Post-WSOP observations of the poker world

Now that the World Series of Poker has all but come to a close, the poker world is settling back into its usual routine of high stakes cash games and weird behavior.

Joe Cada recently learned the hard way what Biggie Smalls has been telling us for years – mo’ money, mo’ problems.  The 2009 WSOP Main Event Champ posted on his facebook page that a friend had stolen his checkbook four months ago and has since been forging checks in the champ’s name for large amounts of money.  My advice to Cada – either check your account more often or get a new accountant (and maybe lose the friend).

Poker After Dark is back this week with a new theme. “Lonesome Shark” week includes six players who are unmarried, including Mike Matusow, who is living proof that wearing sweatpants and a fanny pack around in public aren’t guaranteed to get you laid.  Also appearing is “Yukon” Brad Booth.  I’m not sure how many readers are old enough to remember when he used to be a high stakes cash player with enough money to buy in for a “cool million.”  I don’t know where they dug him up, but welcome back I suppose.

Jean-Robert Bellande hasn’t let up on his Twitter campaign, which I imagine is some kind of pre-emptive promotion for his supposedly in-the-works reality show, Broke and Living Like a Millionaire.  Just today he tweeted that “True story: Just yesterday I drafted an email to my backer recommending that he drop me until I got out of my tailspin. Heavy stress.”  So this means that Bellande’s backer needs to be reminded that Bellande is a bad investment?  If anyone has his name, let me know.  I’ve got a great proposition for staking me.

Despite Poker After Dark, things are looking good for fans of televised poker.  ESPN’s coverage of the World Series of Poker Main Events starts tonight.  It should be our chance to see more than all in shoves and shots of the family Mizrachi (for now).  We’ve also got a new set of shows from the PokerStars Big Game, which has filled the void left by the end of the latest season of High Stakes Poker.  The addition of the loose cannon to televised poker in the Big Game has made for fantastic television.

In personal news, my quest to reach SilverStar on PokerStars has gotten off to a great start.  I’ve only been logging about an hour of play each day, but I’ve accumulated 191 VPPs in that time.  I was away for the first two weekends of the month, which took out a ton of playing time.  I expect that being home this weekend I could make SilverStar before the weekend is up.  My approach has been to play 7-10 full ring tables of .05/.10 NHE.  So far I am down $30 for the month, which I’m not happy about.  However, I was running about a $20 profit on the year with the limited cash games I was playing and am only down $10 for the year with this month’s loss.  I’ve noticed a few leaks in my game and am working to plug those, so I expect to see things turn around soon. I’ll hopefully be back next week with a report on making SilverStar as well as a chart of my progress.