From the looks of it, the agency not only promotes boxing but is also a entertainment agency representing various creative outlets and individuals like boxer Andre Ward, broadcaster James “JB” Brown and NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas.

This weekend Ivey is in Pala promoting the up and coming Hernandez while taking time to meet with fans and play a a little poker.

Here Ivey is getting some fight tips from renown boxing trainer Teddy Atlas.

Here’s the full fight card:

My levels of experimentation have varied since that night, from three months of daily usage in 1999 after that initial introduction to a year or two of abstinence. I eventually settled into a seasonal habit (I smoked crack only during the winter months), followed by a less moderate phase in 2013.

I don’t present these stories for shock value. On the contrary, I proceed with a lot of anxiety, knowing the potential to upset and alienate family members, friends, present or past business associates, future landlords, and whoever else is likely to take a dim view of the information I’m volunteering.

Read: Fifteen Years Smoking Crack
It’s a fascinating tale of Schleger’s history through drug experimentation and specifically his trials and tribulations with crack. This piece comes on the heels of his new podcast Dope Stories which also deals with “a rational discussion about drug use.” Here Schleger uses the same logic based thinking that made him so successful in poker to confront the fact that while he knows that “crack is wack” it’s a habit/recreation he has that is not likely to go away.

The article has been a bit of a discussion piece both in and out of poker generating over 1k comments on the Slate website alone. If you have the time, it’s well worth checking out.

Of course, it wasn’t easy (it never is) as Moorman had to borrow a page from Barry Greenstein's book to spiked a fortuitous “ace on the river” in what may have been the most critical hand of the entire tournament. Here’s the hand as reported by the WPT Live Updates website:

A short time later the largest hand of the tournament took place and set the heads-up final lineup in the process. All three players were all-in preflop on Hand 129 and it was an exciting hand from start to finish. Lafaye raised to 325,000 on the button and Rocco reraised all in for 2,020,000 on the small blind. Moorman moved all in over the top for 2,835,000 from the big blind and Lafaye called to cover them both. All three players then tabled their hands.

Moorman: 10c10s
Lafaye: QdJd
Rocco: Ac8d

Board: KhQsJh3s…As

Lafaye flopped two pair to take the lead but Moorman made a Broadway straight on the river to win the hand and triple up to survive. Rocco was eliminated in third place and he took home $423,440. Lafaye still held the chip lead for the start of the heads-up final with 8,275,000 but Moorman was right on his heels with 7,750,000.

With his victory Moorman is a min-cash away from $4 million in lifetime earnings.

Glenn Lafaye had to settle for runner up and will dry his tears on the massive $662,840 payday for second place while hyper-aggro young gun Michael Rocco, who came into the Final Table with the chip lead, rakes his biggest score netting $423,440. Here’s the rest of the payouts:

Final Table Payouts:

Chris Moorman – $1,015,460
Glenn Lafaye – $662,840
Michael Rocco – $423,440
Patrick Bruel – $332,190
Josh Neufeld – $264,520
Adam Friedman – $200,440

For hand by hand recap of what went down in Los Angeles, go to the WPT Live Updates page. Next stop - San Jose, CA for the Bay 101 Shooting Star.

So what IS Official Poker Day? Is that the same as “National Poker Day?” Good questions. Is it the day where poker players will stand up and be counted?! Is it the day where gov’t officials will finally hear our cries?! Is it a day of marketing where casinos will encourage you to come out and play and receive a $5 food voucher with a $100 buy-in?! It’s ALL of these things…AND MORE!

Yes, Blue Shark is creating Official Poker Day swag that you can dress up in Partnering with the poker friendly staff of…Cafe Press because they “are not in the apparel business” (except for the 9 pieces of BSO apparel they have for sale already). You see, when you buy a shirt they’ll only keep half the profit for themselves! Because when you starts a revolution you gots to get paid, yo!

