Dracula Owns Doyle Brunson

STRIP #35
Happy Halloween! I like today's strip a lot, although a couple people on the PokerXFactor forums just said they didn't like the punch at the end. I replied by saying, "The vampire kid doesn't understand why any kid would be Doyle Brunson for Halloween, so he punches what he doesn't understand, which is what kids (and adults) often do." I thought it worked, but maybe not.

In case you weren't sure, little Corbin is wearing a pillow under his shirt to simulate Doyle's weight at the time, and those are the pillow's feathers flying out in the last panel. Also, Princess Amazia (Scarlett's costume) is the most popular cartoon for little girls in the world of this comic and Scarlett is the show's biggest fan.

We once again had a great time in the +EV tournament and I wish more of you joined us! DrSickbeat won the $11 bounty on my head and the 11 cent bounty on L8Bloomer's head. Bloomer's feeling a bit down now, according to his latest blog entry, so post a supportive comment if you've got a minute. The winner of yesterday's fifth +EV tourney was Nashwan, who goes by Indian_Skimmer on the PXF forums. I'll be shipping the first issue of the +EV comic book across the pond to him in the UK as soon as I receive the first printing (under two weeks hopefully). I'm looking forward to seeing those comics in print, and make sure you play in the next +EV tourney on Sunday for another chance to win a free book. I'll also have them for sale on the site, though.

Here's a very cool image I just captured off my screen, showing that the last 20 visitors to plusev.net came from 11 different countries. Notice the flags on the right.

Wednesday's upcoming comic starts a storyline that introduces two new main characters! You'll meet the first on Wednesday. She's only about a foot tall, and she's very hairy, but she's incredibly good at poker.

Phil Ivey Wins the War on Terror

STRIP #34
This one's probably in my top five, so it figures that I didn't come up with the idea. Drawn0ut from the PokerXFactor forums suggested it to me -- a money laundering terrorist gets hooked on the game and loses all the funds. Hard to believe that Bill Frist actually used this as a reason to ban online gambling. There's no proof that terrorists have ever used poker sites to launder money and it doesn't make much sense for them to do so.

The fifth weekly +EV tourney is this Sunday! Register early! Please visit this thread in the forums for all the details.

Congress at Work

STRIP #33
I like today's comic. The idea of a Congressman who had voted for the ban playing online poker himself was suggested to me by L8Bloomer during the +EV private tournament on Sunday. And hey, don't forget to play in the next +EV tourney! Please visit this thread in the forums for all the details.

Disturbing Dream #3: F Frist

STRIP #32
Today's strip is totally insane. Too insane probably. I love it, though. It's the third in a line of crazy dream comics, with the first featuring Daniel Negreanu shooting Mike Matusow and the second telling the heart wrenching story of Phil Hellmuth getting eaten by a shark. I'd like to thank +EV fan and fellow PokerXFactor subscriber tehmac for suggesting the final panel with the Fossilman line and the bones. For those of you who don't know, Greg Raymer's official website is at FossilmanPoker.com.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was the one who pushed through the recent gambling legislation, as I'm sure most of you know. He's most likely going to run for president in 2008. This is my favorite part of his Wikipedia page --

While in medical school, Frist obtained cats from animal shelters, under pretense of adoption as pets, for school research experiments in which he killed the animals. In a 1989 autobiography, Frist described how he "spent days and nights on end in the lab, taking the hearts out of cats, dissecting each heart." After some time, Frist said "[I] lost my supply of cats," so he chose to deceive animal shelters . . .

In the original script for today's comic I had Frist say "I'll never see my cats again" in the third panel, but I later changed it because I figured not enough people knew the crazy cat story.

We had the fourth weekly +EV tournament yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Alfredo64 busted me for the bounty and Aces4Peru took first place, winning the first issue of the +EV comic book as well, which will be printed soon! It was a good day for private tournaments and I won the Euro Donk2Shark, hosted by L8Bloomer, who took fourth in the +EV tourney. I knocked out L8Bloomer on the very first hand of the Euro Donk2Shark, which paved my way to the victory.

Wednesday's strip will also address the gaming ban, but don't worry, no one gets eaten. It does feature another member of Congress, though, and an angry letter written by Corbin.

Corbin Loves Poker

STRIP #31
It's true -- the main character of this comic strip likes poker a lot. Maybe he'll get into humorous adventures one day to entertain us all, but for now he just really likes poker and that is all. Monday's strip will feature the blood and screams of a senator, though, so look forward to that.

