Basketball baby! Writing, and playing poker.

I'm sorry that I haven't written a new BLOG entry for three weeks or so.  It is now Tuesday, January 27 and as of right now I have an official "Facebook" page, and an official Facebook Fan Club page.   As far as my last BLOG entry goes, I changed my mind at the last minute and I bet Oklahoma (not Florida) when my expert friend told me that that was their play, ouch, oh well.  As far as business goes I am pleased to say that we are selling more and more Poker Brat Clothing (PokerBrat.com), both shirts and hats, now that we are starting to advertiseit is cool to sell them to Russia, England, USA and Australia!  As far as playing poker goes, I started a winning streak at UB (UltimateBet.com).  Every day for about eight days (until the 22nd) I went to UB with a goal, say to win $7,000, $5,000, or whatever, and the second that that happened, then I quit for the day.  I found myself hitting my goal in less than 30 minutes in all eight plays, and oftentimes I hit that goal in less than ten minutes.  Because I was playing minimal hours online, I had a ton of time to work on my auto-biography whose working title is "Poker Brat."  In the last three weeks I have written at least 27,000 words, and I now have 46,000 words in total.  I'm not kidding when I say that my hands actually hurt right now (Kinda sad).  On the 22^nd, I lost $20,000 at UB, and I decided that I needed at least one week off from playing online poker, but I'll be back soon!

As far as attending basketball games goes, I called my connection at the Stanford Athletic Department 11 days ago (Friday), and they came back to me with floor seats for Stanford-Cal the very next day.  Wow, what an honor!  The toughest ticket in the bay area, and they gave me floor seats the day before, amazing!  As I walked in on the baseline, past the student section, dozens of the students shouted my name.  I even stopped by the TV announcer table to say hello, as my old friend Barry Thompkins (Barry and I did a UB show together) was announcing the game.  It was an exciting game that came down to the wire, and Stanford won!  Even two years ago, the athletic department wouldn't take my calls, so it feels good to know that I've turned that corner.  By the way, I offered to emcee a charity poker tournament for Stanford Athletics.

But that's just the start of the basketball stuff, as I called up the Golden State Warriors, donated $2,500 to their charity (so that underprivileged kids could attend a game), and then I bought floor seats for the Atlanta Hawks, the Cleveland Cavaliers (it is a fact that LeBron James does play high stakes poker), and the San Antonio Spurs.  I brought my wife to the Atlanta game, and the Warriors won it, and she and I had a great time.  Before the game, Ronny Turiaf came over and said hello.  Ronny played for the Lakers last year, and Ronny and I hung out with Eva and Tony Parker, after a Lakers-Spurs playoff game at Eva's restaurant "Beso" in L. A.  Ronny had a couple of spectacular blocks in the game!  I brought my son Phillip to see LeBron play, and we had a great time!  Down 1 point with 5 seconds left, Cleveland threw the ball into LeBron, and he fired up a shot to win or lose the game as the buzzer went off during the flight of the ball.  He hit the shot!  Phillip and I wanted the Warriors to win, but it turned out that this was LeBrons first buzzer beater for a win in his NBA career!  Phillip cleverly said, "We were witnesses," in reference to LeBrons old commercial about the world being witnesses to his greatness.  Finally, for the Spurs game, I will meet Tony Parker and company for dinner sometime before, or after the game next Monday.  But Phillip and I were at Eva and Tony's charity poker tournament last summer, in fact I emceed it, and they managed to bring in 1,000 people to their event.  I will write this week, and I will be at UB playing some as well.