sanghoki is Back!

After vowing to never gamble again, Charles sanghoki is going to be back to the tables again, the poker tables that is.

In May 2008, Charles told ESPN, “I like to go into Vegas, it’s a fun place, but you know what, I’ve got to stop gambling. That’s the bottom line,” Barkley said during TNT’s pregame show before Game 7 between San Antonio and New Orleans. “I am not going to gamble anymore. For right now, the next year or two, I’m not going to gamble.”

This came about after he was detained by police for owing $400,000 to the Wynn Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Funny thing is, I was actually in Las Vegas when he took out the markers and we watched him playing Blackjack on a private table for about 30 minutes (for what we assume was around $20k per hand).

He had been doing well, according to friends and had stayed away from casinos, but this week Charles announced that he will be playing in a charity event for Ante Up for Africa (a charity designed to raise money for the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Charles will be anteing up $5k to play the event, but promises to donate his winnings to charity. I think he is doing this for a great cause, but the BET blog summed it up the best, “this is like an alcholic who has vowed to give up drinking but decides to host a wine tasting event for charity”.

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Lacey Jones – Looking Better Every Day

AJ Benza is the Best!

Last month was quite a rollercoaster ride with the status of whether High Stakes Poker would be returning. Then on May 16th GSN announced that they would be pulling the plug on the show. This caused outrage in the poker community as they were going to lose THE GREATEST POKER TV SHOW.

During all this a person using the name AJ Benza posted a comment on a Tampa Bay poker blog about his thoughts on the cancelling of the show. Well, after some confirmation, it turned out that this was the real AJ Benza so they got AJ on the show to talk about his thoughts on the cancelling of the show.

One of the best lines from the interview had to do with his experiences with the new owner of the network. According to AJ the new owner said, “I don’t care if we have to air slavery… I want numbers”. He thinks the real problem is that they want listeners that will stay around after watching poker, but because many of the other shows on the network aren’t that great, people leave after HSP.

I really like AJ’s personality in that he is not afraid to speak his mind. Listen to the candid interview about some of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes from making fun of Johnny Chan’s shirt looking like a “strong man in the Beijing circus” to Sammy Farha “haggling like he’s selling a goat” at High Stakes Poker here:

AJ Benza on Ante Up – (fast forward to just about half way through for AJ)

Fortuntately rumour has it that GSN will not be giving HSP the axe and it will live for another season. Don’t worry, there is more of AJ and the rest of the HSP crew still to come!

Also, if you have never seen AJ’s great youtube movie review series called Real Guys Movie Reviews I recommend watching a few of them. Here is one of his reviews: