Rizen has arisen - part II

World Series of Poker Event #3, PLHE. Final table. Chipleader?
Fellow Kansas-Citian and friend Rizen. 'Nuff said.

Quickie Ultimate Fight Night 4 Picks

Quick picks, sorry no formal writeup.

Stephan Bonnar -189 half unit (to win)
This line is inflated, but Bonnar should win this fight.

212 Jorge Gurgel +117 one unit (risked)
Gurgel is a BJJ black belt who trains Rich Franklin.

201 Anderson Silva -183 three units (to win)
Best bet on the card. Silva is a monster.

206 Luke Cummo +143 half unit (risked)
Cummo is a nut, but he's got a good line here.

Win a seat weekend...

Between the Pokerstars World Blogger Championship tomorrow, and the beautiful Bodog guaranteed seat tournaments with massive overlays running all weekend, my main goal for this weekend is to win a seat to the big dance.

Played two of the Bodog guaranteed seats today, in the first I was chiplead almost the entire way but couldn't close it out and ended up finished in fifth place. In the second, I managed to claw my way through most of the field before I got my money in the middle with JJ facing KQ and lost the coinflip, to go home 14th.

My goal for tomorrow is to finally close out a seat - I'll be playing most of the afternoon, including in the Pokerstars World Blogger Championship as well as the beautiful Bodog guaranteed seat tournaments running all day tomorrow.

Trip Report: Meeting Chuck Palahniuk

Cliff's Notes: Went to a reading by the author of Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk last night. Lasted six hours and was a blast. Really recommend his new book as a result.

Yesterday morning, my alarm woke me up with Chuck Palahniuk's (pronounced "Paula Nick") voice responding to questions from one of our inane local radio DJs.

Yes, the Chuck Palahniuk, on the phone with my local radio retards. Author of standout books Survivor and Choke as well as a little ditty by the name of Fight Club which was apparently turned in to some sort of motion picture which I guess a few people enjoyed

Turns out Mr. Palahniuk was in town tonight, reading from his new book. My plans for the evening were set.

Cujofan getting a copy of "Fight Club" signed :

Fellow Palahniuk fan Cujofan and I arrived an hour early. Mr. Palahniuk was already conversing with fans and signing books. The first thing that struck us both was how personable Mr. Palahniuk appeared - he was generally interested in speaking with his fans. He wasn't just signing a book and shaking hands, he was generally engaging in conversation with each person. He was posing for photos with props that he'd brought along. He was engaging, outgoing, and truly entertaining. For the minute or two that you were in front of Mr. Palahniuk, you were the most important person in the room. He truly appeared interested in how you were doing, in some random instantaneous connection with his fans. A brief tidbit or story or question would spawn, and a formerly awestruck fanboy would be actively engaged in an actual conversation instead of just an awkward stare and handshake. Completely unlike most author events I've attended.

Mr. Palahniuk already had a reputation as an unorthadox reader: his readings of his short story "Guts" on his book tour in 2004 reportedly saw fifty-some people passing out during readings. You can get an MP3 of Palahniuk reading Guts here (more mirrors later, or appreciated if anyone can mirror to help with bandwidth) or a transcript here. Note that both are pretty strongly NSFW.

Chuck Palahniuk spoke for a little over an hour - he opened with a handful of anecdotes from his life and his travels and his world. He started by asking how many people present had never attended an author reading event before - and it was close to half of the thousand-some people in attendance (1500 person capacity theater, nearly full). He mentioned that this was one of the most rewarding parts of going on tour, and how he really encouraged people to read more, that there were just so many things that authors could do in print that couldn't be done on the screen.

He led with an anecdote early in the evening about how he's constantly approached by fans who want to share something utterly disturbing with him, and how that's often how he gets a lot of his material. So a young man who came up to him at a signing in Oregon with a trash bag full of something, and as it came to be his turn to get his book signed he starts pulling what turn out to be Polaroid pictures out of this bag and flipping them on the table, one after the other like a card dealer in Vegas. They're pictures of people in strange poses, apparently all asleep, in a small wooden box. Mr. Palahniuk asks him "what are all of these?" and the kid responds "they're my art project". "Yeah, but what are they?" Palahniuk continues to ask. The young man responds "well I work at a porno theater at [location], and as part of my job I have to check all the booths between shifts to see who has died during the show, customers and strippers both. And see I have this camera, that we use for taking pictures of people when we kick them out. So what I do is when I find someone who has died, I grab that camera and then what I do is I take a picture of the person who died. Sometimes I pose them." Palahniuk went on to exclaim that "this is death, real true death - either you're the customer sitting in a makeshift wooden booth with your pants around your ankles being posed by a pasty white guy with a Polaroid camera - or you're the stripper caught dead with the needle still stuck in your tied-off arm".

