After Nenad Medic’s victory in Event ,#1 David Singer made it two out of three for FTP pros by taking down Event #3, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold ‘em. Hot on the heels of his win in the $25,000 Heads-Up World Championship, Singer was the last one standing out of 713 players, taking down Jacobo Fernandez heads-up to win $214,131 and his first bracelet. Singer obviously runs good at life – his very pregnant fiancée was there to drag his ass away at any moment support him with their baby due the next day.

Erick Lindgren finally got the monkey off his back by finally winning his first WSOP bracelet in Event #4, the $5,000 Mixed Hold ‘em (No-Limit/Limit). Lindgren overcame a pro-heavy field of 332 players and a stacked final table which also included Howard Lederer (6^th, $74,199) and Roland De Wolfe (4^th, $117,030) to collect the $374,505 first place prize and shiny (something shiny? Where? Oh sorry got distracted) new bracelet.

It’s not that we’re prone to conspiracy theories, but this little doozy popped up – David Singer and Erick Lindgren both just won their first-ever WSOP bracelet and they both did it in the exact same way. Oooooh spooky! On David’s final hand the chips were all-in on the turn with the board reading 3d-5s-7d-6c. Jacobo Fernandez turned over 7c-3h for two-pair, but Singer rolled over Qs-4s for a turned straight, which held up.

In Lindgren’s case, the chips were all-in on the river with the board reading Tc-5c-3d-4h-8h. Justin Bonomo showed 5s-4s for two pair while Erick had Ah-2d for the turned straight. Both losers had two pair and both winners hit their gutshots on the turn – feel the chills down your spine? Lol live-riggaments.

Chris “Jesus” Ferguson obviously didn’t get the memo that said a Full Tilt Poker pro must win every event, spoiling a clean sweep of the first four events by coming in third in Event #2 for $388,287. Greg “FBT” Mueller also narrowly missed a win and his first bracelet – taking second in Event #11, a $5,000 No-Limit Hold ‘em Shootout for $298,638. All in all, the pros have cashed for over $3.6 million so far – and we’re not even a quarter of the way through the Series.

Apparently, there are a few hardy souls out there who are looking to write their way to Vegas for the Big Dance. The entries that we’ve received thus far have been entertaining and it’s clear that folks have put a lot of effort into their work. In fact, check them out for yourself:

katiemother - Post 1 and 2

TuscaloosaJohn - Post 1 and 2

lightning36 - Post 1 and 2

Looking at this list, it’s definitely worth noting that katiemother, TuscaloosaJohn, and lightning36 scored big-style in Battle of the Bloggers tournaments. Each of them took home a $2K WSOP prize package – well done and congratulations.

If you’ve not entered yet, you’ve still got a few days to take a shot at being our “Blogger on the Rail.” Check out the Write Your Way to the WSOP page for full details.

But, I didn’t grow up playing cards. Nor did I grow up doing any kind of gambling. Instead I grew up in a Pentecostal church where even though the rules we followed were apparently those of the never-changing-always-and-forever-the-same God, said rules seemed to change all the time. First girls couldn’t wear pants, then we could. We couldn’t dance because it led to sex, then we could dance but only if there was no physical contact and we stood in a circle, then we could dance like normal people, but we were too scared to because any kind of close contact would obviously immediately result in pregnancy and the damnation of our souls to hell for all eternity.

And of course we never gambled. When we went to Asian family functions we would shake our heads at the dads playing blackjack in the the corner and mutter tut-tuts at the mums playing Mahjong around those rickety square tables with the fold-out wooden legs. Amid the yells of “Aiya-la” and the rattling of the plastic tiles being shuffled and stacked, we would sit piously in the corner waiting for our parents to take us away from this den of iniquity.

So we grew up. We eventually became old enough to not have to go to Asian family functions anymore, and instead drove ourselves to church – twice on Sundays for the morning and evening services, Mondays for worship team rehearsal, Tuesdays for leader’s meetings, Wednesdays for small group, Fridays for youth group, and Saturdays for youth group band practice.

