I dont no y every1 is slaggin of jerry yang, i admit he got extremely luky at times and is not the best poker player on the planet but 2 win any tournement is an acheivement and shows some skills. Also if people want 2 critisize anybodies play at that final table y not critisize the other 8 players who did not adapt properly 2 yang. I mean wat was childs doing laying down those queens and the same with watkinsons all in move??

Plus i feel jerry yang is a very nice and geniune guy and with the money he has done a lot of good. I constantly read on cardplayer about him donating to different causes and helping the poor. So to OP i think jerry yang is spending a lot of his time helping charity and he realises that hes not the best poker player and therfore keeps it as a side hobby

This is something people get confused so often.

There is no right way to play poker.

But there IS a WRONG way.

Arguing that his image was nitty and the table was playing too tight makes it a great idea for Yang to loosen up and steal a ton pf. That does NOT make is okay to open bet 10x. Nothing that is playing back at 4x or even 5x is folding to 10x just because it's 10x. There can be nothing good about this aspect of his play. DUCY?

dude yang is a horrible ambassodor for poker, but it was bound to happen i suppose but for all u ppl hoo hate jamie gold atleast he isnt just leaving the game and making himself non-existant he is always on the poker scene unlike yang hoo ppl have barely even heard him talk except for

"i bet 1 million"
"raise.........1 million"

This "Jerry Yang is making himself invisible" nonsense that I keep hearing from the Las Vegas crowd is just that, nonsense.

Just because Jerry doesn't live in Las Vegas and doesn't "donate" money to the regular players at the Bellagio, that doesn't mean he is "invisible".

As far as I am concerned, anyone who uses the word "invisible" to describe Jerry is upset because he/she wanted Jerry to lose money to him/her.

I consider "invisible" to be a code word.

==

Jerry did play WPT events on the west coast as well as in Mississippi this past year. He will have played 10 televised tournaments by the time the 2008 WSOP Main Event starts (about 2 less that I was planning for him to play in pitches to prospective sponsors.)

He did not receive what I would consider to be a satisfactory 1-year sponsorship from an online poker room.

The one trip abroad that I wanted Jerry to take, to Macau, was aborted because I didn't know that Jerry needed a TRANSIT visa for either Hong Kong or Taiwan because of his status (U.S. resident traveling on a refugee travel document, not eligible for any passport because Jerry is not a citizen of any country, having given up Laotian citizenship the moment he walked into a refugee camp in Thailand as a child).

Jerry couldn't commit to the Macau trip until 10 days prior to the event because of a family issue. By that time, it was too late to apply for a transit visa anyway. (Jerry had the necessary documentation to get into Macau, which was supplied by the hotel based on the instructions I related to the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour.)

==

Jerry has made several charity-related appearances, including the food bank of Southern California function (in which Jerry donated thousands of dollars worth of food) in Long Beach on March 29.

Besides Jerry, Washington Redskins safety Omar Stoudmire (who was born and raised in Long Beach, California) and Omar's former high school football coaches (Long Beach Poly High School, ranked consistently in the top 20 across the U.S.) were present.

The PR people at Feed the Children contacted (with my assistance):

- EVERY TV station in the Los Angeles market that has a news department, English or Spanish.

- Over a dozen newspapers in the Los Angeles market, English or Spanish.

- Plus the Los Angeles bureaus of CNN and CNBC.

Guess how many news outlets showed up to cover the event on that Saturday morning?

ZERO.

(Unless one of my biggest competitors, my agency has a ZERO PAYOLA policy. I do NOT pay media outlets for coverage.)

==

Bottom line: most mainstream news outlets in the U.S. stopped giving poker players "news" treatment after 2005, when TV ratings were down double-digit percentages compared to 2004, unless the player was involved in something bad, i.e. J---- G---'s dispute in 2006. TV ratings in the U.S., at least among the all-important 18-34 demographic for sports TV, tipped over during the first half of 2008.

Your frame of reference and your expectations of what a WSOP Main Event champion should be doing is stuck in 2004 and 2005. Jerry won in 2007 under very different market conditions. This is now 2008, with market conditions for poker personalities in the U.S. having deteriorated even further.

==

There are plenty of other players who are active in doing charity functions in Las Vegas (Phil Ivey and Jennifer Harman, for example). That's fine for them as they live in Las Vegas.

One thing Jerry and I agree on: Las Vegas is NOT the place for Jerry to make charity-related appearances. Not only would that be "preaching to the choir", that would also be viewed as "encroachment" by the Las Vegas-based poker personalities.

==

I have always viewed that Jerry would be most effective in marketing poker in East and Southeast Asia.

However, most government-run and/or government-licensed gambling monopolies in that part of the world consider poker to be a threat.

There are countries and territories (Hong Kong, for example) where a satellite-delivered TV news outlet (i.e. CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg) would risk losing its "landing rights" in a number of countries if a poker player were interviewed on camera from a location in Asia for a news story.

For example, if a news outlet were to have Jerry appear as a guest at a TV studio in Hong Kong, the news outlet can ask about Jerry's charity work duing an on-camera interview, but the news outlet cannot even mention that Jerry is on his way to a poker tournament in Macau without angering the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), the Hong Kong-based government-licensed gambling monopoly (online and offline) which has taken one of the hardest lines against poker you will find anywhere in the world.

Oliver Tse
Oliver Tse Management Group

what is a ballpark figure for the ME winner to get as a 1 year deal from an online room?...just curious just in case in win this year...

This

i bet...one point three meeelion.

god i hated his voice!