He then proceeded to read us an unpublished short story entitled Mr. Elegant. The basic premise was a male exotic dancer with a neurological disorder, who, as his youth is fleeting and his career is ending, tragically becomes a internet phenomenon - and not in a good way, think the Star Wars Kid - and then proceeds to leave the exotic dancing life behind with a female psychiatrist - who is also a former exotic dancer - to form the management team of an exotic dance troupe... staffed entirely with kids with severe physical deformities. Totally twisted, and completely hilarious. The entire auditorium echoed with laughter throughout the reading, with a couple key "groan" moments as well. Highly entertaining.

One of my favorite quotes from the reading was a line he delivered beautifully: "By the time you're thirty your life is about trying to escape the person you've become....to escape the person you've become... to escape the person you've become... to escape the person you've become... to escape the person you started."

As the story ended to thunderous applause from the ~ thousand-person crowd, Mr. Palahniuk then proceeded to drag out two large cardboard boxes. As way of introduction to their contents, he told a story about his previous book tour in late 2004. Mr. Palahniuk apparently has always had a proclivity for doing two things - offending people with his edgy writing, and handing out random novelty prizes at his signings. On his previous tour, he had found a really great deal on these fake bloody severed hands in bulk, so he shipped a box of them to each of his signing locations a few days in advance, so that he could throw them out during his signings. When he hit the portion of the tour West of the Mississippi, it turned out he was touring directly behind hiker Aron Ralston who was touring for his recently published story Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron was the hiker who got his arm pinned underneath a boulder and had to amputate it himself, remember. So Mr. Palahniuk ships a crate of bloody severed hands to each of these locations, but Aron Ralston arrives first to each location. And so at each location the bookstore staff generally disregard the "do not open" on the packages, and would open them up, find the severed hands, and assume that the hands were a very tasteless promotional piece for Aron Ralston's tour. So repeated every night, the bookstore staff would come up to Aron and tell him "Mr. Ralston, your severed hands are here". And Ralston would tell them with a smile "No, those actually belong to Chuck Palahniuk". Mr. Palahniuk eventually found out what was going on and caught up with Ralston's publicist to apologize - but was informed that "Aaron would like to know where to get them for the release of his paperback."

This just epitomizes the Chuck Palahniuk story - it was highly humorous, yet with a dark edgy twist, but ultimately everything would work itself out to some sort of - usually unexpected - resolution in the end.

So Mr. Palahniuk then begins dumping out the contents of the boxes, showing severed hands from his previous anecdote as well as rubber rats, bloody plastic gelatinous hearts - which he warned would explode if you didn't catch them directly, but then of course he proceeded to chuck them in to the crowd apparently as hard as he could - and in the grand finale some sort of sealed plastic eyeballs, which had generally ruptured and were leaking fluid - he'd fling these through the air, splattering everyone in the path of the eye.

He then proceeded in to a full hour of question-and-answer. He answered some pretty straightforward questions: about his next book, entitled "Rant" which was due out next may. He described "Rant" as "a fake biography of a really disturbed huckleberry Finn type character... and its also about cars". Several typical questions about writing and tips for emerging writers, etc.

One which particularly interested me regarded music. He was asked if he listened to music when he wrote or felt his writing was particularly inspired by music. He responded that he actually assigned each of his characters their own "theme song" - a single song which he'd play continuously on repeat whenever he was writing that character. He mentioned that this was almost a meditative mantra, that when listening to a single song on repeat for days and weeks on end, you would transcend the lyrics and no longer notice them, and become engrossed in the raw elements of the song. He also mentioned that it served as a great way to clear people out of your life so that you could write undisturbed. For Fight Club, he mentioned a lot of those theme songs were Nine Inch Nails. But his other examples ran the gamut of styles and genres, from Reznor to Glen Miller.