My parents encouraged us to do whatever we wanted – and we wanted to serve God. Of course, like any good Asian parents, they made us do “proper” university courses first – my brother and I flaked and got Arts degrees, while my other brother avoided being shunned after dropping out of uni by completing an IT course at a local community college.

At the end of it all, while my parents secretly wished that we would suddenly want to become doctors/lawyers/physiotherapists/engineers (in that order), instead my brother went to Japan to become a missionary, my other brother took up an internship in the church, and I moved interstate and started studying at bible college.

A few years later, my brother is still “saving” those heathen Japanese, my other brother is now a youth pastor, and I’m coming up to the third anniversary of when I sat down at my computer and googled “online poker”.

I was on track to become the next Darlene Zschech (Google is your friend). Instead, I’m in a world of degens, prop bets and an everyday vocabulary littered with terms like “tilt”, “sick tilt”, and “sick monkey tilt”.

Needless to say, it’s all been a little bit complicated. My family have been pretty good about the whole thing, and are sweet enough not to tell me things like, “We’re praying for you,” to my face, but even I’m left wondering how on earth I got here.

After a lifetime of listening to, “Gambling is bad, mmm-kay,” I finally have the chance to define what I believe – and it’s turning out to be more difficult than I could have ever imagined. So I’ll teeter between loving this hobby that has enabled me to see the world and those moments where I’m disillusioned with the world of gambling (shock horror) and I want to run off and become a nun. Over/under on the latter?

*Punchline submissions welcome, please email to pokerfromtherail@fulltiltpoker.com, winner will receive a virtual pat on the back.

There are a lot of events in FTOPS VIII. Do you think it’s possible to play every single one?

Sure. I’m not a mathematician but if there are 24 events over 12 days with four limit events, then it’s just a simple matter of dividing your starting stack by the length of time it takes for an average hand to the power of infinity, plus the time it takes for you to stop kicking yourself in the head for playing a limit tourney. 

OK, maybe it’s a little bit more complicated than I thought. The real question you should be asking though is can you play every FTOPS event and play it well? Apparently staying up for 24 hours straight is equivalent to having a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05. This would put you on par with the One Angry Monkey, but is probably not conducive to playing your best poker. Plan ahead, pick the events you want to play (or the events you can play) and good luck!

Why is Razz so stupid? Who on earth would make a game where the worst hand wins?

Hold your horses right there tiger (I’m going with an animal theme today). The great thing about having so many different poker games is that there’s something for everyone. Most regular normal folk like good old No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. Action junkies might go for Pot-Limit Omaha. Librarians would go for Limit tournaments. And pure sadomasochists enjoy playing Razz.

Ridiculous generalizations aside, sometimes it’s nice to play a game where everyone is as bad as you – which actually in this instance makes you good… wait I’m confused. As an aside, I’ve actually heard that our own Big Donkey is quite a fan of the game seeing as it allows him to legitimately play most starting hands with a 7 and a 2 in them. Did that answer your question? No? Oh well.

I know I asked this last time but what the hell is with the return of the Bouncebackability Freeroll? Are you guys still high on crack?

Just in case it hasn’t popped up in casual conversation, the Bouncebackability Freeroll is a special Freeroll for those poor people who finish on the bubble in any FTOPS event. Finishing one place outside the money in any tournament is tough – but can you imagine finishing on the bubble in a tournament that you received an entry to because you finished on the bubble?

As for the name, few can say it, none of us comprehend it and we all fear to type it, but the Bouncebackability Freeroll will remain as the legacy of one great man. A man whose footsteps we fear to tread in, lest we be accused of coming up with promotion names by drawing random words out of a hat.

As my fellow scribe One Angry Monkey said, “Some ideas are good, some ideas are great. But the Bouncebackability Freeroll was simply sheer genius.”

