In the early days of CardRunners one larger than life figure rose above the madding crowd, not a very large crowd as CR took awhile to take off, to embody the spirit of the CR community. That man was Lou Pinella.

Some say Lou was raised by wolves, some believe he sprang full grown from the head of Zeus, others that he traveled back in time to bang his mother at a Catholic school mixer in 1965 and is indeed his own father. Whatever the truth may be it can't be denied that his powers exceed those of mere mortal men.

Some things I believe about Lou:

1. He has a huge penis but it isn't quite as big as he thinks it is. (for the record I haven't seen his schlong but I have faith)

2. He could lose his whole roll in a marathon HU session and believe that he didn't lose, he just ran out of cash. And it would be true.

3. He can tilt Spud just by thinking about him.

For these reasons and others, the early CR community gravitated to Lou as its defacto leader. If you needed a rail, Lou was there. If you were up for a story about a Filipino sex show, Lou had seven at his fingertips. If you wanted to watch someone lose 10 buyins HU against a eurolagtard, Lou would oblige (and win it back and more the next day). Pot odds, EV, chip equity, all those terms made Lou's head hurt. He played by feel and he was magnificent.

There was nothing more fun than playing a trash talking 9 man sng on UB with Lou, Spud, Zaitsev, Bdog, Stinger, etc. etc. As an aside, for those of you who are students of Zaitsev, he was hugely talented but a terrible tilt monkey back in the day. I'm assuming he has that under control now.

As CardRunners has grown, the feel of community it once had has dissipated, as has Lou's participation, and the poker world is diminished for it. He still plays (exclusively on UB because despite his demi-god status he is retarded) so if you get a chance stop by and pay homage to the legend that is Lou Pinella.

Just remember "a lot" is 2 words.