He was hit with a couple standard questions about Fight Club - most predominantly asked to settle the debate as to whether Marla was a hallucination inside Jack/Tyler's head from a tumor. He answered with "Marla is whatever you want her to be" and remarked that it was something he found wonderful and fascinating about Fight Club - that people could and would read in to it many different interpretations. Of course, being Chuck Palahniuk these are bound to be some twisted interpretations, and of course he apparently gets hit with them left and right. He recounted an extremely humorous story of being on a flight right after the movie was released, and being approached by a male stewardess, saying "Mr. Palahniuk I recognized your name from the manifest and wanted to tell you how much I loved the book and the movie but I just have to ask - and this can stay between you and me of course, I can keep a secret - the whole of fight club is really about gay people having sex in bathhouses, isn't it?" Palahniuk deadpans "What do you say to someone like that? So of course, I say the only thing I can to him: 'shhhh don't tell anyone'. No, of course its not, but I don't want to tear down someone's interpretation of my work. That's what's great about it".

He was asked if any of the rest of his books were going to be made in to a movie. He reported that all of his books are already optioned except his latest "Haunted", and only not yet on the latter because they're deciding to option it whole or in parts. He mentioned that he thought "Choke" would be the next movie released - and that Darren Aronofsky was the director and Arnofsky's production team from "Requiem for a Dream" was in place for "Choke". But he also mentioned that "Choke" might get beat by "Survivor" which was optioned by the people that did "Constantine"

One of the best Q+A responses came in response to a question from a female in the front row, asking that since he pushed the boundary so much with his writing, what truly disturbed him? I think this question truly surprised him, as he laughed in response. He warned us that this image is what he sees eight nights out of ten when he closes his eyes to go to sleep, and that it would haunt us forever, and that some of us should probably put our hands over our ears and hum. Those who chose not to read, just skip the next paragraph.

He returned to the story he'd opened with, about the young man with the trash bag full of polariods of dead people from Oregon. Remember that the man had mentioned that he had the camera on hand to photograph people that they'd kicked out, ostensibly so that they could hang their picture with some warning such as "do not admit". Palahniuk said that he'd asked the young man "So what do you have to do to get kicked out of this sort of place?" Palahniuk said that the man responded with "well, the most frequent offense was one we'd call "the taster". You just get tired of opening up the booth to clean up the jizz, to find the same guy licking the floor all the time. "

After completing the Q+A, Mr. Palahniuk stayed on hand for another three, maybe four full hours to meet with fans, continue his autograph session. I was among the last group to go through the line, and while visibly tired he was still as engaging and entertaining and genuinely interested in engaging with each of his fans as he was the two hours he spent before the reading. At the right you can see the salutation I received on my signed hardbound copy of Haunted. He filled out the dedication and the signature, then bam - bam - bam hit the book with a the stamps seen. it was quite a surprise - I think he reserved that for the few hardbound copies that people brought in, as 95% of the audience was there with the glossy paperbound copy instead. I walked away a little after midnight, having been in the presence of greatness for six solid hours, with a newfound respect for one of my favorite authors, and a strong desire to go home and get started on "Haunted" right away - not to mention to re-read every one of his books thereafter. If you're interested, there are still aparently a couple dates left in his tour. Check this page on his site - tonight (June 13th) he's in Dallas TX and tomorrow (June 14th) he's in Modesto, CA. I'd strongly reccomend attending the event if you can, even if you've never read any of his books.

No WSOP seat, but two MTT final tables

I wasn't able to earn a seat in the World Series of Poker on my second day of trying, but just like last time I tried to win a seat I was able to final table two multi-table tournaments, this time both on Party Poker (bonus code: PERFORMIFY) - and both regular tournaments and not satellite structures like last time - for a nice night.

I tried three different Bodog Guaranteed WSOP seat tournaments. All three had huge overlays - the first was a ~$100 entry with around 40 people but paying a seat for first , the second and third were both $67 levels both with at least a 10x overlay from Bodog. Simply incredible overlays. But alas, I wasn't able to make any real progress in any of those. However, while I was playing one table on Bodog I fired up two Party Poker multitable tournaments: a 99-man MTT with a $44 entry fee, and the Saturday Night $109-buyin $40k Guaranteed prize pool which had 637 entrants. And I final tabled both of those.

In the 99man $44-buyin I entered FT as chiplead, but made two bad plays in a row and dropped to third in chips.

