It’s no surprise Wicked Chops Poker made Bluff Magazine’s “Poker’s Power 20” this month. Apparently, followers of the popular poker site believe… a day of poker news without WCP is like a day without sunshine. After all, what would loyal readers do without the Friday Night Parting Shot, blurry poker pro photos overpowered by sharp background breasts, clever phrases like “A Woman”, Ginger sightings or simply policing them as ”sexy pigs” or better, sexy pigs who post pictures of sexy girls .
It’s hard to decide what to call them… WCP, The Guys at Wicked Chops and the latest fave ”The Entities.” Not that it really matters, as their readership has skyrocketed in the past four years landing them the WSOP Commissioner, Jeffrey Pollack, as a huge fan.
Metaphorically speaking, they possess an additional quality that puts the man in manly and that’s… balls. Sure, plenty of people have courage to step up and express their thoughts but few can speak brutal honesty combined with style and wit.
Even better is their ability to laugh when people say things like Dr. Pauly… “The poker world desperately needed an influx of homosexual hipsters like the gang at WCP. Without them, the poker world would be a bunch of overweight schleps.” And while I’m sure they chuckle at the above statement, it’s quite possible Erica Schoenberg made them speechless (for about two seconds) with her description “You know you’ve arrived when Wicked Chops talks about you.”
Michele Lewis: What inspired WCP?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>THE ENTITIES: Nothing, really. At the time we didn’t see anyone covering poker the way we wanted to read about it, so we just decided to do it ourselves.
MICHELE: How many guys are involved with WCP?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: There are 3 Entities plus some other occasional contributors, including this hot little poker cougar.
MICHELE: I’m sure the cougar will appreciate being called little. So, Pauly gets hate mail from people saying they wished he died… can you top that (assuming WCP has ever pissed off any readers)?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Pauly gets hate mail? That’s crazy. We get a few emails from a pissed off girl every now and then, or from a reader who doesn’t think we’re posting enough (or enough hot girls), but the positive outweighs the negative greatly at this stage.
MICHELE: I don’t recall any hot girls, just Patrik Antonius. But I have always thought the WCP humor wasn’t exactly WCP’s point of view but in fact…the point of view of some ignorant, primitive fictitious red neck, similar to Borat’s approach. Am I totally off?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: People seem to be losing their grip on the fact that most humor is meant to be kind of offensive. How many jokes have you heard that AREN’T at somebody else’s expense? Over the years we’ve certainly tried to tone down anything overly personal, but our sense of humor is what it is. People get that now, we think.
And bottom line is this: we’ve all dated minorities; we’ve voted for Barack Hussein Obama; 1/3 of the Entities is even married to a chick who is 1/2 Asian. So we get a pass, right? Like, we’re in the club, we can make fun of everyone now, right?
MICHELE: I’m not sure, check with Ted Danson. You guys remain relatively anonymous, some say that’s lame, some say its ingenious and I say it shows a lack of vanity, at least in a Perez Hilton sort of way. What say you?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Is not caring that people really know who we are a lack of vanity? If so, then call it a lack of vanity. We decided really early on that this blog wasn’t going to be so much about who we are and what we do. So we’ve remained consistent with that vision. And by “vision” we mean that in the least pretentious sounding kind of way. It’s just not our style. It works for Pauly, who does great personal writing, but that’s just not us.
Plus, people come to the site to see hot chicks, not three aging yet still sexy pigs.
MICHELE: I assumed the traffic was for Patrik Antonius photos. I doubt many guys would request for more Patrik even though they secretly can’t help themselves to stare at his pic. But I was totally unaware of any hot chick photos. How do the first wives feel about the parting shot?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: They just have to go to the sink and wash it off. No big deal.
MICHELE: I’m going to ignore that response. Who is the best Wii Bowler?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Probably some Japanese kid.
MICHELE: Whatever. How big is your jet?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Around 10 inches.
MICHELE: Was that a sexual answer or did you buy a jet at the airport gift shop?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Was that a sexual question? Like, “Hey baby can I buy you a jet at the airport gift shop, if you know what I mean?” You know we’re married, right?
MICHELE: What? You’re making me want to write “OMG!” and I can’t stand it when people write “OMG!” This year launched the WCP Forum… how’s that going?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: We have a forum?
MICHELE: Maybe I mixed you up with Neverwinpoker. I thought you guys had a forum.
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: We found having a forum requires having a mod that is active, which none of us have the time to do. It’ll come back but only when we can dedicate the proper time to it. And by “proper time” we mean “right now,” since Google gave us the death sentence, the forum is the only evidence that we even exist on a page 1 Google search of “wicked chops poker.”
MICHELE: Actually, try Googling your name with TM. Hey, is it true WCP was for sale on Craigslist?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Don’t know. Was it?
MICHELE: Not that I know of… I made that up to post in your forum. Wait, do you have a forum?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Don’t know. That’s a great question. We’ll look it up and get right back to you.
MICHELE: While you’re Googling that…. WCP advertises some Daniel Negreanu stuff… what is he like?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Daniel’s a good dude. One of the few players out there who “gets” that marketing themselves doesn’t just raise his profile, but the profile of the game in general. If more of the top guys did what Daniel and Phil Hellmuth do, there would probably be more mainstream advertising dollars and acceptance pouring into poker.
MICHELE: What do you think the immediate future holds for poker?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Probably some bad beats.
MICHELE: Yea, well that goes for most industries. There are a lot of big poker names who read your site… who was the first big pro you learned was a reader?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Not really sure. It seemed like they all discovered it around the same time. We certainly did interviews with some pros early on, but in general it seems like a few months before the 2006 WSOP, after we had been around for a year, the site had made the rounds and most people within the industry knew of it and us.
MICHELE: Which pros have been cool with things you’ve written?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Really, all of them except a few. And the few that weren’t cool at first are now. One thing people don’t get is a lot of the stuff we do that may come across as offensive to a certain group is actually embraced by said group. People think we’re sexist but we have a pretty avid female reader base. Jon “Pearljammer” Turner actually requested to be the first two-time Ginger of the Day. The list goes on and on. Again, most people we think totally get what we’re about and are cool. Very few cause problems.
And like you Michele, it goes both ways. Some guys that we maybe thought came off as douchebags on TV at first changed our opinions about themselves once we met them. Steve Dannenmann back in the day comes to mind. Antonio is another.
MICHELE: Well, I don’t go both ways but I’ve definitely experienced the “Hey, I can’t believe they’re not butter an ass” situation several times. But you’re right, it does go both ways…think of all the players who should be saying “I’m not really a nice guy, I just play one on T.V. What do you Entities do in your spare time besides check out hot chicks, play Wii and blog?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Meth.
MICHELE: Do you guys sell WCP t-shirts or are they reserved for good times?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Let’s just say that when a girl is wearing a WCP t-shirt, she’s earned it.
See photo below for reaction.
MICHELE: Seems to me, you could buy more meth if you sold the shirts. Where do you see WCP in five years?
style=”color: #ff0000;”>ENTITIES: Same place you do now, on the Internet.
So, there you go. It’s incredibly obvious, The Entities learned something from the best American film ever made, Sixteen Candles… it’s better to be a smartass than a dumbass.
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