Liv Boeree - Liv Forever

Getting To Know Absolute Poker’s Latest Beauty, Liv Boeree

Phil Hellmuth and David “Devilfish” Ulliott took Liv Boeree’s virginity.

There, now that we’ve got your attention, allow us to explain. Boeree was one of five “poker virgins” picked to appear on a U.K. poker reality TV show in 2005, with the inexperienced newbies learning the game from such pros as Hellmuth and Ulliott. Just 21 at the time, Boeree, a model from Kent, England, quickly got hooked on Texas Hold ’Em and soon found herself playing tournaments throughout Britain—and doing extremely well for herself. And just like that, a career in poker was born.

Boeree won the Ladbrokes European Ladies Championship in May 2008 and is now a representative of Absolute Poker, where she plays as a bounty in tournaments every Thursday.

Poker wasn’t Boeree’s first love, of course; that would be heavy metal music. A guitarist since her teens, Liv once won a $4,000 Gibson in an air guitar competition. She’s also a talented athlete (horseback riding and skiing ranking among her top athletic passions), and she’s plenty educated, having graduated from the University of Manchester with a first-class degree in astrophysics.

But it’s poker that she’s pursuing a degree in now, and win or lose (though she’s certainly doing more of the former than the latter), Liv Boeree is definitely not a virgin anymore.

Tiffany Michelle Pops Her Cherry

Diary Of A Blackjack Virgin — By Tiffany Michelle

(note: Since writing this article for ALL IN, Tiffany has gone on to place 17th at the 2008 WSOP Main Event, winning $334,534.00)

WHEN I GOT THE CALL TO BE A CELEBRITY GUEST on the latest season of the World Series of Blackjack on GSN, I was pretty excited. I couldn’t wait to take a crack at that million-dollar prize pool and, as a naturally competitive person with a card-playing history, blackjack seemed right up my alley. But in the midst of all my excitement I suddenly realized, I’m a poker player. I’ve never played a blackjack tournament before in my life! What am I doing?!

Granted, with all the casinos I frequent throughout the year on the poker circuit I wasn’t a complete stranger to the blackjack tables. Some of you may know me from my work with Pokernews (and other gaming news outlets) interviewing some of the top players in the gambling community, so I certainly had a head start over other blackjack novices. Ultimately, though, blackjack is just not poker.

Bottom line is, I had never diligently applied myself to this game and didn’t have any clue what tournament blackjack was all about, so a crash session was definitely in order. I quickly brushed up on my basic strategy, picked up the recommended Wong strategy book, crammed in a tourney blackjack session with friend Joe Reitman to explain this whole Elimination Blackjack concept to me, and packed my bags for Vegas.

Poppin’ The (Blackjack) Cherry
My showing at the WSOB wasn’t terrible. My first goal as a blackjack virgin was just not to be the first person eliminated from my table! I managed to make it down to the final three players (and even had the chip lead going into the final hand), but as fate would have it, the dealer had other plans and I came up one seat short of blackjack glory. Okay, maybe “blackjack glory” isn’t what was at stake, but I take my games seriously.

My experience in film and TV was helpful in preparing me for the bright lights and cameras that so many other players become disabled by, but I had other demons lying in wait. To be honest, as a non-math-nerd, I was mildly terrified of blackjack, what with stories of the MIT brainiacs, strategy books filled to the brim with charts and percentages, and too much time spent around the likes of “Hollywood” Dave Stann (who, despite the crazy punkish exterior, is a Mensa-certified human calculator). But after dipping my toes in the water at the WSOB and not ending up a complete loser, I quickly became determined to conquer my fears of mathematical inadequacy and take baby steps toward blackjack.

So I jumped on the tournament blackjack circuit and played every event I could. There may be several methods of learning and perfecting one’s game, but there’s just something to be said for practical experience. At the first blackjack tournament I played post-WSOB, for instance, I was ecstatic to have advanced all the way to the quarterfinals—only to surrender myself out of the entire tournament! Needless to say, I learned a practical (and painful) lesson that day that no book could have taught me. After spending the whole past year playing as much as I could, from UBT events at the Venetian and Barona to online blackjack tourneys, I’ve experienced many other hard lessons as well. But my game has never been better.

Turning The Tables
After a whirlwind year in blackjack, I’ve come to find that it’s actually pretty simple. I quickly discovered that I didn’t have to be a bona fide blackjack expert to show winning results in tournaments because (shhh, don’t tell anyone else) the majority of players out there are really bad! Average Joes who sign up for a blackjack tourney on a whim while vacationing in Vegas—or who decide to play an online tourney using the same “lucky system” they use at the blackjack tables—just don’t have a clue.

So if you have any concept of general tournament strategy or even basic blackjack strategy, you’re already a step ahead of the game. When I began playing online, I could practically min-bet my way through an entire tournament, letting all the clueless Average Joes self-destruct on their own. I would come out looking like a blackjack hero, but really I just let all the bad players eliminate themselves … leaving me on top to cash time and time again.
I’ve been very surprised (and relieved) to find that tournament blackjack parallels my already established poker background in many ways. If you understand poker tourney strategy you have a huge advantage simply because you instinctually understand concepts like playing your position, chip management, and psychology. These are concepts that the average gambling junkie convinced he’s a great player is not likely to come equipped with.

Hungry For More?
At the end of my rookie year in blackjack, this is how I’d sum it up:

1. If you’re afraid of the foreign waters of tournament blackjack, don’t be such a baby—just dive in, you might be surprised to find that you’re already more prepared than you think.

2. People are morons, especially many of the ones drawn to blackjack who are convinced that winning has more to do with lucky vibes and feelings than just cold, hard strategy. So prey off those novices just as you do in poker and claim your own blackjack glory at their expense.

3. Don’t be intimidated by the math nerds trying to spook you away from the game. Even non-math-nerds can still take down a blackjack tourney by means of basic strategy, practice, and an understanding of concepts behind those scary numbers and percentage signs.
There are first times for everything, but just like losing your virginity in certain other activities, blackjack may be kind of awkward at first but I promise you, the more you do it, the more you’ll like it.

When Tiffany “Hot Chips” Michelle isn’t burning up the felt, she can usually be found hosting and commentating for various poker media outlets. She’s most recognized for her WSOP and EPT coverage with Pokernews, and can be found online at TiffanyMichelle.com.