Now with four left i'm in the BB, call a UTG push from the slightly shorter stack holding AK and lose to T7o for most of my chips. Next hand the chiplead standard 3x open raises UTG, second stack calls him, I call all-in from the SB for less with a suited king, and lose to QT when they build a straight. A decent $396 payday for right at three hours of work poker.

In the $40k Guaranteed (637 entrtants, $109 buyin, not the $22 buyin larger field) i was able to run as table chiplead for quite a while in the middle stages to build up a deep enough stack to run to the final table. I was table chiplead most of the way from about 400 left to around 100 left, whatever table I was on. Then with around 100 left a couple much bigger stacks moved to my table, and i lost a couple minor hands as well as my ability to bully the table. Combined with an increased focus on my 99-man final table, I wasn't being as aggressive as I probably could have, and hit a pretty cold run of cards to boot. I dropped below average and all down in to the bottom 10% in chips on the bubble, with 75 left and 70 paying. I lost a coinflip with the shortest stack right on the bubble with my AJ vs his 44, but managed to squeek in to the money in the bottom few in chips. From there I did a pretty good job of keeping a running log: dropped below in smaller font.

A couple hands in to the money, I was in the small blind with T9o and a player in MP limped. I completed and the BB checked. We all had pretty similar stacks, I had 12k behind, BB had 22k behind, limper had 21k behind, blinds of 800/1600 with 50 ante. The flop came Jc, 6h, Th, and I checked. the BB led out with a small bet of 1600 in to the ~5000 chip pot. MP quickly called, and I thought that I had a good opportunity for a squeeze play with the weakness that had been shown, so I push. My thinking is I should have decent fold equity against a lot of hands I want to fold here, and with my middle pair there's an outside chance I could get called by a worse hand on the draw. I end up picking up the pot with my play, and jump to almost 19k in chips gaining some significant breathing room.

Just a few minutes later marks 2:45 in, and we're alread down to 57 players thanks to the flurry of activity that always opens up once the bubble firsts bursts. I've taken down the blinds once with AKs but otherwise haven't played a hand in the last two orbits since my squeeze play. Blinds are 1k/2k with a 75 ante so I don't have a ton of space. After passing through the big blind I get A2o in the small blind, and resteal push from the deepstack in CO+1's raise - I'm not sure how much FE i've got, as my push is less than 1/10th their stack, but they lay it down and I jump just over 22k, still holding on, and now with enough of a stack to have some fold equity as three players at the table have stacks in the low 30's.

at 2:54 mark I get QQ in the small blind, and come over the top of a EP raiser who quickly calls with KQo. My queens hold up, and I double up over 41k. Very next hand I steal raise with A6o from the CO and get called by the much deeperstacked BB, who takes the pot away from me by leading the turn when I check behind on the Q-high flop and he leads the blank river. Two hands later I open raise with A9o and take down the blinds, which jumps me back just over 40k so no harm done. We're down to 43 players remaining, average stack is 44k and i'm sitting decent at my table - three of us are stacked in the low 40ks, with three players below us, and only two big stacks on either side of the table and one guy slightly above in the low 50ks. Of course, just as I finish typing all that, I get bounced from table #4 to table #1 in a restructuring. At least I get dropped in the small blind instead of the big blind.

Third hand at the table, blinds 1500/3000 ante 75, I get dealt KQc in the cutoff. UTG with about half my stack limps, I make it 12k to go and get called by the table chiplead who is in the small blind with over a 125k stack while the limper folds. I flop good, hitting my queen with a flop of Jh, 2d, Qd, and the bigstack leads in to me with enough of a bet that takes the guesswork out of maximizing my payout on this hand - I can just come over the top right now. He calls with AJ and my top pair holds up, doubling me up to over 83k.

A few hands later, still in the same level, MP who has me covered min-raises. I call on the button with A6h, and the big blind folds getting 5:1. I'm rewarded with a flop of 6c, Ac, 5h and flop top two pair with a backdoor nut flush draw to boot. MP checks, and I bet a little less than 1/3 the pot, T5000. MP min-raises me to 10k - I'm hoping he has AK here, so I pop him back up another 16k. He re-re-raises another 20k and I push over the top - sick setup, he's got 66 for a set. I luckbox in to runner-runner flush though, and hit a massive double up to jump over 150k in chips. Two hands later I get AKo UTG+2, and make the standard 3x raise. the big blind calls me, and we see a flop of Tc, 9h, 4h. I lead for around half the pot, 10k, and he calls. The turn is a 2c and we both check it. The river is the 6d, and he fires out a nice blocking bet of 3k which I call - he takes down the pot with JTs and I drop to ~147k in chips. Next hand we go on break - we come back to 32 players remaining with blinds 2k/4k with 100 ante. Average chipstack is 60k, so i'm in great shape. In fact as I look around to see how good of shape I'm in, I realize I'm chiplead at my table and second in chips overall. Quite a shock - I didn't realize that last doubleup propelled me so high.