In true poker fashion they are only taking 50% rake on this “grassroots movement” designed to selflessly promote the game of poker. Half will go to a poker related charity, that Blue Shark will choose. Who knows – maybe Eskimo Clark?! So, who’s interested in an “official” “Official Poker Day” T-shirt?

Now, don’t get hung up on who is potentially making money or who owns the rights to this or whether it’s a National or Official day. Don’t get thrown off by the 1-hour 1.0, throw-it-up-and-see-what-sticks website design. It’s a day that Blue Shark wants you to “accept it, and embrace” (and buy something) so you can say “I was a part of this!”

According to DNAinfo New York, Jason, the club owner/operator says they are rolling in too much cash to let something like “the law” keep them down.

“The reward is much greater than the risk,” Jason (last name not given) said. “If I get arrested, it’s not going to bother me because they’ll just charge me with promotion of gambling and it will be charged as a misdemeanor.”

Not only do the operators of Wendy’s Club admit that poker in New York is illegal but the cops found drugs during their raid too – 1lb. of weed and 5 plastic bags of cocaine. Still the punishment for the profit is not steep enough to stop them.

The city though hopes that when the case is taken to court, it will receive a healthy $1k for every day that the “business” was in operation, perhaps deterring the club to keep operating.

The underground club is one of a few promoted by website MySocialPoker.com where players in the New York area can find underground poker rooms in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

New York reg Christopher Fleming says that while he was among those arrested, he will continue to keep playing.

“This is a very mouth to mouth, underground operation,” Fleming said. “The only other place to play is Atlantic City, and that’s two hours away.”

The show is expecting a few superstars to turn up to the event including 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Greg Merson, as well as Gavin Smith, Matt Glantz, Christian Harder and new Ultimate Poker signee Danielle Andersen. Even Darvin Moon is expected to emerge from the woods to take a whack at this one.

Of course, as in past events, the TV team is on hand for both the tournament as well as an invite-only high(isn)-stakes cash game.

Best part is, if you want to play in this cash game – Todd Anderson and the PNIA team are looking for fish…err whales…um “personalities” to jump in the game with the pros. If you think you have what it take – both in bankroll and table presence – to be on TV shoot them an email at [email protected].

The televised Main Event is a $3500 buy-in, $400k guaranteed event with two starting days which caps off two full weeks of tournaments at the Maryland Live! Casino (which guarantees $1 million in total prizes to be awarded)

The rest of the field is still within striking distance as well and that includes French actor/musician turned poker pro Patrick Bruel who comes to the Final Table 3rd in chips. Josh Neufeld, Glenn Lafaye and Adam Friedman all join Bruel in looking up at the chip average, but one double up puts any one of these players in contention.

Patrick Bruel never surrenders!

The LAPC Final Table is televised so that means no live stream. Still, for those interested in watching the action as it happens the World Poker Tour will have hand for hand updates, photos and real-time chip counts available on their Live Updates webpage.

Perhaps no one in the poker community likes it more than Danish professional poker player Theo Jorgensen. Known for putting money on a wide variety of physical tasks, he sits down with Pokerstrategy’s Barry Carter to talk about some of his more notorious prop bets including his famous 2009 boxing match with Gus Hansen where he famously beat the Dane in the ring and took home $35k for his efforts.

It doesn’t end there: check out this interview about shooting goals against the best keeper in Denmark, running backwards for 5km and, of course, trying to run 1km at the world record average. If you like the idea of risking big bucks on an unknown outcome, check out this piece with Theo.

Spent way too much time in this poker room… First time I see the light after 48 hours #vampire #poker #macau

Also there’s this:

Just another day in #macau sick #ferrari parked in front of the macau #tower

After seeing these photos, perhaps that rumor Tom Dwan denied about winning $25 million in a session isn’t so far fetched…

Got to the table and even at first glance, I’m like “Holy S…” what is going on here. Two well known international pros have got giant stacks in front of them and the rest of the table were all Asian players. There were literally so many chips on the table that there was no space to play. Pic attached below as a sample. The guys have been playing for 2 days with the odd 4 hour break here and there.