Victoria Thornton - From Playboy To Poker

A revealing look at Ultimate Aces.com spokesmodel Victoria Thornton

IF THE ACE OF SPADES is, as ESPN’s Norman Chad likes to say, “the prettiest card in the deck,” then Victoria Thornton is the living, breathing equivalent of the ace of spades. If there’s anyone involved with the world of poker with comparable ability to make men’s tongues drag on the ground, we haven’t seen her yet.
Victoria first entered the public consciousness in 2005, when, as a student at Arizona State University, she was discovered by Playboy and asked to grace the gatefold cover of the October issue. Just a few months later, she was back again, representing every frat boy’s dream on the cover of the January/February 2006 “college girls” edition.
Now 21, Victoria has made the transition from Playboy to the new national pastime, poker. Hers is the beautiful face of UltimateAces.com, a new poker lifestyle site that is changing the way poker and partying go together. You’ll be seeing plenty more of her in the months to come as the UltimateAces.com girl, but here’s an eye-opening look to get your mouth watering …

Who’s your favorite poker player?
“I admire Annie Duke, because of what she’s done for women in poker, what she’s doing off the tables and in front of Congress. And I’m a big fan of Phil Hellmuth. I kind of have a crush on him, to be honest. But I think Mike Matusow is probably a better poker player, I’ve seen him get the better of Phil a lot of times. That bluff with 8-3 at the Tournament of Champions in 2005, that was classic. I’m a huge fan of Phil, but you have to say Mike The Mouth is the better player right now.”

Who are your favorite Hollywood poker players?
“I’d have to say Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. They’re both attractive, and I love Rounders. And they were a big part of the Ante Up For Africa tournament, which was a fantastic charity event.”

Did appearing in Playboy make you feel like a celebrity?
“When I went to ASU, people would come up to me all the time and ask me to sign autographs. And when I would go out, people would notice me. I think it’s fun to be famous, but only to a certain point. I wouldn’t want to have paparazzi following me. I don’t want to be Britney Spears.”

Could you be convinced to play strip poker?
“I’m open for everything. But I’ve been brushing up on my game lately, and I’m confident that I would end up with some clothing still on. But if I’m wrong about that, hey, it wouldn’t be the first time I put everything on display … ”

What can we expect from you at UltimateAces.com?
“I’ll have a blog on the site, I’ll be at all of the parties and events, and I’ll be participating in exclusive online challenges. I love poker—I’ve played at the Playboy Mansion and I love playing online. It’s exciting to be a part of the poker world now with UltimateAces.com.”

GET TO KNOW … VICTORIA THORNTON
Age: 21
Hometown: Scottsdale, Arizona
Pets: Two Chihuahuas, Grizzly and Tipsy (“They’re boyfriend and girlfriend!”)
Favorite Sports: Basketball and tennis
Most adventurous hobby: Skydiving (“I just love it, it’s such a rush!”)
Career ambition: Becoming an actress (“I just signed on for a lead role in a film called GPS”)

Serinda Swan - Pokers Hottest Babe

An up-close look at Serinda Swan, a knockout among poker spokesmodels.

WHEN SERINDA SWAN’S THEN-BOYFRIEND opened up an account with Absolute Poker in 2006, and Serinda started playing alongside him and getting hooked on Texas Hold ’Em, she had no idea how perfect her timing was. Just a couple of months later, Absolute began auditioning for a spokesmodel, and Serinda had a leg up on the competition because she actually knew a thing or two about online poker.

“At the audition, they were putting in some poker terminology to test people, like ‘You can satellite in for only two dollars’,” she recalled. “And I remember sitting out in the hallway and listening to a couple of girls being like, ‘I don’t get it, why do we need satellites?’ Honestly, that’s a very common thing to say; if you don’t know about poker, the first thing you’re going to think about is the satellites in the sky. But still, I knew I had a huge advantage. My knowledge of poker gave me confidence. Whenever you go into a room of people who all know a certain subject and you’re pretending that you do, your confidence level will never be as high as it should.”

Serinda nailed the audition and became “the Absolute Poker girl,” adding that to a resume that also includes appearances in movies such as Loch Ness and TV series such as Exes And Ohs. She’s also since gone on to become a Guess jeans model—and a respectable poker player who has her very own $1/$2 No-Limit table every Sunday from 2 p.m.-4 p.m. Eastern time at Absolute.

But before you try to take her money, maybe you should learn a little more about her …

How has your game advanced since getting the job with Absolute?
Well, on The Best Damn Poker Show, they showed all of my terrible hands. I was so upset, I got so many MySpace messages, saying, “At least you’re pretty, because you can’t play.” But in general, I’ve gotten my game up pretty well. There’s a difference between being able to play poker and being able to play poker very well. I can play poker. I’m learning the tricks. When I first started, my strategy was limited to “best hand wins,” and I’ve since learned about pot odds and continuation bets, things like that. So I’m starting to apply basic theory to my play.

Do you typically play cash games or tournaments?
I’m better at cash games. It’s instant gratification. When I win a pot, I win a pot, I can leave. I like that a little bit better. But I’m trying to work on my tournament game right now, but I’m not really aggressive with blinds, so I’ve had to learn how to not get blinded out and how to be more aggressive when the blinds go up. In cash games, you can take your time. You don’t have to play a bad hand just because the clock’s ticking.

Do you play live also?
I play online mostly, but I’m in Vegas a lot, so I do tend to play when I’m there. Also, there’s a good poker scene here in Vancouver. I get together with friends and have little home games. And there are a few good casinos near here too, so I take my stepmother, we take a couple hundred dollars down and just go play.

How long have you been modeling?
I started modeling when I was 14. I stayed on that route until I was 18, when I quit, I just kind of got out of the industry. I felt like it was a little too focused on looks and weight and all that fun stuff, so I just figured I should probably go through the next year or two of my life without a weight constraint on me. I decided I was just going to take some time off, and if in a year or so I still fit for modeling, after I found out how I’m naturally going to develop, then awesome. And if not, I’d go do something else. And during that time, I actually got into acting, and I’ve done a few movies and television shows. But lately, it’s taken a turn back to modeling, including signing on with Guess as one of their models. It’s an interesting dynamic right now; I’m trying to figure out what I want to do, whether it’s modeling or acting or hosting, or if I can combine all of those together.

You recently started blogging. How are you finding that to be?
It’s interesting. I’ve never blogged before, but Absolute Poker wanted me to. It’s fun, it’s a great way of just letting loose and talking about your life and letting people get an insight into what I’m doing and what’s going on. It’s just a way for people to get to know me a bit better.

Do you find blogging therapeutic?
Absolutely, you just can let go. A lot of the time, Absolute wants me to write about poker, but most people are coming on my blog just to read about my life and what’s going on; if you want a real poker blog, you’re going to go to Phil Hellmuth or Annie Duke or Mark Seif. You’re not going to go to someone who’s like, “So I was on a $1/$2 table last night, and my pot was $75 and I took it down.” Obviously it’s a little more exciting when it’s higher denominations. But I find it really therapeutic, I can get things off my chest.

