There is No 'C' in Shulman

For as long as I can remember, people have been misspelling my last name. They always spell it Schulman instead of Shulman. I usually say, "There is no 'c' in Shulman." After about a million times of saying this, I stopped and let it be. My brother, on the other hand, has considered changing his last name to Schulman to avoid the hassle. The relevance of this is that a 21-year-old by the name of Nick Schulman won the World Poker Tour event at Foxwoods and more than $2.1 million. I received phone calls for a week from a bunch of friends laughing at me for not being the first Shulman to win a WPT event. It would be a miracle if my father won before me, but what about a Shulman with a different spelling? Does that count? I decided that even though he spells it differently, and I don't know him, he won the race to victory of the S©hulmans. Good job, Nick. Do you want my job, too? Others who made the final table at Foxwoods were Anthony Licastro, Billy Gazes, Allen Cunningham, Lyle Berman, and Leonard Cortellino.



Prior to the Foxwoods tournament, the filming of Poker Superstars Invitational III took place at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas; 24 of the world's best gathered to compete in an event that had many heats, like hockey in the Olympics. They played five sixhanded matches and the top 16 players advanced. Then, there were fourhanded matches to get to the final eight, and again to get to the final four. The final four played a series of heads-up matches until someone was crowned the champion. The bonus was that the final eight players also were invited to play on NBC prior to the Super Bowl in 2007 in a $500,000 winner-take-all match. We will publish the results of this event after the matches have aired on TV. You have to love events in which you can go broke with aces a few times and still move on to the next round. That was the goal of the show.



Also in the last month, Caesars Palace hosted the Tournament of Champions from the Harrah's World Series of Poker Circuit events. A total of 114 players entered by qualifying throughout the year by cashing in different Harrah's events, and a few world champions were invited through exemptions. The $2 million freeroll paid nine places. The final nine were Brandon Adams, Keith Sexton, David Levi, Grant Lang, Steve Dannenmann (runner-up in this year's WSOP championship), Tony Bloom, Phil Hellmuth, Hoyt Corkins, and Mike Matusow. Hoyt, Phil, and Mike engaged in a long battle, with Hoyt and Mike getting heads up. After a while, Mike Matusow emerged victorious and was crowned the champion. He is on a roll and is playing some of the best no-limit hold'em that I have seen in a while. If you don't know why he is nicknamed "The Mouth," you certainly will when it is aired over Christmas weekend. It is a good thing he is funny, or else maybe it would annoy people. Good job, Mouth!