Poker Blog & Poker Forum

Bodog Poker has added another poker babe, its third, to Team Bodog. Bodog Poker is perhaps the only online poker room to have only three brand ambassadors all of whom are sexy women players. Leading the team is the veteran Evelyn Ng. Then there is Tatjana Pasalic, who was listed as the second most sexy player. Amanda Leatherman has just joined the illustrious team. Last year another Amanda had joined Team Bodog. She was Amanda “Manderbutt” Musumeci. Manderbutt did not last long, but we hope that Leatherman will have a fruitful innings at Bodog Poker.

On her profile page at Bodog Poker Amanda says, “I’m known as the girl who isn’t afraid to ask questions. Sometimes inappropriate, but I can guarantee you all my interviews are fun!” Her favorite poker moment is playing in the ladies event at the WSOP in 2008 and ending up in the 45th place. She describes her playing style as pretty aggressive and says, “I’ve learned to play small pots while being aggressive and think that’s the best strategy for tournaments.”

Amanda has spent more time reporting on poker than at the tables. She began her career in 2006 and was soon working for PokerNews as an online tournament reporter. She became famous as a hostess and interviewer for the World Poker Tour. Her crowning glory was the Bluff Magazine’s 2011 Reader’s Choice Award for “Best Poker Hostess”, which she won for The Big Game, outrunning poker babe Kara Scott. Amanda says, “I’ve worked in poker for many years. All the pros know me and treat me like a little sister.” Well not all. Amanda had a relationship with Joe Sebok. After breaking up with him there were rumors of something with Daniel Negreanu. Speaking of her assignment with Team Bodog, Amanda said that she is excited to get this chance to play live poker. “Due to constantly working in front of the camera covering poker tournaments, it’s been a while since I have been fully able to concentrate on playing myself – I’m definitely ready to hit the felt on my own.”

Amanda was born in North Carolina on August 7. She was a cheerleader whose grades were high and social circle was ever-expanding. But she chucked it all at the age of 19 and moved to Las Vegas. Amanda now lives in Los Angeles.

In November 2008 poker babe Cycalona (Clonie) Gowen (in picture) filed a $40 million law suit against the online poker room Full Tilt Poker and thereafter disappeared from the poker scene. Clonie was shunned by an influential section of the poker world for going against what was then a reputed and powerful organization. To make things worse for Clonie the lower federal court of Nevada District dismissed her case without trial.

Clonie’s full name is Cycalona, and not for nothing is she named after a cyclone. Quietly she had appealed against the dismissal and has won a reprieve from a federal Appeals court. The Appeals court ruled that the lower federal court had erred in dismissing Clonie’s claim against Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, and various companies connected to Full Tilt Poker. This reversal could not have come at a worse time for Full Tilt.

Clonie’s complaint was that Lederer and other Full Tilt owners asked her to represent the online poker room as a celebrity player. They had offered her a compensation of 1% of the company. According to the agreement Clonie donned the Full Tilt garb for quite some time. However, they refused to cough up the promised amount. Instead Lederer tried to convince Clonie to settle for $250k, which she refused.

The good news for Full Tilt Poker is that, despite the $150 million suit he filed, Phil Ivey is working to find a solution for their financial woes. The story goes that Ivey located a company known by the name White Knight, which was willing to bail out Full Tilt Poker. They were willing to provide the funds required for paying back the stranded online poker players belonging to Full Tilt, but they wanted a majority control in the company. Bitar and Lederer, the current majority holders, did not accept this condition and the deal fell through. It has been reported that Ivey has boarded a private plane to Dublin to meet Full Tilt executives. Therefore some sort of deal with White Knight could be in the offing. Lederer is apparently holed up underground in Las Vegas.

WSOP 2011 will kick off this weekend. There will be some notable events on the way, but ultimately the focus will be the Main Event starting on July 7. After the final table is set for the Main Event, there will be a break. Then the final table will resume in November.

The sports betting site Bet365 is among the first to release the odds for the winner of the Main Event. Right at the top is the popular favorite Phil Ivey with odds of 66/1. Next are three players with odds of 80/1. They are Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius and Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu will be thrilled to be placed ahead of rival poker professional Phil Hellmuth who has odds of 150/1. How the female poker players will fare has always been of interest. The woman with the shortest odds is not surprisingly Vanessa Selbst. She has odds of 200/1.

