I'll Just Take The Money

Good morning everyone.  Ah, what luck...  As the clock hits 6:00 a.m. after another rainy day here in San Marcos, America, and as I settle in to type my blog entry, the movie 'Bedazzled' is on 'FX' for the second day in a row...  :)  For what is pretty much a "B movie" to me, Elizabeth Hurley is an A+ to me in this one (I can't name anything else that she's been in off the top of my head either)...  The movie also ends with a sappy, feel good sort of song (that I'm on board with) by Sister Hazel:  "If you want to be somebody else, if you're tired of fighting battles, with yourself, if you want to be somebody else, change your mind..."  -Change Your Mind- (Sister Hazel)  I also think that this is easily Brendan Fraser's best role in a movie, but make no mistake, I'm watching it for Elizabeth...  ;)

ANYWAY..., a little poker tournament is going on in Las Vegas at the moment. The 'Main Event' of the World Series of Poker started with 6,598 entrants this year, and 666 players are going to cash this time. Daniel Negreanu posted on his twitter account that he "would have made it 667 just to avoid the heebie jeebies..." @RealKidPoker As I've finally summoned up the strength to follow a WSOP event, knowing that I'll be in the desert soon enough, I am LOVING TWITTER for my ability to follow lots of players. What I have discovered is that I'm getting quicker, more accurate updates on chip counts from player tweets than from the WSOP website. Another thing that I love about this Main Event is that I am familiar with A LOT of players who are still playing. A couple of these are players that I have found through the blogs and/or twitter itself. Corey Souther, whose twitter handle is @ThePokerMonkey (Corey on the WSOP chip count, Will Souther by his twitter handle) is a blogger from the southeastern part of the country who has done VERY WELL in WSOP Circuit Events. Thanks to Rob, another blogger who is also on twitter (@Robvegaspoker), I became familiar with Alicia Spencer yesterday (@SunshineAli23). Alicia has played 2 days of the event and is now sitting on over 200,000 in chips, while Souther has just over 67,000 in his stack heading into his second day. Rob met Alicia as she was in the process of winning back-to-back tournies at Aria (for a one-hundred dollar buy-in I believe). The links to both Rob's and The Poker Monkey's blogs are in my reading list to the right. In addition to these two, there are SEVERAL other professionals and celebrities I support who are doing well in the tournament. If you go to my twitter account (@desertcoach), you will find Negreanu, Jason Alexander, Barry Greenstein, Chad Brown, Erick Lindgren, Antonio Esfandiari, Sam Trickett, and many other players who I am tracking easily on a daily basis. Brendan Fraser realizing that he can speak Spanish - too funny...

I am now 3-4 on my mock baseball betting, with last night's game being the 3rd time in 7 games that I have either won or lost an over/under by a 1/2 run. After being 5-0 in the top of the 1st inning, the All-Star Game stayed under 8 1/2 total runs - HA HA... (8-0 final, National League). I'll post my Friday 'bet' on Friday since there is no MLB action until then.

Speaking of betting, I have a semi poker-related story here from when I was a dealer and was treating sports betting as more of a hobby. My favorite cocktail waitress that I worked with on the graveyard shift at the Riviera was a new football fan (surely influenced by the talk about football betting among myself and my close dealer friends). As it happens, she was on a multi-week run of winning parlays and I wasn't doing as well as her when this story took place... I was just THE KING of filling out two-dollar parlay tickets, and I made a comment to her that instead of tossing her chips for her excellent table service in the poker room, I might just start giving her parlay tickets that I had purchased. She paused, raised her eyebrow, smiled, and responded, "I'll just take the money..." ;) Have a great day and I'll see you again on Friday.