NYCs Golden Athlete Begins Title Defense
Who has been New Yorks most successful athlete over the past year? A-Rod? Derek Jeter? Tiki Barber? Chad Pennington? The answer: E, none of the above. While all of those high-priced stars have spent the past 12 months languishing in Loserville, one local player has been raking in the money and winning. Granted hes a poker player, so you may not consider him an athlete, but Jamie Gold has had quite a year.
Gold, who hails from right here in Manhattan, [won] the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event last summer, collecting the record-setting grand prize of $12 million. Tomorrow, the local boy [begins the defense](http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=poker&entryDate=20070709) of his title on Day 1C of the WSOP.
One high-profile local product that has already been eliminated: Annie Duke. The Duchess of Poker, who graduated from Columbia with a degree in both psychology and English, finished 88th last year out of 8,773 entrants and has earned more than $3.3 million during her career, but took an [early exit] from this years tourney. She can take solace, however, in the fact that she was most likely ten times smarter than the person who eliminated her, as most poker players only have degrees in degenerate gambling.