Other markets for the WSOP 2011 Main Event have been opened by Bet365. One of the more interesting ones is for the last woman standing. Selbst tops this with odds of 10/1. Next are Annette Obrestad, Kathy Liebert, Vanessa Rousso and Annie Duke with odds of 12/1. Poker babe Maria Ho who has been last woman standing before has odds of 20/1. Another related market is whether a female player will make the top 20 in the WSOP 2011 Main Event. The odds for this are 9/4, whereas the odds against this are 1/3.

Whereas the Main Event is the focus of the poker world, it is certainly not everything. The sports book Bodog has some interesting markets that cover the wider WSOP tournament. Both Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan are tied at 10 bracelets, just one behind the record holder Phil Hellmuth of 11 bracelets. The odds of either of Brunson and Chan winning the 11th bracelet are 5/1.

Another feature of interest is whether WSOP 2011 will throw up multiple bracelet winners. According to the odds it is likely that a player will win two bracelets but unlikely that a player will win three bracelets. At Bodog the odds that a player will win 2 or more bracelets are 1/3, whereas the odds that a player will win three or more bracelets are 5/1.

Innocuous Twitter exchanges between Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu led to the speculation that the former was contemplating giving up live tournament poker. It began when Negreanu crashed out early from the NAPT Mohegan Poker Main Event on Day One. Incidentally Vanessa Selbst took the Main Event again this year recording back to back wins. She became the only poker player to have won multiple Mohegan Poker Main Event titles.

Coming back to the story, as soon as Negreanu busted Doyle sent him some barbs on Twitter. In due course Negreanu responded by saying that Doyle must be desperately bored for Tweeting messages to players as soon as they bust. Doyle responded, “In your wildest imagination you can’t believe how bored and useless I feel. I may never go bust in another tourney, guess why?” No one expects Doyle to win every poker tournament that he takes part in. So the only logical implication is that Doyle is considering nor participating in any more live poker tournaments.

There have been some indications that Doyle is bored. Why else would he compile lists of sexiest male and female poker players? Or why would he Tweet that he wants to die while taking Liv Boeree’s thongs off with his teeth. He seems to enjoy the Beer Pong Invitational more than the WSOP Main Event. In a recent interview given to Jenny Woo, Doyle said that winning a bracelet is not important to him now as it was in the years past.

There are other factors also that may be prompting Doyle to retire from live tournament poker. He wants to focus on his online ventures including Doyles Room. He has to make sure that the online poker room is ready for America when online gambling is legalized. He is also grooming his online poker team, Team Brunson, and pushing them to center stage. Plus there are health issues. In February this year he was diagnoses with a cancerous tumor in his left arm, which was surgically removed.

But all this is mere speculation. Doyle Brunson is a fighter to the end. When he has to go, he will go with his boots on.

The seventh season of High Stakes Poker is going strong. Vanessa Selbst is generating a lot of heat there and not just at the poker tables. Since High Stakes Poker is a televised event there needs to be some spice added. This is done by the lovely hostess Kara Scott who gets personal with the players. In the “30 Seconds with Kara Scott” segment she asked everyone at the table which actor should play them in a movie about their life. The answers reveal a lot about the players. Andrew Robl and Vanessa Selbst both said Matt Damon. Phil Ruffin went with Pierce Brosnan. Bill Klein chose Robert Redford to portray him. Antonio Esfandiari selected an actor with an equally unpronounceable name – Michael Imperioli. David Peat could not make up his mind, so he gave two options – Jim Carrey and Danny DeVito.

The response that started burning the online poker forums was Vanessa wanting a man to play her in a movie. Vanessa does not hide her sexual inclinations in a closet, but even she would not have been prepared for the kind of explicit banter at Two Plus Two. One poster pointed out that it was not a question of gender, but which actor looked most like her. Another said, “She is a lesbian and obviously identifies herself in a more masculine role. Just look at the way she dresses and her mannerisms. So is it out of the question for a lesbian female who identifies strongly with masculinity to want a man to play her?” A pertinent comment was that are no “masculine looking” women in Hollywood and therefore Vanessa chose a man. A poster countered this saying, “I don’t think Damon’s masculine enough IMO”.

There was no reaction from Vanessa to these comments. She has continued to do what she is best at and that is playing poker. She is competing in the Main Event of the 2011 North American Poker Tour Mohegan Sun wearing a PokerStars patch. Vanessa won this event last year and is back to defend her title. And she is doing it in style. At the end of Day 3 she leads the chip counts with 1,406,000. The field is down to 24 and she is by far the biggest name in that list.