view at the office. Unless you’re your own boss, wait until your home before clicking away.