I’m a little surprised more poker bloggers haven’t written about last night’s WPT Invitational. It was one of the most bizzare games I’ve seen that wasn’t online. That Unibomber kid, Phil Laak, is insane. He starts the final table the short stack with $110,000 and ends up winning the tournament. This guy was going all-in with almost any crappy hand and somehow he would hit! Poor John Juanda who started off as the chip leader looked like he was going to cry after he made good call after good call and watched other players outdraw him.
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But Laak, this guy is the Happy Gilmore of poker. He’s running around the table doing the dinosaur dance, going around behind the dealer so he can see the cards before they fully flip over, and rooting for his opponent to make their hand (the theory being whatever he wishes for won’t happen). What a character and what a maniac player. He’s also the perfect poster child for the fish. They see him doing sit ups while the cards are being flopped or running around the table doing laps and they think “Wow, this guy is cool.” They see him going in with A2o and winning and they think they can do it too. The Moneymaker fans tried to become serious poker players, the Unibomber fans are just going to play like total maniacs. Keep your eye out for screen names like Unikid or BobBomber. Those are going to be some sweet games.

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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
