If happy dogs make you happy, click on each picture for a bigger version. If they don’t – well, suit yourself.

That day, I was surrounded by friends as I took a giant step forward. That night, we threw a party that people still talk about.

A lot has happened in the intervening years. Some of the people who were there with us have gone on to whatever comes after all this. Others have moved on to locales less ethereal but no less distant. I’ve traveled the country and met hundreds if not thousands of new people, a small number of whom I can count among my friends. Somehow I’ve made the transition from being an online-only scribe to being one whose words also appear in print. Along with 300-million-plus other people, I’m now paying for a third war – a few metaphorical, yet no less costly, wars notwithstanding – to go with the two we were putting on our charge account at the time. And of course, the Rapture has freshly come and gone.

Most of the time it feels like this isn’t even the same world it was in 2004. There is, however, one thing that’s still exactly the same: I have the privilege of living my days and nights beside the same woman who said “I do” that sweltering day in May. Let all the other things change as much as they will, as long as I get to hold on to that.

We've waited a long time for this. (Photo: Aditya T)

Like the picture says – 13 years, 12 seasons, 1,018 regular-season games and six playoff series. That’s a long time to wait for a playoff series victory.

I watched the Nashville Predators’ Game 6 win agains the Anaheim Ducks in a treehouse overlooking Lake Charlie, the name I gave long ago to the little pond at my mother-in-law’s house where we had Charlie’s funeral. In the moments after the Predators’ win, my phone lit up with celebratory texts and calls from our mutual friends while I sat in that treehouse not 30 feet from the place where we had all gathered in June 2005 to send him off. It’s a shame he couldn’t be here to see it himself – nobody loved the Predators like Charlie Tuttle – but with all that positive energy converging in one spot, I was as close as I could get to sharing the moment with him.

I spit my faith on the city pavement
To keep a smile
I bought my legs from the US Government
To keep me in line
- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, “US Government”

Every time something bad happens to the poker industry, it seems to bounce back in solid shape. After yesterday’s bad news, I have my doubts about its resilience this time around. I don’t feel this way because I think the actions by the Department of Justice actually have any basis in law. I actually feel this way because the DOJ’s action don’t have any basis in law.

As I recall, one “feature” of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was that it made processing financial transactions for “illegal online gambling” a crime, even though the bill did not define what “illegal online gambling” actually was and no previous law had ever codified the meaning of “illegal online gambling.” Because of the lack of a definition for this supposed crime, it seems pretty obvious that the DOJ is resting its case on its long-standing opinion that online poker is illegal rather than on any words that actually made their way through the House of Representatives and the Senate before being signed into law by the President. That opinion most likely has something to do with the Wire Act of 1961 since there are few other precedents for them to rest on, despite the fact that the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has previously rejected the Wire Act’s relevance to modern online gambling.

Normally if the law says something, it matters. But when the United States federal government is the party pressing a case that goes against the law, you can toss reason and logic out the window. The federal government doesn’t play fair because it doesn’t have to play fair; after all, who is there to hold the government accountable when its citizens have long since checked out and left the governing of this nation to whomever would take it up? The DOJ is not only a player in this game, it’s also the dealer. Given the federal government’s proud mastery of the mechanic’s grip in its games, I don’t expect online poker will get anything other than a raw deal when this case is fully resolved.

In the meantime I’ll need to find a new hobby since playing ultra-low-stakes online poker is fully off-limits to me. Worse yet, the livelihood I’ve made for myself writing about the game and the people who play it is at the very least going to suffer greatly, if it’s not altogether wiped out for the foreseeable future. At least there’s a silver lining here: some assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York is probably going to make a name for himself in this case and go on to a bright political career because of it, and online poker will eventually return as an above-board business with the major Las Vegas corporations backing it (and, of course, taking ridiculous amounts of rake that nobody would stand for in today’s market). The only real question is how long the process will take – and on a much less important and much more personal level, whether I’ll stick around to see how the story ends.

