If his career had taken a different turn, Martin Franklin would've been an excellent infomercial pitchman. Sportily dressed in jeans and a white button-down, with a touch of an English accent, he bounces around the product showcase wall at the headquarters of Jarden Corp., a no-name company behind dozens of name brands.
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Charles Barkley is headed back to the tables in Las Vegas to play in a poker tournament about a month after pledging not to gamble. He says it's all for charity.
Some call him "the Post-it Note Boy," after the 10-foot tall Ray Charles mosaic he made out of those sticky colored squares last summer.
Speed Racer's new Trixie says she gets plenty of thrills at the track – with only a 1-horsepower engine.
LAS VEGAS -- Traveling with Jamie Gold has its perks. A flight to Las Vegas, for example, isn't simply a one-hour trip from San Francisco to Sin City; it's a theatrical production worthy of a casino showroom.
Bryan Berg spends much of his life in a house of cards. Literally. Berg, the Guinness World Record-honored "Cardstacker," has devoted his career to building houses of playing cards -- and skyscrapers, domes, cathedrals and stadiums, too.
Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne fired back Thursday at criticism of his leadership and allegations of inappropriate behavior published in the Wall Street Journal.
(Video courtesy of NBC)
The great Swedish filmmaker is fondly recalled by his No. 1 fan
Fresh from their Father's Day vacation in Hawaii, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck reunited in Las Vegas for some grownups-only fun - for a good cause.
If his career had taken a different turn, Martin Franklin would've been an excellent infomercial pitchman. Sportily dressed in jeans and a white button-down, with a touch of an English accent, he bounces around the product showcase wall at the headquarters of Jarden Corp., a no-name company behind dozens of name brands.
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Charles Barkley is headed back to the tables in Las Vegas to play in a poker tournament about a month after pledging not to gamble. He says it's all for charity.
Some call him "the Post-it Note Boy," after the 10-foot tall Ray Charles mosaic he made out of those sticky colored squares last summer.
Speed Racer's new Trixie says she gets plenty of thrills at the track – with only a 1-horsepower engine.
LAS VEGAS -- Traveling with Jamie Gold has its perks. A flight to Las Vegas, for example, isn't simply a one-hour trip from San Francisco to Sin City; it's a theatrical production worthy of a casino showroom.
Bryan Berg spends much of his life in a house of cards. Literally. Berg, the Guinness World Record-honored "Cardstacker," has devoted his career to building houses of playing cards -- and skyscrapers, domes, cathedrals and stadiums, too.
Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne fired back Thursday at criticism of his leadership and allegations of inappropriate behavior published in the Wall Street Journal.
(Video courtesy of NBC)
The great Swedish filmmaker is fondly recalled by his No. 1 fan
Fresh from their Father's Day vacation in Hawaii, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck reunited in Las Vegas for some grownups-only fun - for a good cause.
You don't have to be a high roller to travel to Vegas in style. Here, Travel + Leisure's tips for playing your cards right -- and saving a bundle -- in Sin City.
In the latest salvo in Anne Heche's bitter divorce battle, her estranged husband Coley Laffoon questions Heche's parenting skills and accuses the actress of resorting to lies to win custody of - and destroy his relationship with - their 5-year-old son Homer.
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Mark Ewing, a 31-year-old entrepreneur and day trader who quit his job two months ago to "take some risks in life," parlayed a $10,000 buy-in into $250,000 by winning the World Series of Golf on Wednesday.
Last week SI writer Richard Deitsch interviewed Eric Bana (Munich) for the magazine's Q&A. The Australian actor plays a professional poker player in Lucky You. Here are additional excerpts from their conversation:
The Internet has made poker into an international phenomenon played by millions around the world. By the nature of the game, most will be losers, but "Texas hold 'em" and the other variations of poker has a professional face, too, not just that of pasty-faced gamblers staring passively at computer screens.
Poker may not seem as hip as it was just a few years ago. And nobody's feeling that more than shareholders of WPT Enterprises, operator of the World Poker Tour.
