Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
PBT: Jeremy Lin wasn't his hot self on Saturday, but he still led the Knicks to victory.
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Golf's dream pairing - Woods and Mickelson - is on the course in the final round at Pebble Beach. Jason Sobel has hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Euro Roundup: First-place Manchester City won 1-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday on Joleon Lescott's goal in the 63rd minute, maintaining its two-point lead over Manchester United in the Premier League.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
ReutersFull Tilt Poker’s pros — Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren, Bloch, Ferguson, Ivey, Gordon, Seidel, Harman and others — are among the superstars of the game. Ivey, a 28-year-old from Atlantic City, N.J., is one of the only world-class black players and he inevitably draws comparisons to Tiger Woods.
When Full Tilt Poker threw a lavish charity bash at the chic La Bete nightclub last week, the players and celebs turned out. Penn Jillette, the big, loud half of the Penn & Teller magic and comedy duo, was there to join his poker buddies.
“Every poker player I knew until the year 2000 was a cheat — and that’s not because of the people I know, though it’s also that,” Penn said. “They’d deal bottoms. They could do everything. I never played with friends because I knew there’d be a cheat there. Then the Full Tilt Poker guys came in with a kind of macho math and playing straight.
“Now there are 150 people playing poker that I believe aren’t cheating. That would not have happened anywhere in the world 20 years ago.”
Penn believes most games still have cheats.
“All your country club games, all your friendly games, the cops and the firemen on the corner, they have a buddy there. In every one of those games someone’s cheating, and it’s a full-time cheat,” said Penn, who is working on a book called “How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker” about a friend who “wasted his life” doing just that.
“Even in the World Series, there’s always nail nicks on the cards,” Penn said. “Those could happen accidentally but they don’t. If you nail-nick one card, and you know what one card out of the deck gives you, even something useless like the four of clubs, your edge becomes extraordinary. You can tell when someone might be bluffing. You can tell what’s coming up. And that involves sticking your finger on the side of the card and remembering which card you did it to.
“All the Full Tilt guys will notice it and call for a new deck. But when you’ve got thousands of people playing, it’s a good opportunity for cheating.”
The alternative to cheating is having brains, skill and luck.
“If you have two aces and I have two kings, and all the money goes into the pot, you feel great about your chances of winning,” Gordon said. “But 18 percent of the time you’re going to lose. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot. But you’re going to get dealt pocket aces 14 times on average, about once every 221 hands or once every five hours. So if this scenario happened to you 14 times, your chances of surviving all 14 confrontations are only about 3 percent. It’s the power of statistics.”
Yet poker still retains its power to mesmerize players and fans, whether they’re new to the game or they played on their kitchen table when they were kids.
“Now everybody wants to play poker because they want to be like the guys on TV, they want to be like the celebrities,” said Esfandiari, a 26-year-old who made his unique journey to the World Series from a childhood in Iran to an adolescence in San Jose, Calif., from a fascination with magic to a passion for poker. His first trick was “the floating dollar bill.” Now he’s floating millions from poker.
“When people start playing poker, they realize what a beautiful game it is,” he said. “It’s so pure in that there are no repeat situations. You can never have the same thing happen. You’re always learning.”
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
NEW YORK (AP) - As the glow fades from the Giants' Super Bowl triumph, some New York sports fans are tuning in to basketball and hockey, with the Rangers in first place and the Knicks' overnight sensation, Jeremy Lin, sparking "Lin-sanity.''
Robins: This year, six new breeds will be making their debut on the green carpet for the Westminster Dog Show, which begins Monday.
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
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Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.