Ever since the whispers of Michael Phelps being a poker player surfaced through the media, numerous news outlets and bloggers have taken the story and ran with it.  I myself have definitely been guilty of getting caught up in the Phelps/poker hysteria although I had some reservations over how serious he really was about the game of poker (see here).

And now there is a very real possibility that I may be eating my words as rumors are swirling about Phelps.  The winner of eight gold medals in the Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps’ next venture may be to become one of the celebrity players for Doyles Room according to some very recent news.

Supposedly he has been hangin with Doyle Brunson and his son Todd Brunson in Las Vegas recently and he’s been getting plenty of poker tutelage in the process.  Doyle recently said of Phelps, “What a great feeling it must be to be 23 years old and on top of the world.  What a nice kid! He had a bunch of his friends from home with him and they were the guests of the Palms Hotel and Casino.  I got a call that he was an avid poker fan and wanted to meet me, Todd, and Hoyt Corkins.  Jennifer Harman and her husband Marco were also there.”

He added to his praise of the amazing swimmer by saying, “Phelps and some of his friends wanted books so I took Super System 1 and 2 to them and they asked all kinds of poker questions.  Michael said all he wanted to do in life, was to eat, swim and play poker.  We went up to his suite to hang out for a while.  His suite had a basketball court, swimming pool, workout room, multiple bedrooms and bathrooms.  It must have been 15-20 thousand square feet, the nicest one I’ve ever seen.”

Afterwards it’s been rumored that old Doyle encouraged Phelps to check out some of the fine strip clubs that the city of Las Vegas has to offer too.  Judging from pictures that have surfaced on the Internet, Michael took his advice.  All of this has got me thinking that Doyle’s courtship of Michael Phelps may very well have the record-breaking Olympian on his side.

Ever since we hit the 21st century, it seems that the days of mobsters and organized crime is slowly losing relevancy.  The vast majority of gambling outfits nowadays are run by legitimate companies, the Godfather movies are rarely spoken of anymore and, save for a few video games out there, the whole organized crime thing is kind of fading away.  It seems that nowadays, poker players and other gamblers no longer have to worry about shady mob-run outfits.

However, a grim reminder of the fact that there are still remnants of organized crime out there in the gambling world might have possibly resurfaced when an Indiana locksmith admitted to being involved in an explosion that ripped apart the office of video poker machine maker C&S Coin Operated Amusements. 

The Indiana locksmith’s name is Kyle Knight and he claims to have been the explosives supplier to the two men who set off the bomb that destroyed the C&S office.  Sam Volpendesto and Mark Polchan are the two guys in question and they supposedly have ties to the Chicago mafia.  According to Knight, these two bragged of having mafia ties and set the bomb off to deliver the message that the mob controls the gambling game in Chicago.

Of course Volpendesto and Polchan’s lawyer denied that his men had mafia ties but Knight’s testimony definitely indicates otherwise.  It also indicates that there is a possibility that the mafia is still doing whatever it can to hang onto its fleeting presence in the gambling and poker world.  And according to the prosecutors in the case, this presence in the West Chicago suburbs adds up to about $13 million every year.  

Now I certainly don’t know for sure whether or not Knight is telling the truth but, assuming he is right and lives through the case, this could develop into a huge story.