The weather outside rarely changes. It's hot. It's sunny. It's hot. It's sunny. The sun sometimes goes down at night. And then it's hot and sunny again. Inside, however, the weather is always changing. Today, it looks like rain.

Witness Jeff "mrrain" Banghart. There was little doubt his new table would end up on the ESPN stage.

Seat 1: Jeff "Mr. Rain" Banghart
Seat 2: Marco Mills
Seat 3: Gus Hansen
Seat 4: Daniel Alaei
Seat 5: Ayaz Mahmood
Seat 6: Brian Swanson
Seat 7: Paul Spitzberg
Seat 8: Senovio Ramirez III
Seat 9: Scotty Nguyen

I caught him coming off the stage during a short break.

"How do you like your new table?"

He looked at me like I'd just asked if he'd like a roadkill opossum for dinner. "I don't like it at all. Are you frickin' kidding me?" he said. "I bust a guy and Gus Hansen sits down? Where did I sign up for that?"

Still, the man behind the weather system doesn't cotton to people raining on his parade. He had 1.5 million in his stack and when he came back from break, Banghart raised three straight hands. The first time, Hansen re-raised. Folded back to Banghart, he thought for sixty seconds and then re-raised. Hansen went into the tank. His right foot started tapping madly on the floor. It stopped for two seconds and then resumed. A minute later, Hansen mucked his hand. When Banghart raised the next hand, Hansen's foot went nuts again. This time he folded pre-flop. Then, on the very next hand, Banghart came in for the third consecutive raise to 35,000. Gus, having re-raised once and folded once, chose to call this time. The flop came down Kd6s7s. Banghart led directly into Hansen for 60,000. Hansen didn't think long this time. He mucked.

Banghart, maybe thinking he had over-stayed his welcome in Raiseville, flipped over AK. He'd picked up nearly 200,000 in three hands.

Across the room, RaiNKhaN was starting to get a foul mood. Before today, he'd had control over nearly every table. Now, people were playing back at him, check-raising him, and calling him more than he would like. He was down to 880,000.

"They have it every time. Every time," he said. "It's time to get nitty. Time to nit up!"

He made good on his promise, waiting for the right moment, and the perfect hand. A cold front moved in hard. He picked up pocket aces against pocket kings and doubled up.

Way to nit up, sir.



With, with my two rain men still going strong, the forecast looks good. Mostly cloudy with a 90% chance of rain on Day 5.

I'm not the eggman. I'm not the walrus.

I am the weatherman.

Goo goo g'joob