Many years ago, a friend of mine talked about something he called The Shampoo Effect.

"You ever notice how, after you shampoo your hair, if you follow the directions to rinse and repeat, it takes a lot less shampoo to do the job on the second time around?" he asked.

He went on to apply this to other areas in life.

I thought about this last night as Team PokerStars' Steve Paul Ambrose placed fourth in the first event of the 2007 World Series, $5,000 Mixed Hold'em. Before he sat down, Steve had his sights set on the bracelet. After a tough run at the final table, he ended up placing fourth. While he won more than $145,000, he was a bit disappointed.

"That kind of sucked," he said.

He looked back on his play and gave himself an honest critique.

"I think I played reasonably well except for one hand in the first level. Basically
I bet the flop and turn, and then MrSmokey1 bet back into me on the river. I was definitely folding, hollywooded a bit, and next thing I knew I'd put the call in. So that was dumb," he said. "Other than that, I thought I played well."

There was a period of time during the final table that it looked like Steve had a real chance at the bracelet. That all changed during a limit section of the Mixed Hold'em event.

"Unfortunately I had a rough 3 hand stretch at 60k/120k limit where I went from chip leader to almost out," he said. "Not really much I could do in those hands I don't think. Overall, I'm happy, although I'm kind of disappointed at the moment."

If I get the chance, I'm going to introduce Steve to The Shampoo Effect. While many old college buddies would use the theory in relation to Happy Hour, I think it could reasonably apply to final tabling a World Series event.

So, Steve, I suggest you spend the day rinsing and we'll be looking for a repeat at another event this year.

In the meantime, congratulations to PokerStars Supernova Steve "MrSmokey1" Billirakis for winning Event #1 and becoming the youngest person to ever win a World Series bracelet.