I strongly suggest you play in the +EV private tournament this Sunday. Along with the usual bounty on my head, this week the winner of the tournament gets a special prize, the first issue of the +EV comic book, collecting strips #1-24. I'm going to send the book off to the printers for a limited run in the next few days.

For all the details on the tourney, please visit this thread.

Poker is Bad for You

STRIP #30
Today's strip is horrible! And Friday's isn't much better! Wish me luck on writing a good one for Monday. Maybe I'll even resort to bringing Harold back. No, not yet. I'll save that for sweeps.

Please reply to this thread in the forums if you'd be interested in custom +EV poker chips.

Corbin Has No Soul

STRIP #29
Hard to like Corbin after this one! I think I'll have him save a dozen babies from a fire on Wednesday to make up for it. Today's comic is a follow-up to the September 15 strip. Really cool how that worked out.

I'm a huge baseball fan. Had season tickets to the Los Angeles Dodgers for seven years in the front row of the left field pavilion, where I caught a bunch of home run balls. The World Series winners for this decade have been pretty crazy. Diamondbacks in 2001, Angels in '02, Marlins in '03, Red Sox in '04, White Sox in '05, and now possibly the Detroit Tigers. Two of those teams hadn't won the World Series in at least 86 years, two of them had never won, and two of them just came into existence in the '90s. And the Tigers of course lost 119 games three years ago. I'm rooting for them over the Mets or the Cardinals.

We had the third +EV private tournament yesterday. A lot of you showed up late -- gotta remember it next Sunday! The winner of the bounty and the whole tourney was tubbs0r, and here's his animated hand history. You'll need to sign up for a free PokerXFactor account to see it. Please don't watch hands #31 or #36, though.

Strike a Pose

STRIP #28
I think Corbin might turn more and more into a Homer Simpson like figure as the years go on. Eventually he'll be 300 pounds and just speaking gibberish while clicking randomly on eight different tables and drinking gallons of beer. Violet will have left him and he'll struggle to remember Scarlett's name on the rare occasions when he sees her. Pretty sad. No, that won't happen.

You may think the M on Corbin's shirt is for the University of Michigan, since it was revealed earlier that they live in the Detroit area, but it's actually a shirt Corbin had custom made because he's such a big fan of Dan Harrington's M statistic.

The third weekly +EV private tournament has not been set up yet, but I'll do that soon and it should take place on Sunday afternoon. Please check the forums for more info. You should all be posting there anyway! It seems like most people just comment on the strip in other poker forums where there are threads devoted to the comic, but I don't get to see them all that way, since they don't always have links that show up in my site's stats. So start posting!

Flipaments

STRIP #27
I haven't played a flipament yet, but they sound pretty fun. Adam M. Junglen popularized them recently on the 2+2 forums. He's a fellow PokerXFactor subscriber and a fan of the comic, so you should all check out his blog.

You should also note that Corbin came away from getting struck by lightning with only a small band-aid on his forehead. Maybe Violet's right about him just being a luck sack.

If you're a college football fan, be sure to come back for Friday's strip, where Corbin strikes the Heisman pose for some reason --

Corbin Lives

STRIP #26
I'm glad Corbin survived the lightning strike. If he didn't, I'd probably have to make the strip all about Scarlett becoming a top poker player, which would be slow and boring. Violet would just be constantly frowning at her in the background. Or I could have switched the focus to Harold, I guess, and his amazing life in Vegas. I miss Harold -- he'll have to return one day.

We had a lot of fun in the second weekly +EV private tournament yesterday. It was the first time that SurfChix had played Omaha, but she knocked me out for the $11 bounty and ended up finishing second to nico1a! Third place went to Aiiaiiyo, the nice lady who translates +EV into Hungarian on this site.

By the way, for any of you who aren't sure, online poker has NOT been banned. Corbin only saw a newspaper headline about it and I'm sure Violet doesn't know much more than that. The new law does not make it illegal to play poker online and many lawyers think that it doesn't really change anything and is unenforceable. For more info, read this article. One of the biggest poker sites, Full Tilt, recently announced that they're here to stay. I haven't played too much on Full Tilt, but I really like their software (lightning fast) and I'll be playing there a lot more from now on. It's really fun to watch the pros play high stakes cash games on Full Tilt, like Phil Ivey and Mike Matusow especially. They even talk to the rail sometimes, which is really cool.

