Wil’s Big Bang and Pauly’s Finger

“Game over, Moonpie.”

If you missed The Big Bang Theory this week, you missed this line getting deliciously delivered by Wil Wheaton. Wil plays his “delightfully evil” alter ego while tilting Sheldon in a card game called the Mystic Wizards of Ka’a. Up until this week, I had only ever seen Wil play poker.

It was just a couple of weeks before I discovered Wil was going to be on BBT that my brother and I discussed how Wil would be a perfect guest on the show. I recently gave Matty a copy of Wil’s book Just a Geek: Unflinchingly honest tales of the search for life, love, and fulfillment beyond the Starship Enterprise, which he highly recommends.

Wil was, indeed, perfect on the show. Now that he has staked out his territory as Sheldon’s nemesis, I can only hope he comes back to reprise the role. Reading through the blogosphere, I’m not alone on that front.

Getting to see the evil-yet-still-playful side of Wil has me convinced that he could totally pull off Hellmuth in the movie version of Check-Raising the Devil.

I first met Wil at the World Poker Blogger Tour in December 2005. Every one was falling all over themselves to introduce me to Wil. He struck me as very nice — passionate and articulate about poker. But I wasn’t sure what all the hoopla was about.

Even when people referred to him as Wesley Crusher, I didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I just thought they called him that because he looked like a slightly older version of the character on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It wasn’t until months later that I realized he WAS Wesley Crusher.

I especially liked the BBT episode because when I have played Wil Wheaton in poker, I channel my own “delightfully evil” alter ego. I guess it’s because Wil is so even tempered, I view it as a personal challenge to tilt him. And he takes it so well — other than the tilting part. So I look for every opportunity to play my rock to his enchanted bunny.

In other blog news, I saw that former PokerNews editor Haley Hintz made a WSOP Circuit final table at the Horseshoe Chicago this week. It’s her third cash at that locale in less than a year. Nothin’ like a home turf score.

I guess nothing should surprise me when it comes to the good Dr. Pauly. But I was still a little awed by this post. I mean the guy has some range — from crack whores to Cezanne.

Pauly recently sent this picture of me he took at the 2007 WPT Championship. It brought back some great memories. With Pauly, I got to work alongside Change100, the Poker Shrink, Tiffany Michelle and Shronk.

I started looking through all the pictures of Pauly I’ve collected over the years. I couldn’t believe how many I had of Pauly giving the finger. Here’s just a sampling of my digitizing Pauly collection.

My Pictures: Wil Wheaton with monkey from the 2006 WSOP, Pauly at the 2005 WPBT, Pauly and Falstaff at the 2006 WPBT, Pauly (hiding finger) and me at the 2005 WSOP, and Pauly at the 2007 WSOP.

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