What does an average day at work consist of for you?

On a normal poker tournament day if the tournament starts at noon, I generally wake up half an hour after the tournament has started. Then I just relax and get to the tournament about one hour into the start of the event. I don’t like to wait around because I get bored, so I prefer to miss the first part of the tournament. It also keeps me a little fresher at the end of the day.

When I’m not playing tournaments it really goes by whatever I feel like doing - I don’t have any particular schedule or anything. I don’t have an alarm clock so I just wake up whenever, sometimes I play tennis with friends, rarely I play golf, and then just pretty much find a good restaurant and hang around. But I play poker almost all the time, if I’m not playing a tournament then I’m usually playing on Full Tilt Poker. So I end up playing probably 320 days out of 365 because I love it.

A lot of people talk about the poker lifestyle – what does that mean to you?

I mean it’s strange, it’s really like a sport because you have to travel the world - which is great - but it’s also challenging continually going to places. A poker player loses most of the time, especially in tournaments so you have to get in the plane back and think about what happened and improve for next time. It’s good though - you don’t have to hurry because your career lasts many more years than a regular athlete. At the same time, we don’t know if we’re going to win, so we have to perform consistently.

Do you ever still play poker just for fun?

It’s still fun for me to play poker, but I always play to make money. Because it’s my job, it’s not something that I’ll do not to win. To play for fun I prefer to do other things.

What other poker professionals do you admire or respect?

It’s very difficult because there are so many. It depends on the game you pick, because then there are certain ones you respect more than others. One of the great things with Team Full Tilt is that it’s full of champions. For example, Chris Ferguson, who recently won the NBC Heads Up, Phil Ivey who just won the LA Poker Classic, Howard Lederer who won the $100K buy-in tournament in Australia - there’s just too many!

One last question – what’s something about you that people wouldn’t know?

The dilemma at hand is a common one for theologians – how should Christians approach current issues when all they have to guide them is a book that is thousands of years old? It would be a lot easier if Proverbs 31:6 simply said “Thou shalt not play poker for real money, and those who waste their time with play chips or who enjoy Razz shall perish in the fires of hell for all eternity.” Unfortunately (or rather more fortunately) all it says is “Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish.”

But of course poker isn’t mentioned in the Bible, and gambling only scores a few obscure references. So it’s a little perplexing why there are so many Christians who are adamant that poker is a sin. Indeed a lot of the arguments are, well, thin to say the least – in this edition of Friday Fundamentalist Funnies, here are the top pearlers:

1) Gambling is stealing by consent, stealing is a sin

I would love to be able to say I made this up but sadly no. Last time I checked stealing by consent was actually termed giving – and according to every offering (cough Pastor’s BMW fund cough) encouragement sermon I’ve ever sat through, giving is good in the eyes of the Lord.

2) Gambling violates the Golden Rule – Love your neighbour as yourself

The logic here is that you wouldn’t want to lose money so you shouldn’t try and take money off other people. Well what about if I want to lose money? Some people spend money on entertainment by going to dinner and a movie, I choose instead to terrorize poor little nits in rebuy tournaments by going all in every hand and watching them cry in the chat box when they finally decide to call with their Aces and lose their allocated one buy-in to my 9-4 sooted. I relish crazy maniacs dumping money onto my table – it’s only fair that I get to return the favor.

3) Gambling is a wasteful use of the Lord’s money

People who use this argument obviously haven’t seen some of the Poker Tracker graphs floating around BBV. Can you imagine if my beloved Patrik Antonius followed this advice? Of course he doesn’t need to since he is God and therefore pwns all before him – let us all join the Church of Antonius.

Why is the One Angry Monkey so sarcastic? People ask really good legitimate questions and I would like to read a proper answer.

Ah the age-old question – what makes people the way they are? We’re not sure if it is nature, nurture, or a severe lack of both, but the One Angry Monkey certainly lacks a softer side.

