Attended Day 1 of the 2+2 WSOP party today, and scored maybe the single greatest piece of poker memorabilia on the planet. Behold - a $50 bill signed and tit-rubbed by Ch3ckraise himself.

Eat your heart out.



And just in case you never saw the legendary Bing Blang Blaow thread, here's the link...

Created Victory Song When I Beat Someone Headsup

Arrived in Vegas this afternoon, dumped my stuff in the room and headed over to the Rio to see what was going on. Railed Schneids in the final table LHE shootout (out in 6th) and shipped a single table tournament. Considering the buy-in (only about $200) it was a crazy tough table and the whole thing took almost two hours which is an eternity when you start with 40 BB stacks and the levels are 15 minutes long.

I'll most likely be playing in Day 1C of the Main Event next week. Day 1D is supposed to be the softest but it's already closed until they get more registrants in the other days. So instead on Thursday I'm going to go see Ka at the MGM. An old friend of mine from college is performing and has said she can show me around backstage afterwards.

Still haven't run into any CR folks - it's really annoying that I have almost no idea what anyone looks like.

SPOILER: You can follow my Main Event progress on Twitter at JohnWray_pkr

I've always been an Alpha Consumer - I was the first out of anyone I knew to buy a DVD player and a Palm Pilot and a flat screen monitor and you name it (sounds ancient now I know but this wasn't that long ago in geologic terms). But for some reason I was late getting on the Twitter wagon. So a few days ago I finally created an account so that friends and family and backers can sweat me in the Main Event next week.

When it came time to pick a name, however, I panicked. Did I want to be John Wray or JimmyLegs for all of eternity?

Most of us probably spent no more than 30 seconds picking our poker names back in the day, which has led to some rather amusing and ill-planned nicknames like durrrr and OMGClayAiken. Fortunately for me I like JimmyLegs and don't mind being known by that handle. It's catchy, evocative, and most importantly it's easy to say out loud. Thank God I'm not MSH123fk or some nonsense. But I'm fast approaching a crossroads and need to make a decision about which identity I want to push in my future endeavors.

Most of us are Internet geeks. We protect our anonymity and secretly enjoy having online alter egos. It's awesome to be '8 Ball' or 'LightningBabe' - makes it seem like we're a member of a crack commando squad or a legion of superheroes or old school road gamblers. But sometimes an alter ego can get in the way of your regular ego, especially if you're trying to carve out some space and notoriety in the poker industry. And if you're trying to promote yourself there's another problem with having an anonymous nickname... it's anonymous. Which is why most pro poker players move away from their nicknames and start promoting themselves as themselves, especially once they start appearing on TV. Sbrugby became Brian 'sbrugby' Townsend and then just Brian Townsend. durrrr is usually being called Tom "durrrr" Dwan these days and I suspect it'll just be Tom Dwan soon. Even "The Rock" just goes by Dwayne Johnson now. You hit the big leagues, suddenly it's a good idea to start promoting yourself with your real name. Full-Tilt knows this, which is why all of their red pros have to play under their real names. It's part of their strategy to market their pros as personalities instead of anonymous players. You can build a relationship with a name, but you can't build a relationship with an online ID.

So for me the choice seems clear - if it is my ambition to do anything in the poker world other than grind the online tables (and it is) then I need to be known by my real name and I might as well start doing that sooner rather than later. Objectively speaking I'm known more as a personality anyway - my poker game is strong but it's not top flight. My real strengths are in other areas. And while I'm certainly a Net Nerd, I also come from film and television where your name is your brand. So going by my real name actually seems more natural than using a screen name. After all, Aaron Sorkin and JJ Abrams don't have wacky nicknames.

So John Wray it is, though I'll still answer to JimmyLegs.

I leave for Vegas tomorrow and would love to have the CR community railing me via Twitter during my very first Main Event next week, so feel free to follow my tweets. And please drop me a line if you're also in Vegas - one of my goals is to meet as many awesome CR people as possible while I'm there.

Good luck to everyone!!!!!

John Wray

Sold out. Leaving for Vegas on Friday, wish me luck!