Since he put his email address up there at the end of the video, I felt compelled to write to Mr. Buccigross. Here’s what I sent him:

Hi John,

I’ve been a Nashville Predators fan ever since my friend Charlie Tuttle first took me to a game downtown in the team’s third season. I was in my mid-20s then, mostly broke and taking my time finishing out a useless degree at a state school in Clarksville, Tennessee. I remember Charlie telling me about going to a few games and having a blast in the half-empty arena. Tickets were dirt-cheap and more often than not you could move from the third level to the lower bowl and find an empty seat with a better view. After a while, Charlie had begun listening to the games he couldn’t go to in person on the radio and the call-in shows afterward, watching NHL 2Night, reading prospect reports, learning everything there was to know about the team – really getting into it. It was clear he was having a blast, so it wasn’t long before he convinced me to come along for a game. Of course I had a great time. I think I’ve probably been to something like 60 or 70 Preds games in downtown Nashville since that time, easily the most time I’ve invested in a sports franchise since I was young in the 1980s and my dad punished me for what I can only assume were my crimes against humanity in a previous life by making me an Atlanta Braves fan. Thankfully I recovered from that malady long ago, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be a Predators fan decades after the team has been moved to Moose Jaw or Yellowknife and the presence of a franchise in Nashville is just a footnote in NHL history.

Back in those lean early years when human sieve Mike Dunham and little man Cliff Ronning were our best players and Cale Hulse was one of our strongest defenders, I grew to love the Preds, as did more than a few of our mutual friends. We would drive the 40 miles or so from Clarksville to Nashville just to catch games and drive back home. I got excited when the good young players we’d drafted started to show up on the ice and I could see how we were only a few years away from making the playoffs. I was giddy when they unloaded Dunham on the spendthrift Rangers and gave my all-time favorite Predator, Tomas Vokoun, the starting job in goal. I remember the thrill when the Preds made the playoffs for the first time in 2004, and the unbelievable intensity of the Gaylord Entertainment Center when I caught Nashville’ second-ever home playoff game and watched Vokoun carry the team to a 3-0 win in his finest hour. (Charlie had caught history in person two days before when we beat the Wings 3-1 for the team’s first playoff victory.)

Perhaps most vividly, I recall the satisfaction of moving back to the Nashville area after two years in Knoxville and buying season tickets with my new wife and Charlie, right up at the front of the upper bowl – they had such a fantastic view! We got to tour the arena, meet Terry Crisp (who has GIGANTIC hands) and some of the coaching staff, check out the locker rooms and the ice – it was fantastic. Then that satisfaction was shredded into disappointment when the team’s then-owner, Craig Leipold, decided to push the league for the player lockout. To say the following year was a letdown would be a world-class understatement. We got the chance to catch an AHL matchup and some NCAA Division II hockey during what should have been the most exciting Nashville Predators season ever, and we even caught some ECHL “action” during a trip to Atlantic City in March of 2005. (Our heckling of Johnstown’s goalie from the glass and his subsequent meltdown in the third period – in two consecutive games in a 24-hour period, no less – is still a legend in my mind.) But Leipold’s “business decision” meant that Charlie never saw any more NHL hockey: he died of complications from osteosarcoma in June of that year at the age of 26, just a month and a half before the league concluded its new CBA with the players.

I caught a few games the next season, but it wasn’t the same without Charlie. It took me a while to regain a sense of excitement about the game and the team after the disappointment of losing him and them so closely together. But when the interest and excitement returned I had finally moved to Nashville and the team was beginning its respectable run of playoff appearances, giving me something to hang on to even if the experience was different than it had been in the early years. I’m not going through the archives to try to confirm this or anything, but I don’t really recall anyone in the major press thinking the Preds had a shot in any of their matchups with the Wings, Sharks or Blackhawks. (I thought they had a fantastic chance last year after watching from the upper bowl as they made the ‘Hawks look ridiculous in Game 3 last spring, but then it was all downhill from there.) So today when I pulled up your “vlogumn” today and saw you picked the Predators to beat the Ducks in 7, I felt compelled to write to you.

I’m sure there have been a few random picks of the Preds in a given playoff series over their last five trips to the playoffs, but I don’t remember any of them coming by anyone of your renown in a year where I actually thought they had a solid chance. It’s going to be a tough series, to be sure, but when you unexpectedly said “Preds in 7″ instead of everyone else’s “Ducks in 6″ I got all warm and fuzzy and reminiscent and willing to take 30 minutes to write an email to a guy I’ve never met. So thanks, John, for picking the Preds to win. It doesn’t mean a thing to most of the world, but Charlie would’ve loved it and knowing that makes me really happy.

