The 2nd annual blogger tournament is now history, with Bill Rini taking 1st, resulting in total vindication of his previous dead last finish in December. CJ took second and I'm sure sometime in the near future the good doctor will have excellent tournament write-ups for the event.

I'll start with the bad... the tournament mechanics, it was a craps shoot and after 2 levels it degenerated into a game of fold or push all-in for the majority of the field. I have no doubt that Felicia will take this topic to task so I leave this to her and say in advance I completely agree.

Moving on to the positive, the turn-out for the event was tremendous, from Canada to Texas, from LA to New York the poker bloggers came. After Bill Rini captured the most coveted honor in all of pokerdom and the blogosphere the party sauntered down to the La Salsa where our most esteemed dignitary, Al Can't Hang had arranged a reception for the scribes.

This, at least for me, was the highlight of the gathering. I had a chance to meet new bloggers, including a disproportionate number of lawyers, a science guru and a programmer. As always, I feel as though I ran out of time and didn't really get to chat at length with a couple of bloggers that I admire, respect and think are just plain cool. Of course, numerous old acquaintances did abound and I had an opportunity to catch up with HDouble, Howard, BadBlood and many, many others.

A couple of memorable moments from the various events. Poker Nerd cracking EvaCantHang's A,K with the hammer at the MGM mixed game table. Hanging out with She-Verb, Beer City, and Hellahold'em at the aforementioned blogger table. The AlCantHang/Dr. Pauly suite at the downtown Plaza Hotel.

I know I'm still missing numerous people in this post; but visit the blogs I have linked and you're sure to find the rest. CJ did a good job of organizing this blogger convention as did Al (after tournament party), Otis (storm the castle) and Felicia (MGM poker gathering / Sushi).

Sean and I finally managed to work Card Club back into the schedule so I'll be back on the podcast this week along with Pauly. We hope to have some mid-week WSOP updates for the show, as well, so do tune in.