Reggie Bush's role in Ciara's new music video Like A Boy have intensified rumors that the duo are an item. In the video, which was shot in Los Angeles, Bush is quietly sitting in a chair while Ciara seductively moves around him; whispering in his ear, hitting him on the head, laying between his legs and kissing him on the cheek.
Paul Wasicka is sitting in front of a pair of computers in the corner of his quaint hotel room searching for a pen. It wouldn't be so hard to find if he wasn't sharing the room with two of his friends and there weren't suitcases and clothes sprawled everywhere, but he is and it's making it hard to find anything in these cramped quarters.
Cingular appears to be grabbing the lion's share of smart phones. In the last few months, the carrier has stocked its lineup with the Nokia E62, the HP iPaq hw6925, and the 3G-enabled Cingular 8525.
SI.com's Arash Markazi traveled to Park City, Utah to chronicle the slate of never-ending parties and events surrounding the Sundance Film Festival. Here's his diary of the scene.
We've all, at some point, been guilty of playing a hasty game of Solitaire on our computer while the boss isn't looking, secretly wishing that winning a round could be part of the job description.
When David Harrill's aging mother-in-law moved in earlier this year, he knew one consideration trumped all others: Don't mess with her bridge game.
Know when to press - and when to pull back.
November is National Alzheimer's Disease month. CNN medical correspondent Judy Fortin talked about the illness with Dr. John Morris, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
We talked to everyone from an NFL kicker to a tech CEO to find out what goes into the secret sauce of excellence.
When he won $12 million in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas this month, Jamie Gold, a television producer, pumped his first in the air, hoisted stacks of cash over his head, and wrapped his mother in an embrace.
A hedge fund manager was a big winner in another type of high-stakes gamble -- the World Series of Poker.
Often referred to as "America's new national pastime," poker has exploded over the past couple of years -- specifically Texas Hold 'Em games, a popular poker variant that has spawned TV shows, online competitions and even poker chips sold at local convenience stores.
True story: As part of its social-studies curriculum, my daughter's fourth-grade class was planning a field trip to the Lower East Side in Manhattan to get a sense of what life was like for immigrants in the early 20th century.
Rather than spend up to $60 on the latest computer game and study a 200-page manual to learn how to play it -- a growing number of desktop gamers prefer inexpensive and easy-to-play "casual games."
Binion's Gambling Hall & Hotel is in the old part of Las Vegas, far from the glitz of the Strip. Just a few miles from the legendary Caesars Palace and the swanky Bellagio, it sits on a forlorn stretch of downtown that's about as sexy as a Walgreens--subpar hotels, cheesy casinos and not-so-famous stage shows (two tickets to see Hellbent 4 Humor, anyone? Anyone?). But when Steve Dannenmann strides across the bland wine-colored carpet in the upstairs ballroom after downing a $12.50 T-bone in the coffee shop, he doesn't see the leaky ceiling and the deserted expanse full of stale air. He sees television cameras, bright lights and hordes of poker fans stomping their feet on steel bleachers. He hears them chanting his name. That's what it was like in this room six months ago, when his life changed forever.
Electronic Arts decided it couldn't beat Jamdat, a publisher of videogames for cellphones, so this week it made the largest acquisition in its history, paying $680 million for the Los Angeles-based game-maker, the biggest player in the burgeoning $2.6 billion market for games on mobile phones.
"The day I turned 65, I played bridge with Bill Gates. You know, you can have fun when you're older," says Ione.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Investors in WPT Enterprises, operator of the popular World Poker Tour television series on the Travel Channel, have to be wondering if they've been dealt a losing hand.
Paul McCartney sometimes gets a little help from a friend.
Stocks surged Friday as a strong -- but not too strong -- June jobs report reassured investors that the economy is hopping, but not so fast as to force the Federal Reserve to speed up its interest rate-hiking campaign.