Bad Day

STRIP #25
Corbin is having a very bad day. He really did get struck by lightning, by the way, as you'll learn more about in Monday's strip!

About 60 percent of +EV readers live outside of America, so I envy most of you. If PokerStars decides to ban Americans after Bush signs the new bill into law (scheduled for October 13), Sunday's upcoming +EV private tourney may be the last one on Stars. We could move it to Full Tilt for subsequent weeks, though. Here's all the details for tourney #2:

WHEN: Sunday, October 8, 2:20 PM ET

WHERE: PokerStars

GAME: Pot Limit Omaha

BUY-IN: $10+1

PASSWORD: plusev

BOUNTY: $11 cash transferred to your PokerStars account immediately after you bust me (Snagglefood) out of the tourney.

FIRST PLACE: Not sure yet about an extra prize for first this week. I might decide to give you something!

Keep in mind that this is a Pot Limit Omaha tournament. I love Omaha, so I thought it would be fun to change it up a bit instead of just playing Hold'em all the time.

If you're new to private tournaments on PokerStars and are having trouble finding it, please view this image. If you're new to PokerStars in general, please download it through this link. If you have any questions or if you'd like to talk about the tournament, please post in this thread on the forums.

I also highly recommend that you play in the Euro Donk2Shark private tourney at 3:30 PM ET on Sunday. It's hosted by L8Bloomer, a buddy of mine on the PokerXFactor forums, and it starts an hour and 10 minutes after the +EV tourney. I finished second in the Euro Donk2Shark last week after having a big chip lead heads up. Frustrating. The winner gets interviewed by L8Bloomer after the tourney and the transcript goes up on his popular Donk2Shark Blog. So don't forget to win!

Disturbing Dream #2

STRIP #24
This one might be a bit too crazy for some people, but it's my favorite strip so far. I like blood. This is the second in a series where Corbin dreams about professional poker players being murdered. The first featured Negreanu shooting Matusow.

+EV will begin to address the issue of Congress banning internet gaming in Friday's strip. I'm not too worried overall about what Congress did, by the way. A lot of very smart people who work in online poker, like the guys at PokerXFactor, have said that online poker will survive this. People have been panicking, but there's no need for that at this point.

It's not poker related, but you should check out this guy's site. Here's one of his funnier posts.

Meeting Phil and Annie

STRIP #23
Today's comic is pretty much just a setup for Wednesday's, which is my favorite strip so far. Be sure to check it out! It's extra crazy, though, and bloody, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Over the weekend Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy of PokerXFactor finished 2nd in Ultimate Bet's Aruba Classic for $447,000, the biggest cash of his career so far. The final table of that tourney will air on the Game Show Network on December 10th. Can't wait to see it. I'm also looking forward to tomorrow (Tuesday) night, when Eric "Rizen" Lynch, who appeared in this +EV comic, will be featured heavily on ESPN's coverage of Event #3 of this year's WSOP, where he finished third.

Sunday's +EV private tournament on PokerStars went great! 26 players showed up! I finished 25th after getting pocket kings on the first two hands of the tournament and pocket aces shortly after that, losing a huge pot with the aces to a set of sevens. PIMP1111 busted me for the $20 bounty. Diggs82 won the whole thing and he'll get his name in an upcoming comic, probably as an opponent of Corbin's.

I joined the Hendon Mob poker forum recently and read all about Vicky Coren winning the European Poker Tour event in London last week for nearly $1 million. She posts a lot on that forum and has continued to since the win, mostly in this thread. She seemed so nice that I decided to send her a PM asking her to check out the strip, and she replied quickly, saying, "I think that's very funny. I love cartoons and I love poker, so I'm very excited that AT LAST the two have come together!" Thanks, Vicky, and congratulations again on your huge win!

I also want to congratulate Annette_15 on making the final table of the biggest online poker tournament in history early this morning, the Main Event of the WCOOP on PokerStars. Still in Aruba after cashing in Ultimate Bet's big live tourney there, she goes online and makes another $163,000 for 7th place. Incredible.

And last but not least, +EV is now being translated into Hungarian by a fan named Bea who wanted to share the comics with her poker playing buddies on a popular Hungarian poker site. Click the image to below to see more!