Even if my sullen fellow scribe wanted to provide some genuine advice, I’m not sure he could. “Poker From the Rail” isn’t just a blog name to One Angry Monkey, it’s the story of his poker-playing life. If you’re not picking up what I’m putting down, searching for sage poker advice from someone who has a bankroll equivalent in value to a cheeseburger is not the way to go.

As a tribute to the One Angry Monkey, I will say most people have the sense not to ask questions when they know they won’t like the answers. Sure that means we don’t get a lot of questions but whatever buddy, this isn’t the Care Bears factory – go find a more gentler poker forum like hmm, NWP, wait no 2+2, hold on umm, FCP and voice your opinion there.

I think I’m pretty hot stuff, how do I become a Full Tilt Poker pro?

Hey there hot stuff, welcome to the FTP stable. Ha, gotcha! You really thought it was going to be that easy didn’t you? I’m not saying we don’t share the same sentimonies but apparently there is a little more to it.

Given that none of us are qualified (or will ever be qualified) to give you an answer, I think a good start might be to win stuff. And by stuff I don’t mean a $7 pot in .05/.10 NL, I’m thinking some kind of unmentionable event where they give you a bracelet and a pile of cash at the end, or a tournament with a 3-letter acronym – they’re all the rage these days.

Lucky for you Roland de Wolfe wrote a comprehensive guide on winning those pesky Main Events – put it to good use and come back to us when we can look up your name on The Hendon Mob and actually find something.

Poker is destroying my marriage. Please help.

At last check none of us Poker From the Railers have ever been married. Nor have we ever played anything that could be classed as poker (boom-tish). Given how under-qualified I am to provide advice on this topic I really should stop here but I just can’t let a loyal reader down.

All I can say is live in the moment – games are certainly tougher than they used to be, and with all the information available on the inter-webs, even my micro-stakes NL tables are filled with crazy 3-betting TAGs and LAGs. Load up six tables of $2/$4 NL and isolate those 63/5/1 donks like there’s no tomorrow.

Remember– there’s always plenty of fish in the sea.

P.S. Please send us a trip report.

In fact, the most unpleasant poker experience of my life was playing the Ladies Event at the 2006 WSOP. I was mid-way through a nine-week stay in Vegas and the combination of being forced to answer stupid questions like, “Do you know where Daniel Negreanu is?” while manning a booth squashed in between the Milwaukee’s Best Light girls and the hookers from Sapphire (who to their credit had gotten organized that year) had put me on serious monkey tilt.

I’m not a good poker player, not even close, but in spite of my record of zero cashes in live tournaments (a streak that continues to this day), I somehow managed to sell 55% of myself and decided to front the rest for the buy-in. I rock up to the tournament late, and as I sit down it suddenly dawns on me why the majority of my friends are boys.

Some tournament reporter wanders over and asks the woman in seat 1 for her chip count. After she turns back to the table, the conversation goes something like this:

Collective table sheep minus Cyndy Violette and myself: “We love your magazine! You’re such a good poker player..blah blah blah”

It was almost the poker equivalent of the “I’ll-insult-myself-so-everyone-around-me-will-pump-me-up” bullshit that irritates me about being a girl. When another girl comes up to me and goes “Why don’t you like me?/I’m so fat” I usually comply and reply with the expected “Of course I like you, you’re a really nice person/No you’re not, you’re totally skinny” when what I really want to say is, “For the love of God stop putting your fucking neuroses on me!” Manipulating other people to spout adulation about you is false humility and I’m calling you out on it.

Of course this now leaves me in a bit of a quandary as I’m now equally tilted by both sexes. I wasn’t really contemplating going to the Ellen Degeneres side beyond maintaining my “List of Women I Would Turn For” (Tea Leoni, if you ever leave David Duchovy give me a call – I’ll dress you up like Bad Boys I and we’ll live happily forever after), but given my non-existent track record with the lads I was simply trying to increase my outs.