He states that blinds were $4k/$8k US and had been even higher…

Then I looked more carefully and noticed a few “vouchers” floating about for HK$5m at a time as they had run out of physical big denomination chips. In total approx. US$20m of chips on the table!! Blinds when I was there was a mere US$4K/US$8K but they had been playing as high as US$12.5K/25K earlier in the sessions. Wasn’t a game I was keen to join with even the smallest stack sitting with US$1m in front of him.

Those HK$5m vouchers are worth $650k USD. The hand Hall witnessed saw two players chop what would have been a $5m pot to the victor.

The largest pot I saw at the table had a fairly quiet start on a KH 10S 7S board, which exploded with a 10D on the turn and a 5s on the river. After an unusual amount of tanking both a local and a pro, both ended up all in for a HK$40m (US$5.1m) pot. Lot of excitement ended up in a chop with both holding A 10. Saw some pretty sick river bluffs with river bets of US$700-800k going in which were treated with much amusement at the expense of the folding player.

How much cash is in this photo? Hall states that he’s “fairly certain” the Yellow plaques are HK$500,000 or ($65k), the Orange plaques are HK$100,000 ($13k) and the Brown chips are a mere HK$10,000 or ($1.3k)

Hellmuth, who still thinks that there are flaws in the GPI, has recently suggested a “players council” to help determine the formula:

While Dreyfus doesn’t seem overly concerned, it looks like he would like to get Hellmuth on board as it wouldn’t hurt to have a popular figure like Phil standing behind his business.

Hellmuth currently sits at #143 on the GPI and despite that fact, the pair seemingly are on good terms.

Tournament Director Matt Savage has been tastes of hands here and there to make us feel like we are in action ourselves. In the hand above, rising star Michael Rocco faces off against French foe Bruel in a blind on blind confrontation.

The beloved movie star turned poker pro Jennifer Tilly held the chip lead at one point today, but fell in 22nd place. But not before she was captured taking some deep breaths in tight spots against constant foe Alexandru Masek.

Side bar: Michael Rocco isn’t a household name by any stretch, but if you want to learn more about this young poker star, check out his 2012 interview with F5 editor Jeff Walsh.

For chip counts and live updates visit the World Poker Tour homepage.

You see, in his view, poker isn’t the upstanding citizen of the gambling world but it’s situated somewhere between porn and load-sharking – it’s for mischief makers.

The reason people are running out of money is because the recreational player mass we are attracting is not in the stratum of high-risk takers. Instead, we are attracting low risk takers.
Players who won’t use their credit cards, won’t lie to their wives, won’t beg, steal and borrow, and won’t take the Children’s Book Club money.

Read: Have We Got This Sponsorship Thing All Wrong

So he asserts that people like Luke Schwartz, Tong G and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow would make great ambassadors for a poker brand that embraces the dark side (of course, all of those names are already sponsored).

I want their roles and responsibility statements to enable them to push the game to its limits, supported by the brand itself also creating even more innovative ways to create mischief, mayhem and madness.

While Davy feels that the wrong people are being sponsored, he’s not up for taking the high-risk, controversial route of calling them out by name himself. Do you agree? Are today’s high profile sponsored pros a boring lot or inspiration for you to double down on your poker game?

According to Rich Ryan and PokerNews, the players were asked if they were in favor of the shot clock or not and, if so, to what extent? The proposal has the clock giving players 30 seconds to act on their hand otherwise it would be dead. In addition, players are given “time buttons” where they can utilize them to get an additional 60 seconds to act (those can be combined in the case where someone has multiple).

“In The Money”, “FInal Three Tables” or “Final Table Only” were the instances.

One pro who was polled was German phenom “Mad” Marvin Rettenmaier who went against the grain and emphatically voted “NO”.

