The call came at 11:00 a.m. It was from Mori Eskandani, a producer with High Stakes Poker. Iíd been hoping to play on the show for a while, and Mori told me I was getting my shot. But Iíd need to be at the Golden Nugget within four hours, prepared to buy in for a minimum of $200,000. Of course I said Iíd be there, but I did not plan on bringing the minimum. After a few phone calls and a trip to my box at Bellagio, I had $400,000 in cash. This might seem like a lot of money to put together so quickly, but, for a successful high-stakes poker player in Las Vegas, itís really not a big deal. Remember what they used to say about Stu Ungar: Money was the cheapest commodity in his life. Hey, I can relate.

The bigger downside of a short-notice invitation is that I had no time to prepare. My opponents included Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and Patrik Antonius. Lineups donít get much more challenging than that. Iíd have liked a day or two to review their play and examine what I could do to beat them. But that just wasnít an option. Truthfully, though, at the risk of sounding arrogant, Iím not afraid of anyone at the poker table. So I spent a couple of hours getting mentally prepared and showed up ready to play my best.

Some people go on High Stakes primarily because they want to appear on TV. The money that may be won or lost is secondary. That is not my situation. My $400,000 meant a lot to me. I was there to win. It was the biggest game I ever sat down in and also ñ considering that I was positioned between Patrik and Phil ñ the toughest. But I stayed confident and had a really good time, especially after I got used to play suddenly stopping for makeup retouches and camera adjustments.

No doubt, youíre wondering how I did. Unfortunately, I agreed not to reveal that. But I will post the airdate as soon as I know it.

. . .

Right now all my poker friends are buzzing about a mysterious online player named Isildur1. Nobody seems 100-percent sure who he is. But the belief is that heís a Swedish pro who built his bankroll on the European sites. Heís currently beating the biggest names in poker. Since October, Isuldur1 is ahead more than $3-million, playing heads-up against Patrik, Phil, and Tom. Most audacious of all, heís multi-tabling all of them simultaneously. No one has ever come into these games and just beaten everybody the way he has. He plays them all day long and is obviously very good.

I donít know what will happen long term, but I do have some experience with Isildur1. A few weeks ago he played me heads-up at $50/$100 holdíem. He quit me after just an hour. So I canít really tell you how good he actually is. What I can tell you is that heís definitely confident and thinking. Obviously, when he plays for the highest stakes ñ $500/$1,000 no limit ñ heís making more correct decisions than everybody else. Itís psychological warfare, and so far heís coming out on top.

Nevertheless, Tom tells me that he expects to eventually win. While itís hard for me to handicap their matches, over the years Iíve learned one thing about Tom Dwan: Betting against him is usually a mistake.

. . .

When you spend a lot of time focused on poker, itís nice to have friends who can break you away from your obsession. That was the case a couple weeks ago, on the night of Brian Rastís birthday. I wanted to stay in, but Brian and the guys convinced me to join them for dinner at Cut.

If youíve never been there, you really ought to check it out. Cut is

Wolfgang Puckís steakhouse in the Palazzo and itís really excellent.

Between courses, we played What Lodden Thinks ñ the most outrageous estimate tied into a question about how many guys in Vegas unknowingly have girlfriends who are hookers; the Lodden number was 18,000; Iím confident that the true number is closer to 500 ñ and I wound up winning a couple grand overall. But when the check came, we played credit card roulette and I lost. So the $1,800 tab ñ including our standard 30-prcent discount ñ was on me.

Dinner turned out to be so much fun, that I wound up going with the guys to XS, across the street at the Wynn. Of course, we had a table on the edge of the dance-floor and everybody got plastered. By 3:00 in the morning, some people had too much fun and needed to go home. But a bunch of us decided to keep rolling. Outside the club we ran into Chuck Liddell, and he invited our group to go partying with him. First, though, he needed to quickly run up to his room. He asked us to wait, but, after just a few minutes, four hot girls walked by and we followed. No dude can compete with hot girls. Not even Chuck Liddell. Maybe next time, Iceman!