3:19 in - I take over the chiplead by a slim margin after sniping a couple rounds of blinds uncontested. With 31 left we're back in hand-for-hand. Two minutes later we lose #31, and are down to three tables, but still in hand-for-hand it seems.

3:30 in - I pass a few chips to my left but retain the chiplead, and manage to eliminate a player in the process. I call a preflop minraise from a shortstack on the button holding T9o. The flop comes 7s, 8c, 9s and I lead for half the pot 12k. the BB calls and the button calls for less. the flop is 7d and we both check. the river brings the 8d for a board of 7-8-9-7-8. I check as does the BB, and he drags the pot outkicking me with K9. We do eliminate the shorty who held unimproved AK, which leaves us 27 left. I retain the overall chiplead by about 20k chips. Its currently 9:40pm CST, for the record.

3:36 in, I open the other two tables on my second monitor to keep an eye on them. I see a three-way all-in (two players all in) AQs vs A2d vs AKo on table #3 - A2d flops a fourflush but AQ his a queen on the flop, and we've got another elimination. Someone at my table manages to eliminate a player and leapfrogs me in chips to 180k. We're down to 24 left. Next hand I raise J7d from the button and am called by the big blind. I flop a three flush and a gutshot but stupidly make a small bet at the pot when he checks to me. he check-raises all-in and I curse myself for not checking behind. I drop to 109k in chips, which puts me in fourth at my table (the guy who just outplayed me jumped to third in chips at the table with the 120k pot) but I'm sixth in chips overall. We've got 22 left.

3:44 in - i haven't played a hand since my last entry, as I haven't had an opportunity to steal and haven't seen any decent cards. I dropdown to 96k in chips, right around the average. We consolidate to two tables, and then almost immediately lose another to jump down to 19 players remaining. Blinds move to 4k/8k with 200 ante. I get AKo in the small blind, and the CO pops it to 17k. I come over the top with a raise of 37k, and she folds saying in chat "I have AK please show me AA". I figure she's just trying to act strong on a steal, but go ahead and show my AK anyways when she folds as a dick move. I jump to 120k in chips, jumping above the average but eighth overall in chips by my look at the other table. We're down to 16 remaining. In a move to show confidence, I start formulating my two+two final table sweat thread.

3:54 in, the poker gods reward me for my arrogance. I have AJ in the big blind and just call a middle position raiser's standard 3x preflop raise. I hit an ace on the flop, and check looking to possibly checkraise. However he checks behind. A queen hits the turn double-suiting the board, and I make a strong lead in to him. He pushes and I quickly call without thinking it through much - turns out he's got QQ and I double him up, dropping to 33k in chips and near the bottom of the pile. Two hands later I push from the CO with A5o and take down the blinds to jump up to 42k. Blinds and antes are going to eat me quickly though, I'm going to have to get lucky to make the final table. We're down to 15 remaining.

3:57 in, I push 22 in to a limper and the big blind from the SB, and jump above 50k, next-to-last in chips. However next hand we lose the shortest stack and we're down to 14 remaining and I'm back in last place. Very next hand its folded to me on the dead button, and I push with K9o and steal the blinds again. Very next hand, I'm dealt JKo and the now-shortest stack whom i've barely got covered pushes to my immedaite right. I think hard about it, and decide to call - there's nothing but pride between 14th and 11th. I find myself in good shape against AT, and win by spiking a ten on the river. i jump over 130k remaining, and we've got 13 left and I'm now eighth in chips.

4:06 in - two pair loses to a full house and we've got 12 remaining. I'm at 113k in chips, aparently seventh in chips. two minutes later I'm dealt jacks in the big blind, but it folds around to me.

4:10 in - 88 in the CO, takes down the blinds to jump over 133k. We lose a player on the other table, down to 11, with a microstack left on the other table. I'm forth in chips at my table, sixth overall.

