Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

“Scotty Nguyen’s gonna be triple crown, baby!” Nguyen said while posing after winning the $50k H.O.R.S.E. at the 2008 WSOP yesterday.

Nguyen beat out the field of 148 players to win what many poker players regard as the most prestigious bracelet at the WSOP. “The $50K H.O.R.S.E. event is the best all around player…#1 in the world”, Nguyen said to interviewers. “Nobody can walk up to me and say, Scotty, you’re second, baby.”

Since his blow-up at last year’s WSOP, Nguyen has had a few final tables, but no first place finishes. Nguyen was the chip leader in the main event last year with just 12 players left, but started spewing chips and ended up finishing 11th.

This is Nguyen’s first gold bracelet since 2001. “I’m gonna make Phil Hellmuth squirm,” he said, referring to the World Series of Poker record holder with 12 bracelets.

Nguyen beat out 2nd place finisher Michael DeMichele. Nguyen said, “He’s a great up and coming young player. Everyone told me to watch out for him.”

Here is a video of him with Amanda Leatherman where Scotty looks pretty drunk:

H.O.R.S.E., which stands for five games of poker played in rotation - Hold ‘em, Omaha, Razz, Stud and Eight or Better - tests the all-around player more than the No Limit Hold ‘em game, which was born in Texas and is currently the most popular poker game worldwide.

Here are the top 10 from the $50k H.O.R.S.E. final table:
1 $ 1,989,120 Scotty Nguyen
2 $ 1,243,200 Michael DeMichele
3 $ 781,440 Erick Lindgren
4 $ 568,320 Matt Glantz
5 $ 444,000 Lyle Berman
6 $ 355,200 Barry Greenstein
7 $ 284,160 Huck Seed
8 $ 230,880 Patrick Bueno
9 $ 177,600 Ralph Perry
10 $ 177,600 Raymond Davis

I’ll end this post with one of my favorite videos of Scotty Nguyen:

Ryan Hughes could easily be considered the best Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better player in the world.

Hughes managed to beat the field of 543 players in event 47 (the $1500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or better) to win $183,368.  But, get this, this is his 2nd bracelet for this game at the 2008 WSOP.  In event 20 (the $2000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or better) Hughes outlasted 340 players to win $176,358.

This brings his total winnings from this game to $359,726 plus 2 fancy peices of hardware!

According to the WSOP website, Hughes is the first player in World Series of Poker history to ever win two gold bracelets in Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split.

Born in San Francisco, Hughes started playing poker in 2003 while he was in College at Arizona State University.  Hughes told reporters that his favorite poker game is Omaha High-Low Split, but after his finishes in these events, that might be changing.

There has been quite a bit going on lately, so I figured it would be easier to just do a summary post of all the things.

Jennicide Is Off For Jury Duty
Jennifer Leigh (aka Jennicide) had to leave the WSOP early this year to attend jury duty.

In her blog she recently wrote:
“I have been having a chain of nightmares of being sequestered to a long murder trial, in which I feel sorry for the 11 other jurors that would have to be witness to my bantering and childlike snootiness for the terrible circumstances.

I need to be in Las Vegas during these times! Yet, I am stuck in Delaware! I have to wake up at an unreasonable hour too! Reporting to the courthouse at 8:30 a.m.?!”

Ernest “The Murderer” Scherer Playing WSOP Events
Ok, we made the nickname up, but Gambling911 released an article that Sherer is the main suspect for the murder of his parents.

Hookers Get Rolled
Pauly posted a great story about how some poker players rolled some hookers with tournament chips…

“Benjo told me a hilarious story about how Bellagio hookers were trying to cash tournament chips at the cage.
Apparently, a couple of horny and angle-shooting poker players removed $1,000 denomination tournament chips out of play. They used those chips to pay off hookers, who were not very bright and accepted the chips in return for sexual favors. Of course they did not read the fine print on the chips where it said it’s not legal tender and only a tournament chip.

Horny Poker Players 1, Dumb Hookers 0.”

Joe Hachem Might Be The Next Joe Hachem

After vowing to never gamble again, Charles Barkley is going to be back to the tables again, the poker tables that is.

In May 2008, Charles told ESPN, “I like to go into Vegas, it’s a fun place, but you know what, I’ve got to stop gambling. That’s the bottom line,” Barkley said during TNT’s pregame show before Game 7 between San Antonio and New Orleans. “I am not going to gamble anymore. For right now, the next year or two, I’m not going to gamble.”

This came about after he was detained by police for owing $400,000 to the Wynn Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Funny thing is, I was actually in Las Vegas when he took out the markers and we watched him playing Blackjack on a private table for about 30 minutes (for what we assume was around $20k per hand).

He had been doing well, according to friends and had stayed away from casinos, but this week Charles announced that he will be playing in a charity event for Ante Up for Africa (a charity designed to raise money for the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Charles will be anteing up $5k to play the event, but promises to donate his winnings to charity. I think he is doing this for a great cause, but the BET blog summed it up the best, “this is like an alcholic who has vowed to give up drinking but decides to host a wine tasting event for charity”.

As if Lacey Jones wasn’t hot enough when we first wrote about her on BankrollBoost.com. Here is a very recent video of her at the 2008 WSOP talking to Amanda Leatherman of Pokernews.com:

Last month was quite a rollercoaster ride with the status of whether High Stakes Poker would be returning. Then on May 16th GSN announced that they would be pulling the plug on the show. This caused outrage in the poker community as they were going to lose THE GREATEST POKER TV SHOW.

During all this a person using the name AJ Benza posted a comment on a Tampa Bay poker blog about his thoughts on the cancelling of the show. Well, after some confirmation, it turned out that this was the real AJ Benza so they got AJ on the show to talk about his thoughts on the cancelling of the show.

One of the best lines from the interview had to do with his experiences with the new owner of the network. According to AJ the new owner said, “I don’t care if we have to air slavery… I want numbers”. He thinks the real problem is that they want listeners that will stay around after watching poker, but because many of the other shows on the network aren’t that great, people leave after HSP.

I really like AJ’s personality in that he is not afraid to speak his mind. Listen to the candid interview about some of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes from making fun of Johnny Chan’s shirt looking like a “strong man in the Beijing circus” to Sammy Farha “haggling like he’s selling a goat” at High Stakes Poker here:
AJ Benza on Ante Up - (fast forward to just about half way through for AJ)

Fortuntately rumour has it that GSN will not be giving HSP the axe and it will live for another season. Don’t worry, there is more of AJ and the rest of the HSP crew still to come!

Also, if you have never seen AJ’s great youtube movie review series called Real Guys Movie Reviews I recommend watching a few of them. Here is one of his reviews: