Los Angeles Poker Classic and Beyond

LAPC is over, for a Dr. Pauly recap see here. My dream final table (picked from the final 18) unfortunately did not materialize. One of my favorites, Kristy Gazes went out 16th and Chris Bell finished 13th. Bill Edler tv-bubbled in 7th and Vincent Procopio was 8th. Paul Wasicka did make the final table and finished 4th and JC Tran played one hand of heads up to finish in 2nd place.

What's up next? Well I am gong to spend some time at the Shooting Star at Bay 101 in San Jose and then its off to Monte Carlo to cover the European Poker Grand Final for Poker News. Back to Las Vegas for the WPT Championship at Bellagio and by then it will nearly be time for the 2007 World Series of Poker. Actually I have my first WSOP article up already "90 Days and Counting."

Then its a dreaded date: July 17th, the Final Day of the 2007 Main Event. Already I have heard several of the best writers in poker talking about July 18th as the first day of whatever comes next in their lives and 'poker' is no longer on their list of career choices. The effects of UIGEA are now clear, the government has made it impossible to earn a living writing about poker. Many writers, bloggers and commentators are already gone, expect an ever accelerated line of departures after the Series this summer.

Just another consequence of the Federal Poker Prohibition; the loss of what was finally becoming a professional class of journalists covering poker from multiple and critical points of view. After the Series this year expect coverage to decline both in quantity and quality, too bad when our game was moving out of the back rooms and into the corporate offices where a different kind of watchfulness is needed.