Wiffle, Rivers, and The Nuts

I’m on a plane this morning to Vegas and can’t wait to get started on the 2009 WSOP.

It’s amazing to think what my life has been like in the year since I went to the Rio for my first Main Event. At the time, I didn’t even have a passport. Since then, thanks to my third-place finish and all the publicity that came with it, I’ve racked up over 140,000 frequent flyer miles in trips to poker tournaments in England, Monaco, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay — not to mention Atlantic City, Los Angeles, and lots of others in the US.

My schedule is already filling up. A couple of hours after I get off the plane, I’ll do a photo shoot for something or other (I can’t keep all of this straight). Then this afternoon, I’ll shoot The Orel Hershiser Wiffle Ball Challenge, in which the great pitcher will take on me, Greg Raymer, Joe Hachem, Hevad Khan, Chris Moneymaker, and Vanessa Rousso. Orel says he can make the wiffle ball dance so much that we’ll be lucky to foul off one ball out of ten. I hear that one of my PokerStars colleagues is bringing along a Fred Flintstone bat to even up the odds.

After that, I’’ll head to the Hard Rock for a great charity event for Refugees International that Annie Duke has put together called “Sucking Out on the Rivers.” It’s a shot at her “Celebrity Apprentice” opponent, Joan Rivers, who was so ugly and smarmy and said some not-very-nice things about poker players. Annie has hired about 20 Joan Rivers impersonators (including Vegas legend Frank Marino), and put a bounty on their heads in today’s tournament. It should be fun.

A few weeks ago, when Norman Chad was on my radio show, we talked about his “The Nuts” segments on ESPN’s WSOP telecasts, in which he goes heads-up with a poker pro, asking questions while trying to distract them with some athletic endeavor. I guess that’s what led to me being invited to do one of the segments, which we’re going to tape tomorrow morning. I have no idea what they have planned for me.

Then, finally, at noon tomorrow I’ll get to sit down at a poker table with a couple hundred of the best in the world to play the $40K event and kick off my World Series Of Poker for this year.

A little prop action: my radio co-host, Paul Harris, asked me last night for my over/under on the number of players we’ll get in three events. For the $40K, I set the number at 182 (he took the over). For the $1K event on Saturday, I put it at 4,048 (he took the under). And for the main event this year, I think we’ll beat last year’s total of 6,844, and I made the number 7,411 (he took the under). What do you think? E-mail me your picks at dennisphillipspoker@gmail.com.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress through the WSOP, so check back here often!

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