The Show(s) is UP: Johnny Chan/Mama Grinder

It's a poker kind of week around here, so we grabbed the legend Johnny Chan for a chat and he let loose on Harrah's for taking a cut of the WSOP pot. Then, of course, I chatted with Susan Laufer, mother of the four Mizrachi sons who cashed in the WSOP Main Event. You decide which is more fascinating. Click on the date below to listen or right-click to download and listen at your leisure or subscribe via iTunes or Zune.

July 19: Johnny Chan's WSOP Complaint
Special: Mama Grinder Explains Mizrachi Mania

The current generation of professional poker players generally have little regard for those who ruled the game prior to the big boom, except when it comes to at least one guy: Johnny Chan. That’s because Chan was the champ who appeared as the idol successfully bluffed by Matt Damon’s character in “Rounders,” the seminal 1998 poker flick frequently credited with inspiring thousands of young people to take up the game. Chan, the last player to win back-to-back World Series of Poker Main Event championships 22 years ago, was back in the news this week when appeared briefly in the top 10 in this year’s tournament before hitting a few bad beats and busting out in 156th place. The outspoken pro spoke to Steve this hour about why he’s unhappy with the current management of the World Series, why he was unimpressed by Phil Laak’s recent 115-hour poker-playing spree and why he’s never played a hand of cards at Aria.

In Banter: Steve’s new boob job, it’s fucking hot, Veer opens, South Point expands and thoughts on the Vegasness of Top Chef and Holly’s World.

Links to stuff discussed:

Johnny Chan’s website
The Johnny Chan-Matt Damon video clip from Rounders
Steve’s piece for AOL News on the 2010 World Series of Poker’s final table
The special edition the Strip with the mother of the Mizrachi brothers
The R-J’s coverage of the opening of Veer
The website for Holly’s World
The Top Chef profile of Stephen Hopcraft of Sea Blue at MGM Grand
The image of the chefs on that Mandalay Place wall and the chalk Justin Bieber worship
The Las Vegas Sun on the expansion at Suncoast
WSJ blog on Steve Wynn buying the Plaza Hotel
Steve’s AOL News coverage of Phil Laak’s 115-hour poker feat

New Times 4 Strip/Petcast... & Johnny Chan!

OK. We're shifting the schedule, possibly permanently, to accommodate Miles' working a lot of weekends. So, starting tomorrow, The Strip is live at noon PT and The Petcast is live at 1 p.m. PT at LVRocks.Com.

This week's guest on "The Strip" is two-time WSOP champ and "Rounders" star Johnny Chan, who had a remarkable run in this year's Main Event and finished up 159th out of 7,319. The legend has some tart words for the corporatization of poker, is dismissive of Phil Laak's recent 115-hour poker-playing stunt and fondly recalls his recently departed friend, Bob Stupak.

Then, on The Petcast, we'll chat first with Stephanie Hoefener, a board member for Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue which this week bought 172 wild horses to save them from slaughter. Then we talk to journalist Jason Cochran, who had a piece on WalletPop.Com comparing the costs of having dogs and cats.

Join us live at LVRocks.Com to listen live, see us via webcam and join us in the chat. You can also listen via mobile device. Or you wait for the podcast version, of course, and subscribe via iTunes or Zune to The Petcast or to The Strip in iTunes or Zune.

Poker Needs A Superstar

My diagnosis of what ails professional poker as the WSOP opens today, from the Las Vegas Weekly:

The World Needs A Poker Star
Competitive-game fans want someone to admire
BY STEVE FRIESS

A few weeks ago, I was one of millions of Americans who got sucked into watching something on TV that I ordinarily would never, ever care about.

It was a Monday, I was overdue on more than one assignment—including that week’s Strip Sense entry—and I don’t usually watch sports on TV anyway. But the human drama of a hobbled Tiger Woods somehow managing one amazing comeback after another in the U.S. Open was so compelling that it even made watching privileged people using a crooked metal stick to hit a small white ball across a water-guzzlingly lush and exclusive private park worth my attention.

That said, had it not been for Tiger, such a close match with such great heroics surely wouldn’t have drawn my interest.

And that is the probably insurmountable problem that ails the World Series of Poker as its most prestigious event begins this weekend: There are no transcendent stars. What’s more, thanks to the very same factors that earlier this decade turned the WSOP into one of the fastest-growing professional competitive events— how’s that for avoiding the word “sport”?—of our time, there also never will be.

“You can’t buy your way onto an NBA court; you can’t buy your way onto an NFL field,” said Jeffrey Pollack, WSOP executive director. “You can, however, enter the World Series of Poker and potentially walk away as a world champion. We offer a brand of hope that’s more accessible than any other global sports brand.”

Well, that’s great, but where does that leave poker? Without mystique, that’s where. With nobody who has ever attained the same household-name status of a Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan or Andre Agassi. Ask any group of 55-year-old women emerging from a third viewing of Sex and the City, and they’ll all know who each is.

Ask the same people who Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey or Johnny Chan are; very few will know. Try Joe Hachem, Jamie Gold and Jerry Yang, the most recent three multimillionaire winners of the WSOP’s $10,000 buy-in No-Limit Texas Hold ’Em tournament—aka the Main Event—and expect the blankest of stares.

Being a victim of one’s own success is a cliché, but there is no better way to explain why TV ratings have been in decline for the WSOP. The meteoric rise in the fascination with poker in general and its richest tournament in particular boiled down to the notion, borne of the boom in Internet poker that turned every Midwest frat boy and bored Silicon Valley code geek into a rounder, that everyone is equal at the table. TV poker shows became so popular even my teenage niece watched, a sure indicator of fad status.

The allure was simple: Anyone can win. Even me.

And yet here’s the problem: Anyone can win. Even whatsisname.

Read the rest HERE