I think the only logical option now left is to go asexual – if you know any single-celled amoebas who like to have a good time, please let me know.

Anyway, my point was that in spite of my Asian-math-whiz-kid-wannabe background, it’s only three years later that I’ve finally grasped the elusive concept of variance. And now that I understand the almighty force, the only thing left for me to work out is why so many people just don’t get it.

People who tell me bad beat stories, broke joker tourney donks asking me for money because their one big luckbox win wasn’t enough to sustain their lifestyle of 10K buy-ins/Cristal/strippers/coke until their next big luckbox win – indeed many of the things I dislike about poker would vanish into thin air if people just got variance.

I did consider standing up on my high horse (I’ve spent so much time up there lately that the saddle is getting worn down) and demanding that the WPT run a short tutorial on variance right after that thing about hand rankings complete with Vince Van Patten voiceover – but then I saw the light.

Why? Well it’s these exact people I despise that end up being the value in the games. The ego – well the male ego, let’s be honest – is such that success is usually attributed solely to one’s own ability, skill, grace and wit. Luck doesn’t even factor into the equation.

For example, Random Douchebag somehow wins a six-figure amount in a tourney and concludes he has awesome skillz, so he sits down at 200/400 PLO. Or try Mr. N00B who is running at 17BB/100 over 500 hands because his gut-shots keep hitting, and he decides that the only logical thing to do is move up.

Now I’m not sure what side of the aquarium glass I’m on, but I hope that variance continues to be misunderstood by the masses. Now go forth and make sure you play your favorite hand like it’s Aces, chase your outs no matter how many, and for the love of God please keep running good - at least until I meet you at the table.

Sure my actual poker experiences are the same – I like winning, I don’t like losing, when I get bored I call with hands like T-5 off-suit because I can make two straights and two flushes, I don’t like bad beats or bad beat stories, and I one day dream of winning a big LOL donkament so I can give my job the finger and live like a balla (whoops did I say that out loud?).

However, if we had an office conversation about being hit on at the poker table - unless Patrik Antonius was somehow there - I’m guessing it would be pretty lopsided. Look I knew what I was getting into when I started playing this game – I grew up with two brothers, played basketball, went to a high school where there were five guys for every girl in my class, took up skateboarding and worked in the punk/hardcore music scene before I found myself here.

I’m not saying that all guys have been awful – when I started playing and making really really noob posts on forums like, “What’s a tournament entry fee? Is that what you have to pay to get into the casino?” most people were patient and helpful. One guy in particular even posted me some instructional books and DVDs from interstate to get me started. One of those was Phil Hellmuth’s Million Dollar Strategy, but I’m sure his heart was in the right place.

As I’ve continued my progression into this crazy world of degenerates, I have to say I’m a little bit shocked at the number of apparently heterosexual men in the poker community that seem hell-bent on driving girls out of the game. If it’s not 15-year olds playing online with Daddy’s credit card telling me to go stick my chips up my, well, you can guess what orifice, then it’s these ballers for whom the bulk of their contact with women tends to be paid for by the hour. Needless to say, the pimply under-agers might actually come off best in comparison.

I’m not asking for the ship-it-holla-ballas out there to start up a charity for girls named Sapphire, Krystle or Mercedes (they get enough “love" as it is), nor am I on a moral rampage. I realize no one will read this, but if you do and 1) you’re a guy and 2) you play poker here’s some advice: If you see a woman at the poker table, don’t leer, don’t stare at her tits and definitely don’t ask her to show you her tits. Instead just say hi and if that manages to go OK, try to have a conservation. But for the love of God, avoid topics like strippers, hookers and coke (and especially any stories where all three are involved).

The more women actually feel welcome when they sit down at the poker table, the higher the chance that poker rooms and tournaments will be less of a sausage-fest. Unless you actually prefer sitting around a table with no personal space for 12 hours a day in a room that’s 95% full of men – not that there’s anything wrong with that.