Poker author Jonathan Little is in complete agreement with Rettenmaier.

But it looks like the pair are in the distinct minority as WPT’s Mike Sexton indicated that when the ballots were tallied, roughly 80% of the players were on board with speeding up the game.

Gordon Vayo raises from middle position to 11,000, Oliver Price reraises from the big blind to 26,000, and Vayo moves all in for 99,500. Price snap-calls with AA, and Vayo turns over QQ. It’s a cooler for Vayo, who will need to improve to stay alive. The board comes T8763, and the pocket aces hold up for Price to win the pot and burst the Money Bubble by eliminating Gordon Vayo in 64th place.

Savage then takes the mic and announces that the 63 players still in are “In The Money!” to a smattering of claps and even a healthy “boo.”

There’s still a ton of big names vying for the over $1 million first place prize including Jennifer Tilly, Bryn Kenney, Dan O’ Brien, Chris Moorman, WPT Champ Ravi Raghavan, 2012 World Series of Poker Champ Greg Merson, Eugene Katchalov, Mike Sexton and Jason Mercier.

The funny part is, it looks like none of the winners of the awards seem particularly informed about what they won and even what they are nominated for. Neil Channing, who wins Best Blogger, admits on mic that he hasn’t written a word in 9 months while Sam Trickett says he had no idea why he won Best Tournament Player. Tony Kendall won Best Contribution to Promoting Poker and he states he has no idea how he got it. Alexander Millar won an award he didn’t even know he was nominated for.

Despite the confusion of the recipients and the lack of red carpet attire (c’mon Trickett!) the event looks to have been a blast with the UK poker community rallying for a night of recognition and celebration. Watch it!

The bros at Wicked Chops Poker always had the inside track on what was going down over there as, for a brief shining moment, they were on the Epic acquisition list. Here, two years later, they look back at the key players in the fiasco and see who got bounced from poker and who lived to tell the tale.

Read: Epic Poker Two Years Post Bankruptcy: Where Are They Now?

The interesting part about the article is WCP’s inside knowledge on the major players, many of whom are unknown names to the general poker public. Additionally, they analyze who the real winners in the deal were – Daniel, the HPT, 441 Productions – and perhaps a few of the losers.

Annie Duke – Speaking of Annie, she’s also out of poker. Annie has rebranded herself as a master in Decision Science. That might actually be the best decision she’s ever made.

Food, flight, hotel and especially the massive amount of rake that comes with playing live, in the eyes of TPE, just isn’t worth it. TPE points out that the juice on any given tournament can be as high as 18% and never goes below 10% and almost none of that goes to the dealers.

Read: The Cost of Playing Live Tournaments Is More Than You Think

Even the most frugal of us, like an Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler would find it hard to be profitable in the long run by chasing the tour. On the other hand, online tournaments give you the comfy confines of home, being close to your fridge and the ability to fire up as many tournaments as you need to beat variance.

What do you think? Is online the superior choice or are you grinding online so you can take your shot in the live arena? Or do you live in one of the 49 US States where if you don’t play live, you don’t play at all….

Looking for more information on the tough life of a tournament pro? Check out Deadspin’s Article: Why You’ll Never Make A Living Playing Live Poker Tournaments

Here’s a couple selections for you:

Liv Boeree

There’s no definitive answer to this. Do whatever you feel works for you and whomever you’re fortunate enough to meet. If you fall in love, that’s great. If you don’t, that’s fine too. The two things can mix well and can also cause problems, like almost all great things in life! Don’t worry too much about it either way.

Read: Ask The Pros: Mixing Love And Poker

Natalie Hof

In my opinion, it’s very important to share some interests in a relationship. Thank goodness my boyfriend is also playing poker. But to be totally honest with you, I try to avoid talking too much with him about hand histories and strategy. We are only playing Sundays or live events together, so the rest of our time it’s just a normal relationship with other activities.

