Poker miscellany

This has been a slow month for me poker playing wise. It started out cold and hasn't gotten any better so I've taken it easy and have played very little poker this month. I look forward to the holidays and then will gear up for the first Southern Poker Championship at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi where I will be in January with Rounder both writing and playing (and hitting those satellites hard I assure you!)

I may make a quick trip to New Orleans during their Winter Bayou whatchmacallit in a couple of weeks, but it will be only to sightsee with my wife and not to play.

We've got a pretty good issue of Rounder coming out in December. I profiled Tiffany Michelle, Victor Ramdin and Gavin Griffin this month. I've always liked Victor the few times I've met him. Just seems like a super nice guy. I met and got Gavin's number at the media meet and greet at the Palms this summer. Actually, I met his girlfriend Kristen first and she took me over to him. Both are good folks. She seems very sweet and the work both of them did (especially Gavin with the pink hair dye job) to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research was exemplary. I haven't met Tiffany Michelle in person; just talked to her after being given her number by my editor Evert to contact her for a profile. Here is one interesting Tiffany tidbit you may not know: she considers her most interesting role as a dead patient on an episode of ER when she was 18.

Here is what she had to say: “It was pretty awesome to have Noah Wyle on top of me trying to revive me and have blood come pouring out of my mouth. Those are the things about acting that are so outside of everyday life that make it a lot of fun.”

You meet too many bad people in the world of poker so it's good to see the success of these three, all of whom seem deserving of good fortune in the game (despite a certain UB controversy we've all read and heard about).

Over at Al Can Hang's Full Tilt Poker Blogger from the Rail blog you can see a post I sent him around the time of the WSOP final table looking at other WSOP promotions/gimmicks over the years and how well they worked. I had fun putting that one together.

B.J. McBrayer

I definitely need to give a shout out to B.J. McBrayer. He's a local guy in Tuscaloosa who's about 25 or 26 who I've played a lot of poker with over the last few years. Everyone always knew B.J. was a good player and lately he's finally truly broken through on the tournament circuit. He finished runner-up to Clonie Gowen in the main event of the World Poker Open and followed that by chopping the main event of the IP Poker Classic in Biloxi three ways. His cashes over the last month total about $120,000. B.J.'s a good guy. I can't say anything bad about him (aside from that stupid Yankees cap he wears) so I certainly root for his success. I suspect you will see his name in tournament reports many times in the years to come.