WSOP Madness - Tiffany Michelle and Tony G

The 2008 WSOP so far has had it's fair share of controversy, as any good WSOP seems to do so the past few years anyway. This year, poker player Tiffany "Hot Chips" Michelle had a chance to make history and become only the 2nd woman at the final table of the WSOP, plus give a huuuuuge boost to poker in general as she is well... not called "hot" chips for nothing.

Tiffany finished 17th in the 2008 WSOP, and it looks like TonyG, major share holder in pokernews also employed Tiffany as a reporter and even worked a deal to help get her in the main event, which soured when Tiffany and her agent secured a deal with Ultimate Bet for sponsorship instead of working with TonyG (PokerNews) for the sponsorship opportunities.

Tony comments in his blog:

As I thought about it all, I said to Jeff that if he put up $4K, I would put up $6K but I would have all the rights to Tiff in terms of endorsement. I know Jason and Tiff both heard me say this. Jeff immediately said yes, that he would do it. I was under a lot of pressure right then because I had run out of cash and even had to borrow money to stake her. I told Tiff that she would have to sign a contract and I wanted it understood that I wanted the rights from anything that might come of her playing and placing in this event; at the time, it was kind of like buying a lottery ticket. I was pretty excited and pumped because I had 35 players in the main event and very high hopes that some of them would do very well and win, of course I was interested in what it would all mean to PokerNews in terms of traffic and new exposure.

See more on this post on his Tony G's blog here but it looks like he is letting this go according to his post at the very bottom of Tony G's post. You can catch the discussion of this at the major forums like P5's and 2+2.

You can also listen to Tiffany Interviewed on PokerRoad.

Coming from the poker perspective, this could have been so much better had Tiffany worked out a deal with TonyG, PokerNews and Poker Stars.com as Tony says in his blog... and even better had Tiffany made the WSOP final table, it would have been like a Chris Moneymaker effect all over again.

Here is Tiffanys statement at Wickedchops who says why was she singled out to wearing only PokerNews stuff while other players had lots of logos and pokernews stuff on it as well.

Ahh, maybe next year.

*this post was by Spry, not Haley :)

Phil Laak Plays WSOP In Disguise

Phil Laak, one of pokers most interesting personalities decided to play the 2008 WSOP in disguise. He dresses up like an old man and no one knows past the entire 1st day.

Kudos to CardPlayer for a great video interview with Laak where he breakdowns all of the details that went into why he did what he did.

It's an excellent interview, talking about not only the social aspect of undergoing a professional makeup artist that was rushed in a four hour session, compared to how he had to use the 'old man' image against his poker opponents. Excellent interview and a very cool and intriguing thing from Phil Laak, one of poker most outspoken poker personalities.

Here is part 2 of the interview and here is a photo of Phil Laak in Disguise and you can discuss Phil Laak's WSOP 2008 Main Event Disguise here.