Jason Kirk

Nashville, TN

“The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.” – Kurt Vonnegut

I’m not going to get rich playing them, but they’re good cheap entertainment. I think one of my favorite things about them is that there’s almost never time for people to use the chatbox. Some people still use it, of course, but their comments are rarely seen by their intended targets. And pretty often the things they say are ridiculous enough to make me chuckle, like the other day when I got called a “luckbox” by the guy who shoved preflop with sevens only to run into my tens.

The upshot is that I almost never see any of the words below, with the exception of maybe a “lol” here and there – it’s like the online equivalent of wearing headphones in a live poker room and that makes for a pretty smooth, enjoyable experience.

FULL SIZE: Full Tilt Poker Game Chat Cloud

Pretty soon this will be just another memory.

I read just a little while ago that the Sahara hotel and casino out in Las Vegas is closing down. I can’t say I’m surprised to hear the news. The Sahara was already in the late stages of decline when I first made my first trip to Vegas in 2004, decades after members of the Rat Pack made it one of their regular drink-filling stations on the Strip and almost as long after The Beatles stayed there.

I do have fond memories of the place, though, namely playing in the cheap daily poker tournaments there. So far as your low-end Vegas tourneys go, the Sahara’s were about as good a value as you could hope for. Not that I ever did particularly well in any of the ones I played, mind you – like most of my Vegas tournament experiences, the Sahara ones usually ended with some variation on the old good-decision-bad-result. My good memories of the Sahara are much more about the quality time spent with friends there. When we took Charlie Tuttle on his poker pilgrimage to Vegas in ‘05 we trekked from our lodgings at the Westward Ho! – which preceded the Sahara in oblivion just a few years ago – to play in one of the dailies. In 2008 as the WSOP was getting going the PokerListings crew hit up the daily and, IIRC, Marty Derbyshire ended up making the final table. And of course there were a few trips to the Sahara during poker blogger gatherings – never a common destination, but rather the kind of place where four or five hardy souls who just wanted to break away from the pack could find a little action.

Vegas isn’t a regular destination for me these days so I doubt I’ll make my way back to the Sahara before its doors are closed for good in May. It’s okay – I never had a lot of luck there anyway, and online poker is a lot lighter on my meager bankroll for a good tourney fix – but I still thought it was worth noting the passing of another locale from my memories of Vegas.

Poker's 2010 world champ, Jonathan Duhamel. (Photo: Rob Gracie / GreasieWheels)

Last year I had the pleasure of talking with two-time WPT and three-time WSOP final tablist Soheil Shamseddin for a feature I wrote about him in Bluff Magazine. (You can check out that article here.) Since that time I’ve occasionally received emails from Soheil imparting some piece of interesting information or another. On Monday evening, just hours before Jonathan Duhamel sat down across from John Racener to play out the final phase of his world championship run, I got this email from Soheil with the subject line “Is it destiny? :-)”:

Day 2 of the main event, Jonathan Duhamel was in seat 9, I was in seat 2… Since I had position on him all day, I put a lot of pressure on him all day long…

Late in the day 2, I had more chips than him, I was on the button, everyone folded to Jonathan in the high jack position and he opened with a raise… I reraised on the button with J9 off, blinds folded, Jonathan called with TT spade/club.

flop came J92, two diamonds… giving me top 2.

He bet, I raised, he called.

turn came 4 of diamond, I have 9 of diamond in my hand for top 2 plus flush draw… He checked, I over bet the pot by going all-in.

He went in the tank for nearly 5 minutes. He then elected to call with pocket 10’s, both black… I turned my cards over, and he almost mucked since he saw he was drawing dead to 10 of heart, cause 10 of diamond would give me the flush… As dealer announced all-in and a call, Jonathan gathered his stuff and started walking out of the amazon… He was several table away, walking walking walking…

Well…. can you guess what the river was… lol

I’ve never considered myself the sort of person who believes in the concept of destiny. There have been times in poker tournaments, though – Jamie Gold’s 2006 WSOP Main Event run in particular comes to mind – when I’ve watched somebody run over the field with abandon and paused for at least a moment to wonder how they’re able to do it. Anyone who watched Duhamel’s WSOP run this year on ESPN had to wonder the same thing as he spiked one-, two- and three-outers galore to keep his hopes of a world championship alive. And as Soheil’s story shows, Duhamel enjoyed incredible good fortune even when the cameras weren’t watching. It’s not enough to make me believe in destiny, but it’s definitely interesting to think about on a lazy Friday.