What hobbies do you have outside of poker?
Well, I’m extremely active. I have a dog that I take hiking and on runs, and he’s got all his buddies that he goes and plays with. My life very much revolves around my dog, Buddha. But apart from that, I recently started pole dancing classes, which are unbelievable, it’s aerobic, I go to this great place here in Vancouver. You learn how to pole dance, it’s a great workout, but there’s no stripping involved. Guys are like, “Oh, really, how interesting,” thinking that I’m training to be a stripper. I’m like, “No, no, no, hold on.” It’s just a really fun, liberating way to work out, and sometimes I go for three hours, and you’re having so much fun you don’t even notice how hard you’re working out, and then you wake up the next morning and you can’t move!

What qualities do you look for in a man?
I love a funny guy, a guy who can make me laugh, who doesn’t take life too seriously, who is an intellectual—I’m all about the brains. And tall, dark, and handsome doesn’t hurt.

GET TO KNOW … SERINDA SWAN

Age: 23
Hometown: Vancouver, British Columbia
Height: 5’9”
Weight: 125
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue
Pets: Buddha, a French bulldog
Favorite Poker Pros: Phil Hellmuth (“I’ve been working closely with him lately, and he’s such a great guy all-around”), Daniel Negreanu (“Because he’s Canadian like I am”), Phil Ivey (“I just think he’s an awesome player”)

Lisa Dergan

A Revealing Look At The Queen Of Poker Royale

By Matthew Armstrong

THE NEW SIDELINE REPORTER for GSN’s Poker Royale series is not just “another pretty face.” For starters, “pretty” isn’t the correct adjective, “another” seems ordinary, and, well, “face” is a little too narrow for Playboy’s Miss July 1998. But Lisa Dergan is also a seasoned broadcast sports journalist who primarily covered football and golf for a nationwide audience before delving into poker.

The golf game she honed as a child was the key to kickstarting her broadcast career. While playing in golf tournaments, Dergan met producers from the television station KCBS in Los Angeles and joined the broadcast team for the live telecasts of the entire 2001 NFL season. She has since been a sportscaster with Fox Sports Net, interviewing such notable athletes as Charles Barkley, Tiger Woods, and John Elway, and is a correspondent for Best Damn Sports Show, Period. The magazine Stuff recently bestowed her with the honor of “sexiest sportscaster.”

For all of her sports broadcasting gigs, Dergan was able to draw on her experience as either a player or an avid fan. This was not the case with poker, which she admits presented new challenges.

“It was like anything, you just have to immerse yourself completely in the subject until you learn it,” said Dergan. “With poker, the most difficult thing was just trying to learn the lingo. It has a language all its own.” Dergan is playing some poker now, mostly with friends and neighbors, and says she’s caught a bit of the poker bug. So who knows? Maybe down the road she’ll be playing in the high-stakes games instead of reporting on them. Certainly, the pros would welcome the chance to gaze across the felt at her under the guise of trying to discern her tells. With Dergan at the table, just about every guy in the room would develop a Howard Lederer stare in a hurry.

Queen Elizabeth

With a stunning run at the Heads-Up Championship, Shannon now has to be taken seriously
BY JONATHAN GROTENSTEIN

BARRY GREENSTEIN IS BEING PUT TO THE TEST.
He takes another look at the five cards on the board: a pair of sixes and a K-Q-J combo that, when added to the A-10 in the hole, completes his ace-high straight. A strong hand. Almost certainly the best hand.
While he’s been extraordinarily lucky to get there—the original J-6-6 flop hardly promised such favorable results—Greenstein has led out with a bet at every opportunity throughout the hand. This is what professionals do. He’s playing with aggression. Creating his own luck. He has his opponent, who has responded to each swipe with a weak call, exactly where he wants her. He bets the river, hoping to keep her on the line.

The line tugs back.

His opponent responds with the first display of strength she’s shown at any point during this hand. In fact, it’s the strongest possible response: She re-raises with all of her chips, which are more than enough to cover what Greenstein has left. Call and lose, and his run at the 2007 NBC National Heads-Up Championship is over. But he’s committed way too many chips to this hand to escape now.

He makes the call. His opponent, flashing a grin toothy enough to include about an inch of gumline, turns over J-6, having flopped—and slowplayed—an absolute monster. It has taken Barry Greenstein exactly 34 minutes to make the same mistake that an ever-increasing number of other top pros have made. He has underestimated Shannon Elizabeth.

***

“I think that a lot of pros underestimate her,” said poker pro Phil Gordon. “Underestimating your opponent is a big mistake in No-Limit Hold ’Em, and people make that mistake all the time against Shannon.”
At first blush, it’s easy to see why. Most of us know (or think we know) Shannon Elizabeth through her body of work. Work that, more often than not, has involved the memorable use of her body. Her film debut—the 1996 thriller Jack Frost—would have been forgotten a long time ago had it not included a strange and altogether disturbing scene where Shannon’s character gets raped and killed by an evil snowman. (Yes, an actual snowman. With a carrot for a nose.) She’s a star, of course, because of her turn as “Nadia” in American Pie, where she donned a Czech accent (and little else) to embody, quite literally, the object of teenage lust.
Now she’s just check-raised you on the river. What are you going to think? You should probably focus on her three cashes at last year’s World Series of Poker. But you probably won’t.
***

In the beginning, she had little to qualify her as a poker player outside of her birthplace and her deep and abiding love for animals.
She was born and raised, like the game of Hold ’Em itself, in Texas. That might have offered her a head-start at the card table, had there been the time or the inclination to play cards. But there were dance lessons. The high school tennis team. Beer and boyfriends. Blessed with a lithe body and exotic good looks—to look at Elizabeth is to witness an undeniably successful intermingling of Syrian, English, French, and Cherokee ancestry—she left her home state after high school to begin a modeling career that took her around the world. Print ads paved the way for television commercials, then film.
She met a boy—fellow thespian Joe Reitman—and they fell in love. Their mutual passion for animals led them to found a charity, Animal Avengers, dedicated to rescuing and finding homes for stray pets. (The charity has survived. The relationship with Reitman has not.)
When, in 2003, the producers of a new show called Celebrity Poker Showdown called to tell her that by competing in a televised No-Limit Hold ’Em poker tournament she’d have the chance to win thousands of dollars for Animal Avengers, she figured it was worth a shot. She quickly learned the basics of the game from one of the show’s producers and sat down to play. It didn’t take long for Elizabeth to regret her decision. “I went on the show and I was horrible,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t understand it and I didn’t like it.”

