If for some reason we had to close one branch of Congress, which would you choose and why?

Mundane SF dares to ask: What if not? No space travel, no aliens, no FTL, no time travel, no robots, no nanotechnology, no parallel universes, no immortality, no brain downloads. It’s science fiction, for all those people who don’t like science fiction. (Read it. It’s really, really condescending.)

Coming soon, Mundane Fantasy, which dares to ask: What if humans are the only intelligent race and magic doesn’t exist?

I would hate to be Michael Vick right now. I mean I would realllllly hate to be him.

His brother is a thug. He’s a thug. A huge thug.

And now this.

He is toast. And rightly so. The things he “allegedly” put those dogs through is despicable.

While He Who Must Not Be Blogging is sitting in a self-imposed internet exile, I thought I’d take a second to post about my preferred (and ignored) blog topic of choice…poker.

As those of you who follow the poker scene should know, the World Series of Poker has been running at the Rio in Vegas for the last six weeks or so. For the last two weeks, the $10,000 buy-in World Championship No Limit Hold ‘Em Tournament has been running. Yesterday, the final table was conducted, with nine players vying for a first place prize of $8.25 Million.

As an aside, I would note that this is the first year in recent memory when the total number of entrants in the Main Event has declined from the previous year. I could rail against the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) for its contribution to the freedom of the poker playing American public, but I shall hold my tongue.

Anyway, I ordered the ESPN PPV live broadcast of the Final Table, hosted by Ali Nejad and Phil Gordon. The only real drawback for the average poker watching viewer was the absence of the “hole card cam” to check the holdings of the players as the game progressed, but for the purist, it was really a bit more exciting at times to watch the play without knowing everything that the players were holding at all times. The commentary was excellent, the quality of the show was very good.

It was an interesting final table, to say the least. Coming into the last night of the tourney, the chips were relatively evenly spaced among the players, and with large stacks in relationship to the blinds and antes, there was plenty of room for the players to make moves.

As the game played out, though, only one player really made any moves. California psychologist and poker amateur Jerry Yang came in as one of the shorter stacks at the table, but certainly did not waste any time in becoming active with his chips. He came into pots early and often, usually starting out with an oversized initial raise of the blinds pre-flop. At the first stages of the blinds (120K-240K), Yang most often came in for 1.5M as an opening raise, when conventional play would suggest an open raise of between 600K-800K.

He was able to take a couple of pots early, and double up his initial starting stack. From that point, he managed to catch hands at opportune moments, and took out the starting chip leader as the first casualty of the Final Table. From that point forward, he never lost the chip lead, gong on to knock out 7 of his 8 opponents.

Characterized as weak-tight coming into the Final Table by conventional wisdom, Yang somewhat masterfully, somewhat inartfully maneuvered his way through the field like a buzzsaw. Practically every time an opponent decided to play back at Yang, he either forced them all-in or called their all-in.

I don’t know that I’d call him a great poker player in general, but there is no doubt that he was in the zone during the Final Table. He did exactly what his opponents were not expecting him to do. He always applied pressure, almost never caved to responsive pressure, and held a stranglehold on the tournament from the get-go.

Bottom line is that his plan worked perfectly, and he’s now $8.25M richer for it. He won his entry in a satellite tournament for $225. Not a bad parlay.

I’m interested to see how the overall media reports on this event turn out. Yang is a very devoted Christian, and made no apologies for that, both during the tournament and afterward. He’s donating 10% to three charities. From the debacle of Jamie Gold’s championship last year (where the darker, less public friendly side of poker and money were opened to critique), Jerry Yang may be a refreshing return to poker as an “everyman’s” activity.

Congrats to the Champ.

Just walked past TV in UT law lounge during PMBR lunch break, heard something about bookstores in Israel opening on Sabbath to sell Potter book. Heh. No spoilers, though. Phew.

Nine hours without surfing the Web; already going through withdrawal. :)