Glantz Quoted in The Inquirer!

In the chips

Lafayette Hill's Matt Glantz was an options trader - one of the biggest gambles there is - before he quit.

To become a professional poker player.

That was January. He set a goal of making $200,000 at the tables this year.

He more than doubled it last weekend.

Glantz, 33, finished second in a hold 'em tournament at the Rio in Las Vegas. More than 1,000 players each had bought in for $3,000.

Glantz walked away with $414,620 - including a $50,000 "save" he'd negotiated with the eventual winner to hedge his bet.

And on an idle day before the tournament, he bought into a $500 hold 'em event, outlasted 138 players, and won $24,700.

Glantz says he's just going where the money is.

"Poker now is like the [options] market was five years ago," he said from Vegas the other day. He stuck around to play, starting tomorrow, at the World Series of Poker's main event, a multimillion-dollar pot whose buy-in is $10,000.

As for improving your own game, remember that "nothing beats experience," Glantz says. "Read all the books you want, you can study all you want, you can play on the computer. But the most important thing is experience."

And one other thing. Get yourself a poker face.

"People I know tell me I show no emotion," he said - quite calmly at that.

- Posted in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thu, Jul. 07, 2005

Food and Fun

Walt waits for Brady to cook something.


Randall chows down as Sarge (to his left) ponders how he's going to get through another shift at the 14th precinct. (Seriously, the guy looked like he should have a been a sargeant in Hill Street Blues). James rides his bike in the chapter room. Who's the chap in the red baseball cap?


From L to R: Unidentified, Goodman, Suranie, Harron, Morrow, Conallen (the Elder).


Lopcko barbecues in the backyard


Podrost fixes the lock to our room on the third floor yet again. One day when he forgot to take his key and kicked the door in to get inside.


Tad "Who's Got A Problem" Derenbereger gets caught off guard. Josh calls in a pizza order.

Guiley Breeds! - Congratulations!

Holy crap! Shelly and Derek are parents.

That right.

Zachary Harlan Guiley (a healthy 8lbs 15oz and 20 inches long) entered the world on Friday, September 9th at 7:53AM and immediately pissed all over it (literally, on the doctor who was delivering him). While I personally believe his action was a grand, deep, metaphorical gesture that was intended to be both funny and meaningful, Shelly thinks the kid just had to go. Both Zach and Mom are doing fantastic after the scheduled c-section (Zach was breech and had to be forcibly evicted after staging a very long sit in).

He's an amazing boy and we can't wait to introduce him to all of you. In the meantime, we'll be sure to notify you as soon as Zach's Poop Blog, the website where we'll document his every bowel movement through flash animation, daily updated charts and graphs, is up.

Zach -- look at that hair. Guess whose side that comes from. Hint:
Derek's bald.


Shelly and son. Have you guessed the bit about the hair yet?


Zach stone cold chillin' after his bath.

Burdick Becomes A Dad!

I think some of you may know by now, but I wanted to get this brief note out to be sure.

Neasa delivered our daughter Anna Marie at 4:40 a.m. this past Friday morning at UC Leuven Hospital in Belgium. She was born after a 5 hour labor and delivery, which from what I have heard is short (Neasa's opinion may differ here!). She was able to get an epidural which neas describes as "the business".

Anna has big blues (for now) and fair light brown hair. She seems kinda long with long legs so she could be a ballplayer? She is a tad shy of 7 lbs. She is more of a sleeper then a screamer, but does have nasty farts like her dad.

Both Neasa and Anna are happy and healthy and will be coming home this Wednesday. I'll take a few days off at that point.

I appreciate the pointers that some of you emailed me in the weeks prior. It really helped and I was a hands on player in the birth. I really appreciate the interest and support from everyone.

talk to you soon

Rabbi Wexler Checks in From Florida

Brandon Wexler and fiancee Melissa get ready to go to their private island.


Brandon's fiance Melissa and their newly adopted son - Spike Lee

In his own words:

“I was working for Schwab Capital Markets for roughly twelve years. The firm was bought by UBS and I was extended a offer, but turned it down. I am now living in South Florida with my fiancé Melissa and we own our own company. It is called BJOY, it is a clothing manufacturer/wholesale company. While I was up North I was Volunteer Firefighter in Chatham, New Jersey. I loved it so much I will be going to the Coral Springs Fire academy down here in Jan 06 to hopefully go on to be a paid firefighter/paramedic by next year at this time.”

Wexler has also extended the offer to all Phi Psis to ride his Harley.

Phi Psi - The Ad Campaign

After becoming a full-fledged member, I was all gung-ho about Phi Psi and took it upon myself to promote the fraternity. Looking back, I should have changed my major to Advertising since I enjoyed the creative process so much. Here are some of the flyers I created during Rush Week and for some parties. Commentaries are below. Click on each image to see the full-sized version.


One of my favorites, this shows the "before" and "after" effects of joining a fraternity. Not just any fraternity, but Phi Psi! Now it's questionable how accurate the "after" picture was, but compared to other run-of the mill crap that Pi Lam, Sig Ep and the others churned out, this one stands out.


This one is also one of my favorites. Unfortunately, it was probably too obscure as far as its reference was concerned. For those of you who don't know this was/is the famous Charles Atlas bodybuilding spot that used to run in comic books and magazines geared toward young teens in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Basically the story of the underdog, skinny kid who (after being taunted and abused by muscleheads and scorned by his own girl) takes up Charles Atlas' regimen of clean livin' and bodybuilding techniques and returns to kick some ass.

I reworked some of the text but kept the basic message - join us and your life will change and so will you.

Interesting side note. In those days, you had to get all your flyers approved by the Greek Advisor. The guy who was the Greek Advisor was Ted something or other who was a total tool. He held this particular ad for a while saying that he couldn't (or wouldn't) approve it because it "promoted violence". As I recall his exact words were "You're basically saying, you can join our group and we will make you strong and we'll beat up people.."

What the hell was he smoking?

He approved it in the end, but I am sure all the Penn Pi lawyers will agree we had a great case for violation of First Amendment rights. The fool was trying to restrict content and we were too dumb then to question it.


This one panders to the base instincts of the typical college male: sex. Join us we have chicks who look like Claudia Claudia Schiffer it screams. This one was NOT approved by the Greek Life office. I used the photocopy of the "approved" seal from an older flyer and superimposed it to this one. Mind you, this was before the days of Photoshop™.


This one was for a party the pledge class was throwing. Everyone was on the Late Night With David Letterman bandwagon in those days. Sigma Alpha Mu (Sammy) always did a skit during Greek Week that involved David Letterman and the Late Show - every frikkin' year. I've never seen a group that had such a boner for Letterman in my life!

Well there you have it, a complete waste of talent promoting a bunch of losers at 2131 N. Broad Steet. Ogilvy & Mather didn't know what they were missing.