Getting it right
A year ago Dave Knauff dreamed of turning his modest landscaping business in suburban Chicago into a $10-million-a-year gardening behemoth. He sat down with three consultants in the hope that a Sma...
Until Bill Miller did it, nobody ever called 76-year-old Walter Clyde "Puggy" Pearson a giant of the investing world. Pearson's formal education stopped in fifth grade. He's a professional gambler....
Generally speaking, poker players can be divided into four types, or personalities, only one of which consistently ends up the big winner.
The first rule of successful gambling, says Pearson, is to not gamble (in the strictest sense of the word) at all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." For poker players and investors, maybe we should make it three ideas.
In poker there are no sure things. Even the best starting hands can be beaten.
Until Bill Miller did it, nobody ever called 76-year-old Walter Clyde "Puggy" Pearson a giant of the investing world.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Admit it. You've succumbed to the poker craze. You want to be the next Chris Moneymaker or Annie Duke. You fantasize about bluffing your way to a big pot against Hollywood poker aficionados like Ben Affleck.
History is littered with odd tax schemes. William Pitt the Younger introduced a tax on windows in Britain. Peter the Great taxed souls, and Nero, urine.
Two "Dogs Playing Poker" paintings cleaned house at Doyle New York's annual Dogs in Art Auction, fetching a staggering $590,400, the auction house said.
Conflicting accounts about the possible release of Iraqi detainees -- among them the woman known as "Dr. Germ" -- were issued by the U.S. and Iraqi governments Wednesday.
Your cell phone rings to the tune of "The Gambler." You think Ben Affleck's best performance wasn't in a movie but in his winning hand at the last celebrity poker event. You couldn't care less about politics, but you can argue for hours whether you should play or fold an unsuited Ace/6.
In the immortal words of Kenny Rogers: "You've got to know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em." And, if you're the founders of the World Poker Tour, knowing when to take the company public is ...
It's a sport where the major stars often aren't around for the biggest games. Its games are shown weeks, if not months, after they're played. And the viewers exert almost as much energy as the competitors, which is to say, not much at all.
By simple count, it appears to be a success. Of the coalition's 55 individuals on the Pentagon's "Most Wanted Iraqis" deck of playing cards, 43 have been killed, captured or have surrendered, including Saddam Hussein and his sons.
Annie Duke is the mother of four children under the age of 9 and a former Ph.D. candidate in psycholinguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, which makes her, she claims, ideally suited to play...
Beating out the more than 2,500 others who entered the 35th annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Greg Raymer scooped the final pot Friday night for a take of $5 million.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - You know taxes are a fact of life, or, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "the price we pay for civilization."
From the Wolf Blitzer Reports staff in Washington:
At least two explosions ripped through different parts of Baghdad on Monday, with one killing a U.S. soldier and the other apparently targeting journalists.
The Pentagon has declared former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an enemy prisoner of war, officials have said.
Warren and Bill are very aggressive bridge players. You won't be pushing either of them around. But Bill is a "scientific" player, who enjoys learning conventional approaches and reasoning through ...
Don't rush, Paul Phillips tells himself. Even when you're burning up under the television lights, $1.5 million in poker chips is at stake, and you're facing one of the most feared players in the w...
--DEATH BY BOREDOM A University of Texas study found that people who don't use decision-making abilities in their jobs have a 43% higher mortality rate than those who do.
Last year wasn't bad news for investors everywhere. In some countries, stocks offered solid gains. But before you go putting your money in last year's top-performing global markets, take a closer l...
Remember when home entertainment amounted to an evening in front of the RCA, a few hands of gin rummy, and a fistful of Jiffy Pop? Times, taste, and technology have changed a lot over the years. Wi...
A small quiz, if you don't mind: Kindly describe what each of the companies in the top ten of the Most Admired does.
And you think your taxes are tough? The IRS doesn't mind if you collect clocks--or do anything else it considers unusual. It just wants you to fill out a few little forms.