Gordon, the show’s co-host at the time, offered a similarly blunt assessment. “She didn’t know what the hell she was doing.” She lasted only six hands, surviving just slightly longer than Coolio. She left the show with a bad taste in her mouth and zero intention of ever playing poker again.
Poker, however, wasn’t quite ready to let go of her. The game’s huge and unexpected explosion in popularity, coupled with the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for more, meant that there would be many more charity tournaments in need of celebrity players. To no one’s surprise, except maybe her own, Elizabeth found herself bombarded with invitations to play and a logic that was quickly growing inescapable: More tournaments meant more opportunities to raise money for the animals. It wasn’t the pleasure of playing, but a grudging sense of duty that kept her coming back for more. At first, anyway.
***
“I don’t know anyone,” Antonio Esfandiari said recently, “who started playing poker then said, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to play anymore.’”
Somewhere along the way, Elizabeth realized that she wasn’t actually dreading her visits to the poker table. “I started understanding the psychological aspects of the game. That got me more involved.”
She began to think about the game away from the table, discussing her play with any number of poker professionals who seemed eager to offer their advice. “[Shannon] soaks up everything she hears, learning as much as possible,” said one of them, superstar Daniel Negreanu. “I think she has all the necessary traits to do well at poker.” In early-2006, she made a final table in a charity tournament at the Sundance Film Festival, eventually finishing in fifth place.
That summer, she found herself drawn to the World Series of Poker. Not just the Championship Event, which she’d played in 2005, but the entire series. She wound up entering nearly every No-Limit Hold ’Em event.
And cashed three times.
“The first time I cashed was kind of a big deal to me,” remembered Elizabeth. “I got pretty deep with some good chips. I definitely made some mistakes and I knew exactly what they were later on, so I learned from them.”
The final time was even better. “I’d gotten very, very low in chips and we were going hand-for-hand on each table.” Most of her remaining chips went toward covering the big blind, where she looked down to discover the five and the deuce of clubs. When the flop brought two more clubs, she threw in the rest of her chips, praying for a flush. The player on the button quickly called.
She wound up making her flush on the turn, but faced the possibility that a fourth club on the river would give her opponent, who held the eight of clubs, a bigger flush. Which is exactly what happened when the dealer turned over the last card: the three of clubs.
Elizabeth’s disappointment lasted only the few seconds it took her to realize that the card had given her a straight flush. “That might have been a highlight,” she coyly admitted.
***

Still, you would have had a hard time finding anyone who believed that her invitation to the 2007 NBC Heads-Up Championship represented anything but the chance for the TV network to add a pretty face to the lineup. Until Elizabeth starting dismantling the lineup with brutal and ruthless efficiency.
“I’ve had a lot of coaches along the way that have just kind of helped me here and there, depending on what my questions were, what I was playing,” she said. “When I did my heads-up tournament, a few different pros came over to my house and helped me: Joe Cassidy, Jeff Madsen, Clonie Gowen. Everybody’s been really great.”
Even without the lessons, she probably would have done all right against her first opponent, Rene Angelil, who decided an all-in bluff would scare Elizabeth, dressed in pink with hair in pigtails, into folding her hand. She stood her ground with top pair, sent Angelil packing, and moved on to face one of her tutors, Madsen. Her hot run of cards, coupled with what were obviously effective lessons, gave Elizabeth everything she needed to move onto the third round, where she faced Greenstein in the hand described earlier.
“She benefited from really good cards early on,” claimed poker author Michael Craig, who observed her play throughout the tournament. “But you still have to get paid off. It’s easy to be a good player when you flop a full house, but for someone who is not experienced playing for money and recognition, to take the right amount of time, to control her breathing … She used her skills as a polished performer to her benefit.”
Pitted against Humberto Brenes in the quarterfinals, Elizabeth discovered that the script had been re-written—it was Brenes who was catching all the right cards, at least early on.

“I was card-dead,” she recalled, “and he was hitting two-pair almost every hand we played. I was stunned.” Rather than wilt under the pressure, however, Elizabeth decided to change her approach. “I knew I had to beat him pre-flop instead of seeing the flops against him. So I started raising a ton of hands and getting him off his hands before the flop.”

“She acted like she had better cards than Humberto,” said Craig, “and took advantage of him. She repeatedly bluffed him into folding.”

“I think that a lot of guys don’t think girls can bluff,” observed Elizabeth. “So I tend to do that.”
Brenes joined the rest of his fellow professionals on the sidelines, and Elizabeth went on to play Paul Wasicka in the semifinals. She had a chance to beat him, holding Ac-Qc and a chip edge during an all-in race against Wasicka’s pocket tens. She paired her queen on the flop, but Wasicka filled out a straight on the river. It turned out to be the beginning of the end of her magical run, as Wasicka—who would go on to win the championship—spent the next half-hour separating Elizabeth from her stack.

Despite the ending, it was hard for her to be disappointed in the bottom line: a third-place finish against a murderous lineup, good for a $125,000 prize. Maybe more importantly, the poker world had been served notice. Shannon Elizabeth can play poker.

***
Asked if she could see herself as a poker player over an actress, she paused before answering. “Um, yeah, in a sense,” she said, then quickly adding, “but there’s no need to pick one over the other.
“With acting, you have so much downtime anyway. Poker is a good way to occupy my time, make some extra money, keep my brain sharp. And I really love doing it. So hopefully I’ll just keep getting better and better and just keep going.”
Elizabeth, a strong believer in a balanced life, often meditates before matches, burning sage and incense to clear her mind. “I understand that it’s corny, and I understand it is what it is,” she admitted. “I try not to believe that that’s going to make a difference. “But on the off-chance that it does,” she added, laughing, “I just keep with it.”

Will a Hollywood starlet with quirky rituals and a big smile continue to succeed against the best in the world? “I’m trying to get over my fear of going out of tournaments or making mistakes,” she said. “Somebody taught me that when you’re playing a tournament, it’s not just about making the money, it’s about winning. To do that, you have to accumulate chips. “In the beginning, I played so tight. In the beginning, it was just a last-longer for me. And then I started realizing that that wasn’t good enough, just making the money wasn’t good enough. I’ve been working on that a lot.”

And you can add a chip on her shoulder to the ones in front of her. “I think people are pretty much gunning for me,” she laughed. “For multiple reasons.”

Jonathan Grotenstein is a writer living in Los Angeles. He is the co-author of All In: The (Almost) Entirely True History Of The World Series Of Poker, and has collaborated on books with Phil Gordon and Scott Fischman.

The Friel Deal

BY MATTHEW ARMSTRONG

THE NEWS OF THE DEPARTURE OF SHANA HIATT as the host of the World Poker Tour deeply saddened many loyal viewers. Luckily, Prozac is on its way in the form of the energetic, driven, and, yes, beautiful new host Courtney Friel.

Previously a broadcast news journalist and entertainment television host, Friel has already taped almost an entire season, with the first episodes airing in March, and has been having the time of her life traveling the world, thriving in the fast-paced environment of live television production.

“I’ve reported on everything from crime and government to fashion and red-carpet celebrity interviews. This is definitely the coolest job I’ve had,” she told ALL IN. “I feel like I’ve joined the club. I would so much rather report on poker than Jessica Simpson’s marriage or celebrity news. The people are more real and I love hanging out with them.”

Growing up in Philadelphia, Friel knew from an early age that she wanted to be in front of, and behind, the camera. She moved to the Left Coast to attend San Diego State University, where she studied political science and broadcast journalism, as well as taking credited courses in surfing and sailing. After a few years working in L.A. as a broadcast journalist covering entertainment news, Friel realized she needed to get more experience as a hard-hitting reporter in order to jumpstart her career. Rather than waiting patiently to be assigned to more prominent news stories, or hoping to be, along with 90 percent of L.A., “discovered,” Friel left the glitz and sunshine of Los Angeles, not to mention her then-boyfriend and now-husband (sorry, fellas), for a television news job in Jackson, Tennessee.

“I grew up wanting to do broadcast news,” recalled Friel. “I moved to the middle of Tennessee and did everything from camera, editing, audio, producer, anchor, reporter, rolled the teleprompter, everything, all for about $5 an hour.”

Having sharpened her on-camera interviewing skills, she moved back to California to work as a news journalist for a television station in Palm Springs. Concurrently, she got an agent and began hosting entertainment news programs, including stints at America’s Most Wanted, E! News Live, and Trackers on the Oxygen network, and hosting the gaming show EBtv Gaming.

Then, about a year ago, she got a call to audition for the role of new host of the World Poker Tour. She admits that the two-month-long audition process was unnerving.

“At that point I didn’t know much about the poker lingo, so I was getting it all wrong and wasn’t sure what I was talking about,” she said. “But as a news reporter, if there’s a bill in the Senate you have to do a story on, you need to learn everything about that bill and be able to explain it very concisely to the audience. So with poker, I knew I could learn it.”

What caused her more anxiety than not being familiar with the game was that the long application process was drawing closer and closer to her wedding day.

“It was two weeks before my wedding and I needed them to make a decision. I didn’t want to be in L.A. with no job and no honeymoon. But then they hired me, and the first day of shooting was the day after my wedding. We cut the party short, but yeah, I was a little hung over.”

In order to get up to speed on the intricacies of the game, Friel was sent to the WPT Boot Camp, a two-day intensive crash course on poker taught by Mike Sexton, Linda Johnson, Mark Seif, and Ron Rose, among others, where she learned all about odds, terminology, and strategy and played tournaments with the other poker aficionados attending the camp. Here Friel proved she was a quick learner, or at very least, that she has good fortune.

“I won my first tournament there and I was the only one who had never played in a tournament before,” noted Friel, brimming with pride. “I think it was beginner’s luck. But I won a WPT official chip set. You’d think they would have just given me a set seeing as I am now the host, but it’s better this way because I won it.”

Could that be a sign that she has what it takes to play tournament poker for real money? While she does now play in some home games and with the crew from the Travel Channel when on the road, she is realistic about her poker abilities. “Players can read me like a book. I’m a terrible liar. I get aces and I get all excited and flushed. It’s bad—really bad,” she laughed.

Having completed Boot Camp and taped almost a full season of the WPT, Friel has become comfortable with the game, the crew, and the shooting pace, which can be at times hectic and thrilling.

“Last night, there were so many amazing suckouts,” she said the day after taping the final table of the L.A. Poker Classic. “There were plays where a guy had a two-percent chance of winning and he made his hand. And that kept happening over and over again. They all started out with nearly even stacks and they just kept passing the chips back and forth. It was over four hours before the first person busted. The crew has a betting pool ($2 per person) before each show about how long it will go before someone wins. I bet six hours; it went eight, so I lost. But at that point we were all tired and wanted it to speed up a bit. Plus, I just had to stop doing interviews because I knew the show was so long that none of my stuff was going to be used. At that point we all just wanted it to end.”

As the airing of her first show drew closer, Friel was almost giddy with anticipation.
“I’ve been shooting since May and the shows haven’t aired yet, so I’m excited to see which hands they chose to include, which ones were left out, and how it was all put together.”
So are we, Courtney. So are we.

Green With Ngvy

Everybody Wants To Be Like “Evybabee”—A Hot Commodity Without Even Having Won Anything
BY TIM GRAHAM

Evelyn Ng is little more than the Britney Spears of poker, a manufactured “poker celebrity” courtesy of Steven Lipscomb and the World Poker Tour. Beyond coming in second in a six-person, invite-only sit-n-go and allowing WPT to film her frolicking around her pool in a bikini, what else has she done?
—posted by “Ononimo” on rec.gambling.poker, July 6, 2004

Evelyn Ng knows what they’re saying, and she doesn’t give a damn. She knows she has haters. They roll their eyes. They harrumph. They snicker behind her back that she soared to prominence on old beau Daniel Negreanu’s coattails, her glamorous looks getting her noticed at his side. When it comes to a poker tournament of any significance, what has she won?
You can’t spell “nothing” without “Ng.”
Yet there she is on the cover of magazines, on major network television, in coveted seats on the cable fun-time circuit. The statuesque Asian-Canadian, all 5’11” of her, is a star no matter her accomplishments on the green felt. Those striking good looks and big, dangly earrings and revealing tops and Gucci handbags and, when the mood suits her, dresses slit up to the ozone layer, have created quite a stir. ‘Evybabee’s’ aura has captured enough imaginations—and probably spawned more than a few fanboy fantasies—to make her a major poker commodity.

When asked what she’s best known for, Ng laughed and replied, “Probably for being cute.” She’s nothing if not brutally honest with herself. “I’m still kind of in my infancy,” she continued. “I’ve been playing tournaments now for three years, which is pretty long in comparison with some players who have been starting out on the Internet, but I still think I have a long way to go … No, don’t write that. Well, I guess it’s true, though. I mean, I feel very confident in my game, but I haven’t won anything yet. There’s still a lot more than I want to do.” Along the way she’s breaking hearts, although not always in the manner one might think.

Take the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, for instance. NBC invited Ng to play in the enviable field of 64. Some of those who didn’t make the cut were Phil Gordon, John D’Agostino, Hoyt Corkins, Michael Gracz, Robert Williamson III, and Kathy Liebert. All are considerably more proven than Ng, none as telegenic.
Ng hasn’t been too formidable in head-to-head competition, as evidenced by her 1-2 record in two seasons of the NBC event, but few can match her face-to-face.

