All In

Some ten-odd years ago, biographer and journalist Anthony Holden spent a year as a professional poker player, beginning and ending with the World Series of Poker at Binion's Horseshoe Casino. He captured his story in the resulting book, Big Deal.

And now, with poker exploding in popularity, Jay Lovinger, journalist, has decided to spend a year as professional poker player, begining and ending with the World Series of Poker. He'll be chronicling the results in a column for ESPN's Page 2 as well as a book to be published by Harper Collins.

After reading this, my thoughts (in order) were:
1. Lucky bastard.
2. Is he doing this on his own dime or is someone bankrolling him?
3. Given the recent growth of poker, on the TV and the best-seller lists, why doesn't some enterprising publishing company bankroll...er...sponsor, say, a poker blogger, to do the same thing? Surely both sides could make money from something like this.

I bet there'd be plenty of volunteers.