Dear ESPN,

During your coverage of the World Cup games, could you please, please put more pop-up graphics on the screen while the ball is in play? Oh, and make sure they don't pertain to the current game. At all. Either that or I could cover my eyes with my shirt, because that would have close to the same effect.

Also? More Eric Wynalda and Julie Foudy. Thanks.

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I suppose I should write about geeking it up at the bar with BloodyP, eh? I don't see why not.

I arrived a little bit early, as I would for any other blind, non pokering date. I had no idea what he looked like, sounded like over the phone, or even if he was a dude. For all I knew this was a set-up by Allen Funt, but he's dead so I quickly scratched him off the list.

I sat in view of the door just on the off-chance "he" was really a 300lb housewife with sagging breasts and an underbite rivaling Australopithecus africanus. Luckily, he wasn't. He was just a normal dude like me, except he has kids, a wife and a house he's trying to sell. Or do I have those reversed? Let me know, man. I know some people that know some people that could use some cheap, child labor.

We started the drinking night off early, he with a Captain/Coke in honor of Drizz--who unfortunately couldn't make it--and I with a Limon/Water. The plan was to drink a bit and geek out a hell-of-a lot by playing poker on our laptops using the bars free wi-fi, but I think we were both a tad nervous about breaking out the technology in public.

So, we drank and talked, then talked and drank some more, spied the talent, maybe even ate something at some point early in the night. I don't know, because everything gets drunkarific at around this point. By the time we'd had enough to drink where the poker jones overtook us and were forced to pull out the laptops, Eric's(he has a real name!) couldn't grab the connection, even though I was allowed to drop half my meager bankroll while he watched my less than stellar play. Thanks, sporadic wi-fi. Thanks a lot.

Somewhere around four Limon/Waters and a few Miller Lites deep into happy hour, a young lass aged 25 years came into the bar, alone, and promptly pulled out a book. Not that out of the ordinary, considering the time of the day and amount of light pouring through the 5 bazillion windows in the bar. It was early.

We both noticed her come in, said nothing while simultaneously taking pulls from our respective drinks, and jumped back into our conversation. Not that I remember what we were even talking about, though, but I'm sure it had something to do with bars, poker or, how do I say, "shitty" the north side of Minneapolis is. Hey, I wouldn't want to offend my ghetto readers, would I? No I would not.

Do you mind if I shorten this a bit? Didn't think so.

That night, almost no poker was played. Eric, The Thai girl from the bar and I played darts, listened to shitty music and drank all my roommate's beer after happy hour ended. He'd spent almost the whole night talking to her and smoking with her, then up and dropped her figuratively on my lap at the end of the night.

Ultimate Wingman.

The fact that the last thing I wanted was to suck face with this girl doesn't detract from the skill involved here. I know good wingman work when I see it, and this was goddamn good work.

The girl I'm dating right now might think differently, though.

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Why would PokerStars schedule the WBCOOP in the middle of the day on Father's Day? I'm tempted to have me some children of my own in the next week just so I'm able to play. If that's impossible, well, I'll have to celebrate by playing golf with my dad.

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Limbo:
noun: the state of being disregarded or forgotten
noun: an imaginary place for lost or neglected things

That's an disgustingly apt description of where my poker game resides right now.

Everything has been a struggle lately. I'll make a small deposit at a new site, say, $100, run it up to around $9,000 in a day, and then the next day I'll lose $8890.

Hey, I'm still technically up $10! Sure, those numbers might be slightly inflated, but math is hard for blonde people.

That scenario has happened at least 5 times in the last two months, so it's obvious that my game has a powdered donut eating Anna Nicole sized hole in it, and I don't even know where to begin the breakdown of why this happens so consistently. But it does.

And it's fucking frustrating.