Natalie is not impressed

Celina Lin

I need a person who loves me as a poker player, but I also make the time to be available outside of poker.

So if you are looking for love in all the wrong places (e.g. the poker table) perhaps these smart ladies can give you some helpful hints on how to find and keep a relationship together in the face of a four-bet.

If you are looking to get some inside information on the life of Duhamel, this probably isn’t going to get you too excited. When was the last time he – Had a hangover? Broke a bone? Called someone a f***face? Of all his replies, perhaps the most interesting is him having busted 4 tournaments in 2 days. Anyway, it’s Monday and what are you going to do…work on your spreadsheet?

Kill 2 minutes with Sarah and Jonathan.

The incredibly well-produced video seemingly captures every angle you’d hope to get on this head to head battle where Feenstra flops trips with top kicker and Farrell is tasked with finding a way to win the hand with 3rd pair. There’s so much insight to be gained just from listening to how Farrell frames his decisions and views each step of the action. The cherry on top is how cool PokerStars makes the action look. Check it out.

Read: Bay 101Frequently Asked Questions

That said, tournament director Matt Savage is fed up with his phone blowing up with the same questions over and over. Will there be a live stream? Yes. Will it sell out? Probably. What hotels are near by? And so on…

So the brain trust at Bay 101 posted all the answers to all the questions that Savage is asked on the regular. So if you are planning on attending or even if you will be sitting in your New York apartment, forced to watch from a distance because you ran like crap when you took multiple shots last week trying to get in, you should check out the schedule and live stream details.

Rather than having the “Bank of Timex” set a markup, he let the market determine how much 10% of the multi-million dollar winner was worth. He took to the 2+2 Forums and allowed people to bid the 10%. Of course, at face value, 10% is going to cost someone only $21.50 to get involved.

So how much did someone end up paying to take a virtual Lambo ride with McDonald?

Poster demetri1978 purchased 10% for $115.

That’s over 5x the value (5.3488 to be more exact). But that didn’t seem to matter as demetri1978 even stated he was just having a “fun gamble on a sicko.” So, of course, you want to know if demetri1978 got his money’s worth:

Busto A7o to A9s, ty for investing

That was shortly after Timex ran pocket kings into a set of 4’s.

In the promo vid, we get a glimpse of all the bells and whistles of the new show. Shot clocks putting pressure on the players and the aggressive action button where, if a player gets to showdown with a bluff the folding opponent has to get in the cage and sit out and orbit while the other players feast on their blinds and antes. Plus they get the needle for making the wrong decision.

James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton call the action on what looks to be a well-produced piece of poker TV we’re looking forward to.

First we have Phil Hellmuth shipping it in with top pair and a flush draw against his opponent who find himself with a tough decision with bottom set. Then, below, it’s a battle of heavyweights as newly minted Full Tilt millionaire, Blair Hinkle, is put to the test by 2010 World Series of Poker Champion Jonathan Duhamel on an extremely wet board.

Enjoy!

Here’s Kessler doing what he does best…

Maria takes a few minutes to answer a few questions from the curious cameraman about what makes the LAPC such a great tournament, how she balances her poker dreams and living her life as well as what she hopes to get out of the rest of 2014.

The always charming Ho, chats it up and explains that while she is in hot pursuit of a World Series of Poker bracelet, taking time to life her life – without being worried about the all mighty dollar every day – is what gives her a fresh perspective when she sits down at the table. Check it out!

Read: 'You Play Poker For A Living’

From the judgmental masses who secretly hope that variance will bite him in the ass to the doe eyed dude who wants to hear about every pot he’s ever played, Haxton details all the stereotypes he encounters. If you find yourself having to explain your chosen hobby or profession, then Ike even offers some a couple pieces of advice on how to deal with all those people who want to know when you are going to get a real job.

The first of which is to watch and share his PokerStars origin video…which is right here: