DOYLISM OF THE DAY: "Criticizing someone else's garden doesn't keep the weeds out...

DOYLISM OF THE DAY: "Criticizing someone else's garden doesn't keep the weeds out of your own."

This 700 billion dollar bailout doesn't seem to be changing anything. The stock market keeps going down and banks keep going under. The culprits are being rewarded at the taxpayer's expense. Lehman Brothers went under after awarding 50 billion dollars in options and bonus money to their top executives last year. Why can't the government step in and reclaim that money? The banks that tried to be prudent and make good loans are being punished along with the banks that knew they were making terrible loans. I taught Money and Banking at a University in Texas when I was a graduate student. I remember in our textbook a quote, "Bankers are someone who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining but wants it back the minute it starts to rain." Now, nobody has money to loan to the business people that need it. I don't know what the government is going to do now.

CNN says that Senator Obama is already measuring the drapes in the White House. It does look like he is a shoo-in for the presidency even though there is lots of talk about his association with terrorists, him being a Muslim and some folks saying he is the Anti-Christ. While all these things are taken to the extreme, we shouldn't ignore that Obama didn't use good judgment about his professor, his friends and his spiritual advisors. As far as him being the Anti-Christ, forget that because he doesn't fit the prophecies. The Anti-Christ is coming out of the old Roman Empire which includes Iran, Iraq, Germany, Turkey and other countries in the Middle East. I still haven't made up my mind who to vote for but I'm tempted to vote for McCain. After listening to my poker pals about me supporting George W. Bush in a big way and how bad he has been; if Obama turns out to be a lousy president, I can tell them, "I told you so!" Whatever happens, I hope our country can recover and gain some respect back for all of us.

I went to the Venetian and went through a rehearsal for the "Real Deal", a show that starts October 21st. It went very well with Scotty Nguyen and myself playing poker with six members of the audience. All the rest of the audience can play along with handheld devices that can call or fold. Prizes are given all through the show to the top scorers. Merv Adelson is the producer of the show and has a very professional team out of Los Angeles. The pros that will be in these bi-weekly shows are Scotty, Jennifer Harman, Eli Elezra, Todd Brunson, Gavin Smith, Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu and myself. Kenna James and Lacey Jones introduce each show and pick the folks out of the audience to play. We are going to have a lot of fun with this.

I saw where Daniel was bragging about some of the young poker players' accomplishments. A lot has been made about the number of entries in the old days and some of the older guys' records can't mean as much. Well, a final table is a final table and in the "old days" the field was thinner but tougher. So when you judge from that, John Moss was at 22 WSOP final tables, won eight with two seconds. How about this one, Billy Baxter has been at 11 WSOP final tables, won 7 times with one second. I've been at 21 final WSOP tables, won 10 and have two seconds and three thirds. Some of us dinosaurs could close the deal also.

Caddie: Sir, why do you play so much golf?

Daniel: There is absolutely nothing else to do in Las Vegas.

-DB