“I wasn’t at all happy about being left out, but I understand the politics of television,” said Gordon, a World Poker Tour champ and former co-host of Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo. “It’s like the BCS in college football. Why does Notre Dame, with four losses on its record, get a bid to one of the best bowls every year? Ratings.
“Whatever you think of Evelyn’s skill as a poker player, given the choice of watching her play heads up or Paul Magriel play heads up, a majority of Americans would choose Evelyn despite Paul being the better player.” Gordon, brilliant enough to graduate from Georgia Institute of Technology at 20, diplomatically measured every word when speaking about Ng. That’s why there was no mistaking his inference when he emphasized one syllable in particular
“Who could have a problem with her using her given assets?” Gordon said. “Phil Hellmuth uses his ‘Poker Brat’ persona to get people to fold too much. Phil Ivey uses that ‘Phil Ivey Stare.’ Antonio Esfandiari uses the chip tricks. Daniel Negreanu and Mike Matusow use near-constant banter. The best poker players in the world are the ones who are allowed to steal more often than their opponents. Evelyn Ng uses her assets to get people to play more tentatively against her, and Evelyn obviously has great assets.”

There’s not enough beauty in poker, so anytime Evelyn’s playing, I’m watching. I’d even watch her play solitaire for seven hours straight easily. In my World Poker Tour video game, every time she speaks, I get goose bumps. “Check to the raiser.” Yes, please!!!
—posted by “Guest” on Full Tilt Online Poker Forum, March 5, 2006

It’s not easy, asking a lady if she’s undeserving of her status because of her sexuality. Such questions have a tendency to make a person defensive, hostile, embarrassed, or a combination thereof. Usually, the tough ones are saved for the end of the interview to avoid an ugly tone that could end matters too early.
Ng’s blithe personality, however, has a tendency to draw out the delicate inquiries much earlier than expected. Disarming and self-deprecating, she freely and unapologetically admitted she receives an inordinate amount of lucrative media exposure relative to her modest poker accomplishments.
“Looking the way I do and being different from everyone else has opened a lot of doors for me in attention and sponsorships and endorsements and appearances,” Ng said, “and I understand the game. I’m in the game, and I know how to play it.” As poker gains popularity, observers have a tendency to associate its personalities with those from mainstream sports.
Phil Ivey is known as the “Tiger Woods of Poker.” Steve Dannenmann once called Howard Lederer the “Cal Ripken of Poker.” Hellmuth is the “John McEnroe of Poker.” Matusow could be the “Terrell Owens of Poker.”
And Evelyn Ng? She’s the Anna Kournikova, or Danica Patrick, or Mia St. John, or Natalie Gulbis, or Gabrielle Reece—athletes fawned over for their hotness more than their professional acumen.
“We had some people who called us and questioned why she was in Heads-Up,” said NBC Sports Senior Vice President Jon Miller, co-creator of the Heads-Up Poker Championship. “We had calls from players whose noses were out of joint because she was invited over them and from some writers who were questioning the field. Well, she’s very entertaining, and at the end of the day you want to get the best product on the air and she was a great asset to the event.” There’s that word again.
Ng accepts it all, laughter often mingling with her explanations. Her carefree attitude is captivating, her openness remarkable given the amount of criticism thrown her way. While some female players seem indignant when categorized by their gender, Ng celebrates her sexiness. She’ll reveal her belly button. She’ll accentuate her cleavage. She’s unafraid to be a girly-girl or a femme fatale.
“I have more of a modern feminist view, where, to be totally honest, men are prized for their wealth and how they accumulate wealth and women are prized for their youth and beauty, two things that are very fleeting,” said Ng, who added she’s not interested in having children. “I would be a fool not to capitalize on those things while I have them, before they’re gone.” That said, Ng insisted the image she projects is not an act.
“I don’t think I overly sell my sexuality,” she said. “That’s part of me that’s natural. I like to dress up. I like being cute. I like purses and handbags and makeup. I’m just myself, and I feel people like me being myself.
“And I also try to be a good role model and try to carry myself with a certain amount of dignity and respect. I do have some sense of values, morals.”

So is there a line Ng wouldn’t cross? If Hugh Hefner called with an offer to appear in Playboy, would she be up for that type of exposure? “I wouldn’t be opposed to it,” she said through another giggle. “I’d hear out his offer. You might not get a Paris Hilton sex tape from me, but … we’re always up for negotiations.”

I’ve been teaching Evelyn Ng to play better (she is currently playing $15-$30 at the Bellagio), and I came to realize that she may not be capable of playing certain hands that you should play. What separates good players from great players is their ability to read the flop, and their opponents’ hand … I’m finding it a little difficult teaching poker, because certain things that are necessary to be a top player, no one can teach.
—posted by Daniel Negreanu on rec.gambling.poker, April 27, 1999

Albert Ng was in his twenties when he and wife Melinda emigrated from Indonesia to North York, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. Albert put himself through jeweler’s school to become a watchmaker. He and his wife had three girls. Their youngest was born on September 14, 1975. They named her Evelind, but that spelling wouldn’t stick. She never cared for it.
While the oldest daughter earned three university degrees and the middle daughter went off to Europe, young Evelind grew up differently. By the time she was an angular 14-year-old, she was spending her time at Studio Billiards, hustling for video game and cigarette money.
“I was the black sheep,” said Ng, whose only shame seems to stem from the fact she can’t quit smoking her Benson & Hedges Menthol Lights. “They kind of knew I hung out at the pool hall, but I didn’t tell them I was gambling. In Chinese families, if you gamble, you’re usually extreme at it. They didn’t want me to go down that road because they thought it could be dangerous.”

Ng tried volleyball, then got kicked off the team for not attending practices. Yet she wasn’t some wayward punk—as much as she might have fancied herself as such. She was dazzling in the classroom, and it was there that she first discovered she could hustle math as easily as she could sink an eight-ball.

She challenged a boy in her class to see who could memorize the most decimal places of pi in front of the student body. The wager was for two dollars. The boy rattled off 110 digits. Ng stopped at 215. “I can still do about 70 or 80 today,” she said. “They just come streaming out of my mouth. ”Ng eventually strayed from the pool hall, her mathematical wizardry ushering her toward the Toronto card rooms. She started out as a blackjack and poker dealer.

“When I first started dealing, I was very intimidated by all the lingo and that these people knew so much about the game,” Ng said. “I wanted to research it and read some books. I paid attention when I was dealing and realized the same people were winning all the time. I knew if I applied myself I could be one of those people.”

Ng got her courage up for a $5-$10 Limit Hold ’Em table and remained patient in her study. She said she didn’t graduate to $10-$20 Limit Hold ’Em for another year.
Along the way, she met Negreanu, also from the Toronto area. They dated on and off “for a couple years,” Ng said, “but since the last time we broke up we’ve been platonic friends.” Negreanu never stopped mentoring Ng at cards.
“I definitely don’t think I would be as good a poker player without Daniel in my life,” Ng said. “He taught me so much, not necessarily from a strategy standpoint, but he taught me the inner game of being a professional poker player. He taught me the attitude, not necessarily how to play pocket queens.”

Awful No-Limit player. Lucky she looks pretty good and gets invited to these freerolls because she’s some of the deadest money on the circuit.
—posted by “Brian C” on rec.gambling.poker, May 12, 2005

Ng wasn’t even playing poker when she got her big break in 2002. She had stopped playing for a year, the environment dragging her down. She was miserable. So she went to work doing what she called “mundane office duties” for an independent record label. She said she couldn’t recall even playing online during that period.
“I needed to get away from poker,” she said. “I felt I was really grinding it out every day and that it was maybe taking away from me as a person, that I was becoming jaded, pessimistic. Just being around a lot of negativity, poker breeds a lot of hate. Everyone pretends it’s a social, friendly atmosphere, but we’re all out here to win money from each other. Some people are playing for their rent money or dinner money. Poker is a dysfunctional family.”
Ng jetted out to Foxwoods to cheer on some of her friends at the 2002 World Poker Finals. She was standing on the rail when a man from the World Poker Tour asked if she would sit down for an interview. She tried to explain she wasn’t in the tournament. The man was persistent. Ng relented.

The man, unbeknownst to her, was World Poker Tour founder Steven Lipscomb, who later would invite her to the six-seat WPT Ladies Night event in September 2003 at the Bicycle Club in Los Angeles. It was there that Ng entered the poker consciousness and never left. Ng outlasted Annie Duke, Liebert, and Jennifer Harman before losing the $25,000 winner-take-all purse to fellow upstart Clonie Gowen.

“The top women in the business filled up four seats,” Lipscomb said, referring to the first four eliminated. “The next two seats we had to make sure we had sex appeal and TV-worthy visuals people would appreciate. We couldn’t have asked for better TV when we ended up with those two playing heads up for the title.”
Alas, that compelling cable television appearance has remained Ng’s career highlight. Without it she probably doesn’t have sponsorship deals or magazine covers or poker nerds scurrying around the Internet in search of the latest rumors on whom she’s dating. (Psst: She and David Williams share a place in southern Las Vegas, but she swears there’s nothing going on.)

“I don’t think in any way the attention Evelyn receives is undeserved,” Lipscomb said. “Take any number of World Poker Tour event winners and change one or two cards and you’ve never heard of them. Evelyn being picked out of the blue is not wildly out of line with how these things work. Lightning strikes. That’s what happens.”

Ng has won some money, earning $64,942 for an 11th-place finish in the 2005 Borgata Poker Open and $73,230 for a 39th-place finish in the WPT World Championship at the Bellagio in April.
She doesn’t play cash games anymore, so it’s fairly easy to track her success on the Internet. Unlike golf and tennis, two sports in which career money winnings are an effective measuring stick, poker leaves out an important stat: losings.

“My cash earnings aren’t that high,” Ng conceded, “but I think I’ve lived a pretty good lifestyle because of it. I know I have supported myself for 12 years playing poker and accept that it’s an arena I do well in even if I don’t have a title.”

To hear Ng dismiss the notion that she must win a major tournament to validate her career, one would believe her sincerity. She knew it sounded silly as it was coming out of her mouth, laughing that “winning a tacky gold bracelet would be kind of cool.”

If that doesn’t happen, Ng indicated she wouldn’t consider herself a failure, not when she has so much else going for her. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being Anna Kournikova,” Ng said. “She had a great career and has made a lot of money. It never hurts to be cute, I don’t think.”

One Chic Geek

Evelyn Ng has a confession. Underneath the designer threads and bling-bling exists a side of the sinewy poker vixen few outsiders have seen. “People don’t really know that I can be kind of a nerd,” Ng said. “I like video games. I like science. I like technology. I like reading non-fiction. I like to watch a lot of nature programs. They just see makeup and purses and don’t really know there’s other stuff about me.”

Ng is at her geekiest with video games, a revelation that might make her the perfect woman for many men out there. She started out as a kid with Donkey Kong on ColecoVision. Then she graduated to Super Nintendo and the arcades in suburban Toronto.

Her roommate, fellow poker pro David Williams, recently purchased a standup arcade game with 300 titles. They go mano-a-mano on Street Fighter II, although Ng quickly notes she never plays as Asian hottie Chun Li, so hold the jokes.

Ng’s greatest hits list also includes Tetris, Minesweeper, Puzzle Bubble, Snood, and the poker simulation Stacked, mainly because she has a character in it. She has come up with a way to wager on almost all of them.
“I haven’t figured out a way to gamble on Minesweeper yet, and I want to challenge Howard Lederer to a game because I hear he’s really good at it,” Ng said. “But I don’t think the gambling aspect of it is necessary because there are times with video games when I’m playing against myself. The only thing I’m trying to beat is my high score, and I’ll play for hours and hours and hours. Once I set a goal, I’m pretty relentless.”

Shandi Finnessey, Miss USA Becomes Miss UBT

BY DEKE CASTLEMAN

If you’ve seen even one episode of “The Ultimate Blackjack Tour” on CBS, you’ve noticed the five-foot-ten 125-pound Shandi Finnessey. She’s the statuesque, stunning, yet wholesome-looking blond who co-hosted the first season of the tournament-blackjack show with Playboy Playmate Nikki Ziering. In season two, though, it’s all-Shandi all-the-time on the UBT. And the blackjack beauty appears poised to reach the pinnacle of TV-gambling notoriety that’s been reached only by the World Poker Tour’s super-hostess Shana Hyatt.

From Braces To Beauty Pageants
Shandi, now 28, comes from Florrisant, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where she grew up the youngest of four children and the only girl. Having three older brothers, she says, made her one of the guys. “I’m a tomboy at heart. I can do most things that a guy can, and some things even better! I’m not afraid to get down and dirty and I love all physical sports, especially wrestling.”
As a kid, she spent her vacations in Deering, North Dakota, population 100, where her family is from originally. She loved both worlds: the excitement of St. Louis during the school year and the tranquility of farm country during the summer. She helped out on the farm and feels right at home on a big tractor.
Shandi had more than her share of the typical awkward adolescence, to the extent that she was teased in high school due, surprisingly, to her appearance. “I looked much different in those days than how you see me now. I had a mullet, tinted glasses, acne, and braces, and I was teased so much that it was difficult to focus on my studies. It got so bad that I went to my parents and said, ‘I’m not getting the education that I think I need. I want to move to a smaller school.’ I actually transferred to an all-girls school. The contacts went in, the hair grew out, the braces came off, and I started entering beauty pageants when I was seventeen. It was just a fun hobby at that time.”
Shandi finished high school in 1996, then attended Lindenwood University, a liberal-arts college in St. Charles, Missouri. She graduated with honors in 1999 with a degree in psychology, then pursued a Masters degree in counseling. But before she completed her graduate studies, beauty pageants turned into more than a hobby.
“I didn’t actually see the pageants as a career move until I was about twenty-four,” she says.
After getting serious about it, she won the title of Miss St. Louis Metro, which sent her to the Miss Missouri America 2002 competition. She won. Then it was on to the 2002 Miss America pageant held in Atlantic City, where she took the evening-gown preliminary award. A year later, she competed for the Miss Missouri USA title. She won. That sent her to the 2004 Miss USA competition in the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Televised live in front of 13 million people, Shandi Finnessey was crowned Miss USA. She was the first Miss Missouri to take the national title.

“I dedicated an entire year to preparing for the Miss USA 2004 pageant. I gave a hundred percent of myself to achieve my goal. I worked out for five hours a day, seven days a week, doing high repetitions of low weights for muscle definition and going on an intense protein diet. I ate six times a day–five or six chicken breasts, a can of tuna, a whole head of romaine lettuce, snow peas, grapefruit, and as many egg whites as I could consume.”
When she was named Miss USA, Shandi says, “It was truly the American Dream, where if you work hard enough for something, you can achieve it. Having the crown placed on my head was one of the best feelings a person can ever have.”

The Life of Miss USA
“I moved into one of Donald Trump’s apartments in New York City with two new roommates: Miss Teen USA, Tami Ferrell, and Miss Universe, Amelia Vega. Talk about one great bachelorette pad! What guy wouldn’t die to hang out_in that apartment? When we had any free time we were like any other girlfriends. We rented movies, ate pizza, and had pillow fights. I remember one time we actually had a cupcake fight.”
Shandi describes her year wearing the Miss USA crown as “nothing short of incredible.” First and foremost, representing the title is definitely a job. She typically worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week, including weekends and holidays. She says, “I traveled the world, visiting places that included Ecuador, Thailand, Korea, Germany, St. Maarten, even Cuba. I attended some amazing events, such as meeting the Princess of Thailand, hosting part of the Presidential Inauguration, and touring with the USO and Wayne Newton.”
She was also quite the celebrity in her hometown and state. “The city of Florissant gave me a huge welcome-home party and even put up a big sign when you enter the city that says, ‘Welcome to Florissant– Home of Miss USA 2004, Shandi Finnessey.’ The state of Missouri put up similar signs on the major freeways: ‘You are now entering Missouri–Home of Miss USA 2004, Shandi Finnessey.’”
The most rewarding part of being Miss USA was becoming the national spokesperson for breast and ovarian cancer. “Through- out my year, I helped raise more than thirty-million dollars for breast cancer research,” she says proudly.

Opening Doors
“I always saw beauty pageants as an opportunity to open many doorways and create more choices for myself,” Shandi explains, and since winning the Miss USA title, that’s exactly what has happened.

She went on to compete for Miss Universe in Quito, Ecuador, in 2004 and finished First Runner Up to Jennifer Hawkins, Miss Australia.

She’s has modeled for Dillard’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Anheuser Busch, among many others. She was a color commentator for the Rose Bowl 2005 Parade, “Behind the Scenes Miss USA 2005,” the Miss Universe 2006 competition, and the Fox Network’s “Live New Year’s Eve” broadcast in 2006. She’s been a guest on the “Passions” soap opera, “The Apprentice,” and “Regis and Kelly.”
She currently co-hosts “Lingo,” a word-guessing game and the highest-rated game show on GSN, with Chuck Woolery; she also hosts the late-night live game show “Playmania,” also on GSN.
And, of course, Shandi co-hosted the first season of the UBT after being selected from a pool of hundreds of applicants.
“We did a huge casting call in L.A.,” says Houston Curtis, co-producer of the “Ultimate Blackjack Tour.” “We were looking for someone who was beautiful, intelligent, charismatic, and endearing. We were flooded with hopefuls. We got down to ten girls, then narrowed it down to five. Then, Shandi walked in the door and we knew immediately that she was the one.”
Curtis emphasizes that Shandi was anything but the “typical blond bombshell.” He says, “She’s stunning, of course, but it goes beyond the physical. She’s real; there’s nothing phony about her. She’s approachable. She’s professional and enthusiastic and she hosts the second season of the ‘UBT’ solo. But Shandi’s not only going to have a big run with the ‘UBT,” she’s going to have a huge career in the entertainment business.”
“I love working on the UBT,” Shandi says. “I get to hang out with all the blackjack and poker professionals. I never used to gamble, but when you spend time with the pros, it gets in your blood. The next thing you know, you’re sitting at the tables in Las Vegas with the big boys.
“Working on the UBT definitely improved my blackjack game. I also learned a few things about poker. In fact, the first time I ever played poker, after learning from the pros, I took everyone’s money. It was totally luck, though,” Shandi admits. “I always got the card I needed on the river.”
She thinks Elimination Blackjack is “sexy,” thanks to the strong elements of strategy. She finds the necessity of keeping an eye on everyone else’s chip count especially stimulating.
When asked who her favorite player is, she says, “Ken Einiger is probably my favorite guy. I always tease him about his hair and that bright yellow jacket he wears. Our nickname for him is ‘Bumble Bee.’”
Ken says Shandi has come a long way fast. “When she began, Shandi wasn’t schooled in the intricacies of Elimination Blackjack, and some of her interviews were consequently superficial. But now she watches the games and even plays on occasion, so she knows what to say, and what to ask someone who’s just come off a table after being eliminated. It takes a bit of finesse.”

Shandi Today
Shandi insists that all the awards and titles are really just stopping spots on the way to her ultimate destination: “Marrying Mr. Right and having a wonderful family with lots of rescued pets.”
But Mr. Right has some serious competition for Shandi Finnessey’s time. She plays classical and modern piano and violin, but she says one of the achievements of which she’s most proud was publishing a children’s book called The Furrtails, about a family of rabbits with varying abilities. “The theme of the book is that we all have strengths and weaknesses. They don’t make one person better or worse than another; they just make people unique and different.”
And that’s Shandi’s passion and cause: For years she’s been dedicated to promoting the inclusion of people with mental challenges, such as mental retardation and Down Syndrome. She’s spent much of her time–“I traveled fifty-thousand miles in Missouri alone,” she says–working with elementary-school children. Using The Furrtails as her visual aid and discussion stimulator, she encourages young students to include those who are “different” in some way, and teaches them how.
“I’ve been trying to raise awareness, because I think the unknown is what scares people so much. They don’t know how to interact with someone with a disability– someone who’s different from them. If children are exposed to different situations, different people, and different environments, I believe that they’re more accepting in the long run.”
Today, Shandi is busy working on another children’s book and her memoir, along with shooting “Lingo” and “Playmania” for GSN, the “UBT” for CBS, and the pre-Oscar show for TV Guide.
The big news, however, is her appearance on the upcoming season of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.” “I’ll be one of the contestants, dancing each week for votes, trying to not be eliminated! Any free time I have before or after shooting the different shows is spent practicing for ‘Dancing.’ Have you watched the show?” she asks. “The competition is ferocious. This will be a tough one to take down.”
Given her track record, however, who’d bet against it?