4:12 in - the microstack loses and we're at the final table. I am seventh in chips going in. One of the first hands I make what might be a weak play folding AJ from the CO to two early position limpers, but I didn't like my options there, my gut didn't like calling or raising and so I let it go. Of course the flop is jack-high and the first person who bets at it postflop takes it down. We play a couple more then hit break.

4:20 in - Back from break, blinds are 8k/16k with 400 ante.

4:23 in - AA > KQd and we have our first elimination. After passing through the blinds I'm last in chips with nine remaining.

4:27 in - I make my stand with KJo from the button - CO+1 minraises for a little less than half of my stack and I push hoping to isolate in a coinflip or 60/40. To my surprise the small blind wakes up and comes over the top of me, for enough to force the CO+1 to lay down his hand preflop. I find myself dominated against AJo. We hit a jack on the flop, and the board is nice enough to pair the board on the turn giving me three outs to the chop for the river (the case jack, or two remaining queens) in addition to my three suckout outs (three remaining kings), but I fail to suck out and go home in ninth.

A $955.50 payout for four and a half hours of work poker, for a total nightly payout of just over $1350 and and an ROI of 783% on these two tournaments .

I'll definately be reviwing my hand history from when I lost the overall chiplead around 30 remaining in detail. I really think I lost a little focus there and lost a little aggressiveness, allowing myself to get leapfrogged. Still, a very exciting night of tournament poker and a very nice payday to boot.

For the record, I updated my Top Ten list to reflect these two cashes. The $109 rankes pretty clear 4th best, but I'm not sure if the $44 should be reflected where it is. Its clearly my sixth highest MTT cash in prize money, but might not rank there in terms of field traversed. I might try to come up with some sort of weighted ranking, i.e. field size multiplied by some sort of modifier for buyin level. We'll see...

PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers. Registration code: 3231159

Daniel Negreanu gets STACKED on MTV

You might have heard a little about this hot new poker game, but if you haven't, here's the full scoop. STACKED™ with Daniel Negreanu is a next-generation Texas Hold'em game for PS2, Xbox, PSP and PC. I've got a review copy on the way, and will give our readers a full review writeup once we've got our hands on it. But based on the details I've been able to find, it reportedly contains the most advanced Artificial Intelligence system ever utilized in an interactive poker product. From their press materials, it says it will let you "develop your skills with world-class tournament strategies and real-time guidance from poker's prevailing star, Daniel Negreanu. Go head-to-head against David Williams, Evelyn Ng, Josh Arieh, Carlos Mortensen, Erick Lindgren, and Jennifer Harman as you progress towards a championship title in career mode, before taking on Daniel in a final showdown. Compete online against millions of poker players from around the world in MTV STACKED Masters, the largest tournament system ever offered in a console poker game. Qualify for sanctioned events, where you could challenge the best of the best, and build an online career worthy of enshrinement in the STACKED Hall of Fame". But more impressively, starting tomorrow MTV is running a load of STACKED content. MTV Presents: STACKED Poker is a half hour special premiering on Friday, June 2nd at 9 PM on MTV2 and Saturday, June 3rd at 9 PM on MTV. The program gets inside the breakout phenomenon of professional poker and highlights the launch of STACKED™ with Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu stars in this half-hour special with his unique brand of strategy, intuition and charisma. Shot on location at The Aladdin Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, MTV Presents: STACKED Poker takes viewers through an explanation of the video game, STACKED, an introductory game of poker with Negreanu, then he faces a group of college age competition, competes against some of the world’s top ranked poker players and ends the show by sitting down at a table with special celebrity guests, Ryan Cabrera and Benji from Good Charlotte, to pass on some of his poker expertise. Throughout, Daniel will occasionally “freeze frame” and address the audience with his unparalleled insights into poker strategy, player tells and insider tips.

The special also kicks off a once in a lifetime opportunity for MTV viewers. The STACKED Masters Tournament is a series of STACKED Multi-Table Tournaments, to be played live online. Four players who meet certain eligibility criteria may be cast to participate in the MTV STACKED Masters Showdown Special. Participants in the special will be flown to Las Vegas, where they will face off against Daniel Negreanu at the final table, for a chance to prove their poker prowess against the best in the business.

For more information, you can hit the banner above left, or visit stacked.mtv.com. They've also got a teaser video available for download here. I'm definately looking forward to getting my hands on this game. Having a PSP version should have some serious entertainment potential for train rides or commutes.