So who would have guessed that Black History Month laureate, Leonard Bud Simmons, was Phil Iveys Grand father!

Simmons was the first black policeman in Roselle, the town’s first black police commissioner and first black school board member. He was the founding president of the Roselle branch of the NAACP and, in 1959, organized the Union County African-American Republicans.

He participated in the March on Washington in 1963, and the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. He met Martin Luther King at the Washington march, as well as Malcolm X, inviting the latter to speak in Roselle in 1965.

He served in World War II with the 648th Ordnance Company in France, Belgium, England and Germany, receiving five battle stars and two citations for meritorious service. At Veteran Cleaners, the dry-cleaning business he owned on Morris Street, Bud Simmons would talk about the state of Roselle, and the nation. Smith recalled Simmons — an extremely brilliant man.

In 2008, Simmons Ivey and her son, professional poker player Phil Ivey, founded the Budding Ivey Foundation in memory of Bud Simmons. The nonprofit organization provides educational opportunities to at-risk children.

In the last two years, the foundation has given 1,500 books to Roselle schoolchildren. It donated enough money to Roselle Pop Warner to buy 100 football uniforms, funded a High School Heroes program through Junior Achievement of New Jersey and awarded a $1,000 scholarship to a high school student.

Simmons passed away at the age of 87. He is buried in Graceland Memorial Park in Kenilworth.

In a post a few weeks ago, we covered the random but amusing bet that was made between Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan during a game on the popular poker program “High Stakes Poker”. Dwan bet Ivey one million US dollars that he couldn’t be a vegetarian for a year and Ivey obliged saying that he was looking to go vegetarian anyway and this would be an added incentive. Well, it seems the ‘chicken may have come home to roost’ for Dwan, as Ivey recently realised that there was no way he could go for a year without eating chicken.

Poker Magazine Ace reported that Ivey realised he couldn’t go without chicken for a whole year when he was entertaining friends recently. He picked up a piece of chicken and wanted to eat it so badly that he immediately called Dwan and said he wanted to buy the bet out. Dwan was cool with it and they settled the bet for $150,000.

Is it just me or is $1 million dollars a lot of money as well as a huge incentive? I’d go fruitarian for a year if it meant I got $1 million dollars at the end of it. Come on Phil!

            I'll not eat this cat for $1 million

You’d expect poker to be the biggest entertainer on shows like High Stakes Poker, but history has showed that this is not always the case. It certainly wasn’t on the Saturday night episode, where an interesting bet was made between Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan. Dwan bet Ivey that Ivey wouldn’t be able to resist eating meat for an entire year.

After lengthy discussions and negotiations between the 2 players, Ivey agreed to the bet. If he avoided all meat, including fish, for a year he’d get $1 million from Dwan. Later on, Ivey seemed happy with the deal, saying to co-host Kara Scott: “I was thinking about doing it for a while, so this is kind of like an added incentive.”

This particular High Stakes Poker episode was filmed a few days after Ivey finished in 7^th place at the WSOP main event final table and had won millions in side bets, including $1 million from Dwan. Do I detect some revenge in the air?

“I’m used to having million-dollar sweats with you,” Dwan said in response to losing $1 million in the game and the subsequent bet with Ivey.

Ivey even tried to wager the bet up to $2 million which he felt would have given him an even bigger incentive to give up meat for 365 days.

Dwan has since claimed that Ivey is not getting vaguely close to fulfilling his side of the bet- Dwan reportedly mentioned to Sammy George that Ivey was already trying to buy out of the bet.

Perhaps if Ivey borrowed some of Mel Gibson’s cow brain goo for his poker games he’d stay on top without having to eat meat.

It seems that this time, they really have gotten confused between the Tiger Woods of Poker and the Phil Ivey of Golf.

An Ireland-based betting company by the name of Paddy Power offered Tiger Woods a $75 million sponsorship deal. This offer was turned down by Tiger, despite losing several big sponsors as a result of his indiscretions recently. The would-be sponsors saw this as a particularly ripe time to get Tiger on board.

The deal would have resulted in Tiger being paid out the $75 million over a 5 year period.

Despite the rejection, Paddy Power are getting plenty of publicity in the sports and poker worlds as a result. So much so that there are rumours that they will return with an enhanced offer to clinch this 14-time golf champion.

There’s always a silver lining…

Man, we just can’t let the Tiger thing go!

Phil Ivey, arguably the best poker player in the universe right now (watch out Commander Data) has been granted a divorce from his wife; Luciaetta.

The jokes are streaming in because of his ongoing association with   Tiger Woods: his nickname has been ‘The Tiger Woods of Poker’ for some time now although we’re pretty sure he would prefer it to be the other way round where Tiger Woods would be nicknamed ‘The Phil Ivey of Golf’.

Cake cracked some classy jokes about how perhaps his wife left him after mistaking him for Tiger Woods or that Phil had left her after finding out that she slept with Tiger.

You couldn’t make it up…