I've fallen in love again. After a fling with Napster, I took a friend's recommendation and tried Scour.com--a spiffy-looking Website that searches for media files ranging from MP3s to full-length ...
The Lucky Chances casino in Colma, Calif., a town just south of San Francisco known mostly for its endless cemeteries, has none of the glitz of a Vegas gambling palace. With its scruffy carpeting a...
Go ahead, put away that laptop. (Admit it: You were just playing solitaire, weren't you?) Here's some ear fodder to help keep you sane on those long hauls.
Go ahead, put away that laptop. (Admit it: You were just playing solitaire, weren't you?) Here's some ear fodder to help keep you sane on those long hauls. --J.G.
Go ahead, put away that laptop. (Admit it: You were just playing solitaire, anyway, weren't you?) Here's some ear fodder to help keep you sane on those long hauls. --J.G.
You've probably never heard of a Polish mathematician named Stanislow Ulam. But if you are saving for retirement or a child's college education, you'd be wise to get to know one of the concepts he ...
Sure, for $1,000 or so you can get a decent PC. It's probably all you really need. You'll write reports, cook up business plans, and browse the Web. That's fine.
BUY THE WINES OF THE FUTURE(S)
While casinos will warmly welcome busloads of blue-haired old ladies aching to play the one-armed bandits, they lavish most of their attention on a handful of high rollers. And no wonder. Nicknamed...
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
When retired Army Lt. Col. Chuck Luce, 62, became executive director of the South Carolina Association for Retarded Citizens in January 1990, he was confident that the group's high-stakes bingo gam...
Worried about coming face to face with a carjacker, as more than 25,000 Americans have since 1991? Then you might be a candidate for the latest in automobile antitheft devices (suggested retail pri...
GOOD MORNING. What do we have for me to look at today?'' Linda Joy Wachner, the chief executive of Warnaco, breezes through the small ''stitch room'' on the 12th floor of her headquarters at 90 Par...
The folksy CEO of tiny (14 employees) Vindicator Inc. of Plant City, Florida, is betting he will hit pay dirt with a food-preservation process called irradiation -- exposure to radioactive cobalt p...
Casino regulation in Atlantic City being one of the subjects on which Keeping Up readers receive timely reports no matter what they say, we return herewith to the seaside with an exclusive analysis...
We keep looking for something to happen in the great American casino industry, and it never happens, even though economic theory tells us it must happen. Baffling, eh? And definitely requiring an e...
''You bald old lecher, I'm going to kick you you-know-where!'' cries the young female clerk. Her women companions giggle. It's just a jest, a line read from a role-playing card game called Men- For...
The news report in the Wall Street Journal was brief but stunning. It said that Caesars World, the gaming goliath, had suffered a sharp setback in its second quarter (ended January 31). Earnings we...
Bear Stearns President James Cayne has won national tournaments in bridge, but when a men's magazine interviewed him about his passion for the game, the blunt Wall Streeter didn't know when to pass...
Inspired by a FORTUNE cover story that featured billionaire investor and bridge player Warren Buffett (April 11, 1988), the American Contract Bridge League put together a match that pitted Buffett ...
For eight years Jack Keller, 44, made an enviable living as a professional poker player. All told, he earned $1.1 million and this year was ranked the second leading money winner in the World Serie...
Gin rummy ace Richard Morrow, chairman of Amoco, just chose a new, high-stakes game: mergers and acquisitions. He has bid for Dome Petroleum, the troubled Canadian oil company. If Morrow wins, he w...
William Maxwell believes that anyone can learn to be smart by playing cards. Based on this controversial theory, he has designed a deck and a series of 40 card games that five-to-10-year-olds can p...
As attentive readers will possibly have noted, your correspondent has been laboring for years to find some practical use for his IBM PC -- some use beyond word processing, that is. His efforts thus...
Only in America (cont'd) A woman who lost $350,000 gambling at Nevada casinos wants a federal court to cancel the debt because she played blackjack so badly. Toshi Van Blitter of El Macero, Calif.,...
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