(from our November Bluff Magazinecolumn)
The Wicked Chops Poker Annual “What We’re Thankful For” Article
Every November, sometime right around Thanksgiving, the Entities who comprise Wicked Chops Poker gather around a fireplace and share stories about what we’re most thankful for in our respective lives.
Just kidding. For the most part we take absolutely everything for granted.
Except for poker. Poker has always been there for us. Need an excuse to get away from our current/first wives for a night? Poker. Need some spare coin to help fund covert guerilla wars in developing nations with the hope of spreading democracy abroad? Poker.
With that in mind, here’s this year’s edition of our “What We’re Thankful For” Article.
The 2008 World Series of Poker – This was the fourth WSOP we’ve covered and this was easily and by far our favorite. Huge hats off to Jeffrey Pollack and crew for putting together a well run operation. And while this year may have lacked good Vinnie Vinh chair cashing moments, it did have plenty of big names rising to the occasion, often being railed by girls with even bigger racks.
The 2008 WSOP Rail Birds – See previous paragraph, last sentence. We’ve seen some hot railbirds in the past, but this year’s WSOP set new standards. We even dedicated an entire section of our website (and all but one of the pictures in this article) to these amazing young women.
Sure, people questioned us if snapping photos of girls without their knowledge and posting them on our site was “ethical.” But what are ethics anyway? Ethics are just a system of morals. And what are morals? Morals are the principles or rules that enable you to make the distinction between right and wrong? So then, what exactly is “right?” And what exactly is “wrong?” All we know is if taking pictures of beautiful women and putting them up on the so-called Internet is “wrong,” then we don’t even want to know what “right” is.
Seriously though those girls were hot. (view them all again here)
Not One Ginger Punched Us in the Face – Not sure what this says about us, but two of our three “What We’re Thankful For” lists have included, “not being punched in the face.”
We had a little fun this year at the expense of gingers. For those who don’t know, gingers are red headed people with freckles, pale skin, and no soul (and actually have the capability of stealing your soul by just looking at you in the eye), like Bluff Magazine Managing Editor Lance Bradley. One of our favorite ginger gimmicks this year was a “Ginger of the Day” feature during the WSOP. For the record, we claim many a ginger as a friend. And we even had some gingers request to be gingers of the day. An overwhelming number of gingers embraced the Ginger of the Day concept. A few didn’t. Fortunately none of those people took it out on us in the form of physical retaliation. Or by looking at us in the eyes.
Nicknames Coming Through – We certainly have a knack for picking the right people to nickname. From the spectacularly-breasted J.C. Tran continuing his winning ways (and giving us dozens of excuses this year to post photos of him on our site), to “Salty” Joe Hachem being, well, salty, to David “The Dragon” Pham* giving us a chance to asterisk his name more times then we can count, what a year for our stable of nicknames. We can only look forward with eager anticipation to who will get nicknames next year—and what those people will achieve.
Less and Less People Playing on UltimateBet and Absolute Poker – Screw them. They don’t deserve another cent from any of you.**
The November Nine™ Hostages – Sometimes people get so wrapped up in their own sufferings that they forget about the plight of others. But not the Entities. Those brave souls—The November Nine—who were taken hostage by the World Series of Poker and held captive for four months, unable to access but a minimal amount of their winnings, unable to feed themselves, their families, or put a roof over their heads, they are the real heroes. They are the ones for whom we all owe a deep amount of gratitude.
* Not a real dragon.
** The views expressed by Wicked Chops Poker are not necessarily shared by Bluff Magazine.