Los Angeles Lakers star Ron Artest has legally changed his name to Metta World Peace. To quote WWE Superstar The Miz, really? At least his intentions are good. He is trying to inspire and bring youth together as a result of his name change. Naturally, this got me thinking about poker players that might consider legally changing their names.

Subject:Poker has come under a lot of fire lately as the result of an article claiming the US Department of Justice was going to bring charges against the Merge Gaming Network. One of their harshest critics has been Gerry Poltorak. He published an article basically trashing the article's content and even went so far as to call the writer of the article a coward. A follow-up article was published that exposed a Skype conversation between Poltorak and a man claiming to be Subject:Poker's source.

This evening, I learned that Michael Divita was going to be a guest on QuadJacks Radio. In all honesty, I haven't listened to QuadJacks for a while.   The show went downhill and after an incident a while back where they used some information I provided them to ambush a friend, I quit listening. However, Marco can sometimes perform some brilliant interviews and I was mildly curious to hear what Divita had to say.

In the "how is this poker news" category we have a supposed "poker player" by the name of Jim Rice that will appear on the current season of Survivor. Not to be confused with baseball great Jim Rice of the Boston Red Sox, this guy has supposedly won 40 poker tournaments according to his CBS bio. I guess 39 of those are online cause he only has one win listed on Hendon Mob[http://pokerdb. thehendonmob.

I just spent the last few minutes reading Annie Duke's speech that she gave at the 2011 Women In Poker Hall of Fame induction ceremony. I must say that I was thoroughly impressed by her words. Annie addressed a topic that some of us touched on a few weeks ago and that is the lack of female participation at the WSOP this year. Only 3% of the field was comprised of women.

Sometimes I wonder how much poker news sites are helping to contribute to the visibility of certain online poker sites in the USA[[sitetree_link,id=596]] to the US government. Granted, the DOJ knows what sites are out there, but in all truthfulness, they don't even have to do that much research about which sites are doing well. Hell, we tell them. For example, Pokerscout releases a weekly report about online poker traffic.

Carlos Mortensen is no longer a Full Tilt Pro per a tweet from his agent. Excuse me while I fake being shocked. Does it really make any sense at all for any of the Full Tilt Pros, other than those with an actual stake in the company, to hold onto their "sponsorship?" As the clock tick, tick, ticks away, it looks less and less likely that they or any of us are going to be paid. At some point, loyalty must be thrown out of the window.

I wrote an editorial for the site[http://www. pokerjunkie. com/pokerjunkie-editorial-more-girls-more-dunst-worst-of-wpt-changes] earlier in the week about the changes for upcoming season of the World Poker Tour.   In it, I wrote how I wasn't a fan of Tony Dunst and that the Royal Flush Girls was another concept I wasn't that fond of.

Doyle Brunson made a comment earlier today that he was playing with a couple of professional poker players who say they no longer enjoy the game and that it's all about the money for them. He then proceeded to tell them to seek another profession. Sadly, this seems to be a growing trend among many professionals and wannabe poker professionals. Somewhere along the line in the quest for trying to become rich and famous, they have stopped enjoying the game of poker[[sitetree_link,id=743]].

Poker, as in life, is all about change. Trends come and go. Games get popular, die out, and sometimes even get revived. Strategies change and evolve, as does the game's players.