It’s the story (I want to give them full credit for digging it up) of a former Princeton student, former varsity wrestler, who’s made a ton of money playing poker.

He began in 2003, about the time the poker craze  took hold on TV and online.

His name was Hawrilenko and he used the online name “Hoss_TBF. Online he began playing at 25 cents and 50 cents.

“Between wrestling and my studies, poker was really just a hobby at Princeton,” he told The Times. “I played with friends and online a bit, but toward the end of my senior year, when most of my school work was out of the way, I started playing online more and more.”

Then he won an online satellite tournament for the 2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, “and that’s pretty much how everything got kicked off,” he said.

Hawrilenko eventually moved up to much higher stakes, of $2,000 and $4,000, and has since earned millions of dollars from online gaming.

In February of this year alone, he won an amazing $1.7 million online, according to the poker tracking site Highstakesdb.com.

The 29-year-old has become one of the game’s most respected pros, the winner of a coveted gold bracelet given to WSOP event winners, with a paid sponsorship from Full Tilt Poker, a leading gaming website.

Even his parents didn’t mind.

“My parents were awesome and so supportive,” Hawrilenko said. “They know that I have always been a pretty good decision-maker, and it’s not like the poker thing came as a shock to them. I had spoken to them for quite a while about it.”

Despite his tremendous success, Hawrilenko has started to carefully assess his future aspirations following the upending of the online poker world earlier this year, when the U.S. Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York handed out indictments and seized the domain names of three largest internet poker companies in the world.

On April 15, the federal government shut down the sites — Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute Poker — and froze an estimated $500 million in player assets.

“Suddenly, many players and a lot of my friends had no source of income,” Hawrilenko said.

“Literally, on that Friday, tens of thousands of people lost their jobs.”

Internet gambling is officially illegal in the U.S., but the sites are registered overseas, and many players have prospered.

Then the system crashed.

The U.S. government is seeking $3 billion in penalties and up to 65 years in prison for some of the 11 defendants named in the indictment.

Meanwhile, American players who depended on the legal gray area of online poker to earn a living were out of work and casting about for new careers.

Many of those players, including Hawrilenko, are venturing out to play more live tournaments and high stakes cash games inside brick-and-mortar casinos, which still is legal.

“There are several things I have wanted to accomplish outside of poker for a very long time,” Hawrilenko said, “and this will give me the opportunity to do that.”

In case you hadn’t heard…

You know…the Chilean miners trapped underground, thank God still alive…but unlikely to be freed for a few months are passing the time playing poker.

How cool is that? Our game is saving lives.

Well, it seemed like a miracle when a group of miners were found alive after an accident in a gold mine in Chile last week.

Still a massive ordeal for the miners, especially with the prospect of having to spend a further four months stranded in a tiny underground chamber before they can be rescued.

So what are the miners doing to keep mind and soul together?

Playing a whole lot of poker it seems.

According to the daughter of former Chilean football international Franklin Lobos who is one of the trapped miners, the men are getting a serious number of hands in. In an interview in the Daily Mirror, a U.K. newspaper, Carolina Lobos revealed her confidence in her father’s ability to survive saying, “”It will be difficult, I’m sure, but I’m not worried about him. I know he is happy and content down there because he is playing lots of poker and cards. It is good for his mind.”

The trapped men are receiving a steady supply of water and medicine, as well as letters from family members via a six inch wide hole.

Experts are hopeful that they will remain in decent physical shape while the rescue tunnel is built.

It obviously happened in Europe, but I think it’s pretty funny.

The definition of lower is: a person with a record of failing; someone who loses consistently.

Ok, I’ll buy that.

It would hardly be considered the most flattering name for a poker player to be saddled with, but one man determined not to live up to his name is German player Manig Löser.

But Loser recently did well at the European Masters of Poker tournament in Bulgaria last week.

Manig Löser succeeded in outlasting a field of 260 players at the Crystal Crown Casino, to win the 1,100 euro buy in event and walk away with the 49,080 euros first place prize.

Not bad for a Loser, eh?

As the tournament eventually played down to just nine players, Löser then plahyed a solid game and maintain his stack, while others busted out around him.

Finally, Löser eliminated Romanian George Draghici in third with his Q-8 badly dominating his opponent’s J-8, to force a heads-up encounter against Israeli player Shani Vahnun.

It took less than an hour before the final hand of the competition was played, after Loser was dealt K-6 to his opponent’s 9-8. With the flop falling  Q-J-6, Löser bet out 55,000 euros with bottom pair, only for Vahnun to push all-in over the top for his remaining 700k with a gut-shot straight draw.

The turn and river of A-2 failed to improve the Israeli’s hand and he had to content himself with the runner-up prize of €35,000, instead.

Manig Löser thus became  the 2010 EMOP Bulgaria champion.

Löser has now won $60,311 from four live tournament cashes, all coming this year.

A loser no more.

But the U.S. Congress is trying to take away all that.

I mean, with the state of the economy, doesn’t it make sense to just let us play and then tax the hell out of the site? It’s not like they can’t afford it.

Anyway, seems like the final touches of the Unlawful Gambling Enforcement Act (due to take effect on Jan. 1) are now being made.

Thank goodness Congressman Barney Frank is trying to do something about it.

Frank is calling for a special hearing on the law.

He is looking to come up with an alternative.

The Senate fooled us, Frank said.

Now they want to look into the legalization of internet gambling.

That’s more like it.

I wanna see what happens this July when the committee meets.

I’ll keep my eye on things. OK?

I love this story, which I first heard about through the Catholic News Service.

It’s about a very cool, poker-playing Catholic priest, who just beat one of the world’s top poker players in a national poker contest aired on a Fox TV show, winning $100,000 that he says he’ll donate to his church’s new building fund.

The Rev. Andrew Trapp, assistant pastor of St. Michael Catholic Church, gathered Sunday at a viewing party with 300 boosters in a Garden City Beach, South Carolina, gymnasium to watch a previously recorded episode from a poker tournament that began online with 10,000 contestants.

The Sun News of Myrtle Beach says the crowd cheered when Trapp beat poker professional Daniel Negreanu (nuh-GRAH’-noo) with a final hand. Supporters wore T-shirts reading: “We’re cheering for the poker playing priest.”