On Winning

I have a lot of "acquaintances" in the poker community, but there are only a few people outside of the media that I would consider "friends." Two of these friends have won their first bracelet during this WSOP--Steve Sung and Greg "Full Blown Tilt" Mueller.

Steve and I became friends about a year ago because we share a common faith. Steve is one of the best all-around tournament players in the game; I think he has WSOP final tables and only one of them is in no-limit. It was a fairly impressive feat to win the 6,000 player "stimulus special"; there are sooooo many bullets you have to dodge in that kind of tournament. After losing his first couple pots at the final table, he put on an absolute clinic as he made all the right moves and all the right bets and virtually ran over his competition. He then went on to finish in 3rd place in the 10k 2-7 no-limit singledraw, and just missed another final table in the 2.5k PLO.

I met FBT in a 10-20NL game at the Bellagio during the 2006 WSOP; he's been buying pieces of me in events ever since. In '06, he finished in 2nd place to MrSmokey1 in the mixed holdem event, and after another runner-up finish in '07 his BC buddies started all kinds of needling about not being able to take one down. He plays in the biggest mixed games you'll find outside of Bobby's Room, so it's no surprise that he final-tabled a stud event and just won the 10k LHE event.

Anyway, congratulations to both Steve and FBT for bringing home some man-jewelry.