Poker is a game of skill, luck, percentages and, at times, steel will. Poker is a mental game, and not many toyed with opponents’ heads at last year’s World Series of Poker better than Tiffany Michelle, who was the highest-finishing woman in the 2008 Main Event after taking 17th place and earning $334,000. Not too shabby considering it was her first time playing the WSOP Main Event. Tiffany Michelle won her seat to the 2009 World Series of Poker at the Road 2 Recovery Foundation’s fundraising tournament (above), and she plans to donate 5% of her Main Event winnings to the organization. Known as “Hot Chips” at the poker table, Michelle looks to tackle the difficult task of improving upon her solid finish last year. Getting into the Main Event isn’t easy, as the entry carries a hefty $10,000 fee, but this year that won’t be a concern for Michelle since she won her seat into this year’s tournament at the fourth annual Road 2 Recovery Charity Poker Tournament last October. The event was held at the MGM in Las Vegas, and it helped raise $43,000 for the Road 2 Recovery organization, with other professional poker players such as Layne Flack, Jennifer Harman, Todd Brunson, Maria Ho and others, helping raise money for the organization while trying to earn a seat into the Main Event. The Road 2 Recovery Foundation is an organization dedicated to helping professional American Motorcycle Association (AMA) licensed motocross and Supercross members with financial assistance if they sustain career-ending injuries. Professional racer Jimmy Button started the organization in 2000. In January of that year, he was involved in an accident during a Supercross practice session that left him temporarily paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors told his family he would probably never walk again, but Button was able to make a miraculous recovery and beat the odds. “I got hurt in January [of 2000], so a bunch of guys got together to have a golf tournament to raise money for me a few months later,” Button says. “They did that, and about a month later I got together with the two guys that had put their heads together to do this. A lot of outpouring came for me because I was so well known in the motorcross community, so I got together with them and said this was awesome that you did this, but, you know, in the future there’s going to be more accidents like this, and maybe, just maybe they’re not going to be as well known as I was and they’ll need something like what you guys did for me. Why don’t we start a foundation that can kind of be based upon what happened to me and we can build it from there?” So later in the same year as his crash, Button, Bob Moore and Bob Walker, created the Road 2 Recovery Foundation as an “organization that would provide financial and emotional assistance when an extreme situation arose.” At the time, there was no riders union for AMA racers, and Button knew firsthand how difficult a career-ending crash can be on riders and their families, so the organization would try to help them get through it. Since then, Button has become a bit of a poker nut himself, admitting “I play too much” when asked about playing cards. He might even try to compete in the Main Event this year if he can win a seat through a qualifying tournament. The World Series of Poker actually consists of more than 50 poker tournaments held over a few months that is culminated with Main Event, and the action has already started for 2009. Tiffany Michelle plans to compete in roughly 15 of the events this year, but much of her focus will be on the Main Event that starts at the beginning of July. We sat down with Tiffany Michelle to talk about her love of motorsports, her relationship with Road 2 Recovery, and how she’s approaching this year’s Main Event. You’ve described yourself as a bit of a tomboy and a sports fanatic, so what is it draws you to dirt bikes and off-roading? “I’ve been a huge motorcross fan for several years. Travis Pastrana inspired me to get into supercross and motorcross, so probably at about 16 or 17 I was a really big fan of the sport. Obviously through poker I play a lot of different poker charity tournaments. Back in October, I was invited to come out to Vegas and play in Road 2 Recovery’s charity tournament that was put on to raise money for the organization. I went out to the MGM to play the event and also got to go to the Supercross US Open that was happening that weekend at the MGM arena. There’s different celebrities, different poker players, different Supercross guys, and out of a couple hundred people, first place was a 10k seat to the main event, and so I won the tournament.” I’ve also heard you plan to give some of your Main Event winnings back to the organization. “I agreed to donate 5 percent of anything that I make in the Main Event this year back to Road 2 Recovery. It was a super fun weekend, I got to go to a bunch of races, meet a bunch of the riders, and since then I’ve become fairly good friends with Jimmy Button, who’s a big poker enthusiast, so I’ve gotten to go to a few different races over the last couple months. Now we have the Main Event coming up, and I’ll be wearing Road 2 Recovery patches there. I’m a big fan of the sport, but I also really appreciate and admire what Jimmy Button and his mom, who’s also involved in the organization, are doing for motocross and Supercross riders. I think it’s really awesome. It’s a sport that’s close to my heart as a fan, so I’ll be out there representing for Road 2 Recovery, so it’s kind of fun for me to be able to bring some attention but also give back to an industry that I’m a huge admirer of.” Last year was the first time you competed in the Main Event. How long have you been playing poker? “Last year was my first year playing the Main Event. I have been playing poker for about five years, but on a much smaller scale. I’ve been to the World Series of Poker for the past three years. But last year was the first year I ever played a 10k event, let alone the Main Event. For my first year in a main event it wasn’t too bad a showing.” What are your goals for this year’s World Series of Poker? “It’s hard because there’s a lot of pressure going into the Main Event this year. Obviously, as the last woman standing last year, there’s a lot of eyes on me; everyone wants to see if it’s a fluke. Taking 17th out of 6,800 players is quite the feat, so there’s a lot of hype going into it. However, I play poker professionally and I am very, very aware of the odds of doing well in such a large tournament, let alone the Main Event, which just has so many players. So I’m realistic. I know the odds are not even in my favor to cash, it’s only 10 percent of the field. Out of 7,000 players only 700 will make the money, and I know how hard it is to get there. All that I can do is be optimistic and hope to play my best game. That’s kind of my attitude with every poker tournament I play. Of course I always feel confident that I have the capability of winning, but there’s just so many variable factors in poker between the beats, and the odds, and making bad calls, and getting sucked out on, that I can’t control. So all that I do is go in and play my best game, I do control the things that are in my power, and then everything else is, no pun intended, let the cards fall where they may. I’m playing a lot of the preliminary event this year. I’m playing about 13 of the other no limit events, so if I make final table or cash a few times I’ll be very happy with that. In a perfect world, to make the final table at the main event, okay, that would be fine with me.” You also are involved acting, having appeared on shows like ER, Nip/Tuck and others. Are you able to focus on both right now or is poker taking priority at the moment? “Poker is really full time right now, so it’s kind of tough to balance the acting stuff right now. I pretty much have no life except poker over the summer.” You also have a clothing line coming out later this year. Tell us a little bit about that. “I got a lot of attention at the main event last year for a variety of reasons. Obviously for being the last woman standing, for going deeper and beating a field with more players than any other woman has done before, also kind of my attitude and my demeanor at the table got a lot of attention. I also had a lot of people really interested in my hats and hoodies, and I don’t necessarily think I have any crazy special kind of style, but I guess any style at a poker table compared to most of the guys you see there, I’m bound to stand out a little bit. I had a lot of different clothing companies approach me do want to do something, and then I ended up teaming up with a company called Black Ace. They wanted to launch a Tiffany Michelle clothing line, and all of my pieces will probably be done by the World Series so I’ll be able to wear my own hats, hoodies and shirts. Check out Tiffany Michelle in the World Series of Poker, which starts July 3rd and will air on ESPN. For more information on the Road 2 Recovery Foundation, visit www.road2recovery.com. For more information on Tiffany Michelle, visit her Web site at www.tiffanymichelle.com. ### Josh Burns, Off-Road.com Competition Editor Source: Dirt Sports http://www.off-road.com/dirtsports/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=604211&pageID=1