UPDATE:
According to Daniel, they've used his likeness and a fabricated endorsement without his consent. They ambushed him on camera and he fell for the Applied Kinesiology trick, but never endorsed the product or wrote the stuff they printed he said. It's still unclear whether or not Doyle endorsed the product, but there've been reports that he tweeted an endorsement so he may have fallen for it harder than Daniel. Man, these Endura salesmen are total scumbags.
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Very interesting thread over on 2+2:

Negreanu & Brunson Fall For Confidence Tricksters

I wish I could go back and include this in Brain Fail Episode 3, the one about superstition and magical thinking because it fits perfectly. The whole thing made me so mad I had to write an open letter to Daniel in the thread. Here's the text...
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Mr. Negreanu -

You've been lied to. What's worse is that your reputation is now being leveraged to advance the fraudsters' commercial agenda. These band-aids do nothing. Your initial reaction to the "demonstration" is totally understandable, but the band-aids have no more power to influence your strength and performance than a lucky charm.

We work in a stressful profession, so it's no wonder that we gravitate towards charms to help us cope. We've got lucky hats, lucky glasses, lucky shirts, lucky charks, lucky photos, lucky fruits, boomswitches and doomswitches. We're constantly trying to control the uncontrollable and magically influence the outcome of high-stakes random events. And in general I've got no problem with that - anything that helps us cope with stress or makes us more confident in our abilities could actually help us play better. And since it doesn't hurt anyone else, why not wear that lucky shirt, right? It's a freeroll.

HOWEVER these magical Band-Aids cross the line. This goes beyond lucky trinkets because they're a commercial product being marketed and sold as legitimate science. And that makes me absolutely furious. Applied Kinesiology (the balance and strength-testing they did in the video) is frequently used to support the efficacy of products such as these magical band-aids, but the claims made by these "experts" always fall apart under rigorous empirical testing.

Daniel, you've been hoodwinked. Worse, your name is now attached to a fraudulent product. A lot of people look up to you, and your endorsement of this product WILL influence many people to try it out. And that's tragic. They'll blow hard-earned money on a holographic band-aid that does nothing, and your reputation as a trustworthy source will go down in flames.

PLEASE. Protect the community and your good name - retract your endorsement. Then, use this as a teaching opportunity. Word needs to get out that many many fraudulent products like this are out on the market: aura sprays, healing crystals, detoxifying foot baths, homeopathic potions that are chemically indiscernible from regular water, LED light therapy, magnet therapy, the list goes on and on. You got blind-sided by hucksters. But now's the time to make it right.

Respectfully,
JL

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I'm really interested in learning a new game and could use some advice from the community. I basically only know how to play NLHE, but would love to have a second specialty in one of the lesser-played variants like 2-7 triple draw or something. Here are my requirements...

- Limit betting structure. I'd like something that's a little less stressful and apocalyptic than NLHE.
- WSOP bracelet events. One of the reasons I want to learn a new game is so that I can play in some of the smaller-field bracelet events at the WSOP.
- No stud games. My card memory isn't very good, so I don't want to learn stud which requires memorizing all of the open cards folded by my opponents.
- Fun!

I intend to spend a lot of time learning the new game, so I want to make sure I pick the right one.

Any suggestions?

Micah, the graphics guy who does all the awesome animations for Cardrunners, got a pretty bitchin' new chest tattoo. But he made the mistake of posting a huge picture of it here on the forums knowing full well there are some photoshop clowns in the audience, myself included. Here's the original and a 'shop I did. You can check out some of the others in the thread in General Off-Topic.

In case you haven't seen the thread in The Sweat Box, CR member Hugo "Bazuko" Perez is 7th in chips with two tables left in WSOP Event #16, the $1500 NLHE 6max. He and BigBadDevil will no doubt be updating frequently in the Box, but if you're in Vegas drop by the Rio and show him some CR support.

Good luck, Hugo!

I suggested to Jeff that we put up a forum specifically for sweating CR members in big MTTs, particularly the WSOP events this month. He's a fast sumbitch so go check out "The Sweat Box" under General Poker Topics, currently featuring Matt "jacksup" Matros's Final Table in WSOP #12!

I'm going to try to constantly edit the thread titles so you can see at a glance who's live and who's busted. I may need some assistance in that, but thought it would be pretty cool for those who can't make it to Vegas to get semi-live results from the WSOP all summer.

I also plan to start a massive Main Event thread in The Sweat Box with all CR members and instructors who are playing, and if participants post with updated chipstacks then we can have a status list of CR members still alive.

Check it out, and good luck Matt!!!

I know, I know. I have no life.