Tuesday, August 26, 2008

You Guys Watch the HORSE Final Table Yet?

Wow. I don't want to spoil it, but wow.

7 comments:

Sushi Cowboy said...

Yes, I've seen it. And if you're talking about what I'm sure you're talking about then yeah, wow. There has been extensive discussion on the boards about the matter.

Let me know when you want to allow spoilers on this post and we can dissect further.

Ryan said...

ALL POSTED COMMENTS AFTER THIS ONE MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK.

There. Go!

Sushi Cowboy said...

Scotty just did loads of damage to his image and indirectly the image of poker as well. The worst part was how he disgraced the memory of Chip Reese at the inaugural presentation of Chip's memorial trophy. He was out of control and either he, the WSOP staff, or any of the other professionals in the crowd should have pulled him aside and got him under control. The non-stop supply of beers didn't help.

It would be easier to write it off as a confluence of unique circumstances but his half hearted cryptic apology seems to just dig himself in deeper.

Poker News has an article about how badly the WSOP staff dropped the ball on the incident(s). He lists all of the rules that Scotty broke (in numerical order for your convenience) and was apparently not punished for. The absence of calls seems to support the idea that there are "superstar calls" in poker as well since it seems unlikely that any non-brand name player could have gotten away with that crap.

Ryan said...

That apology starts out OK, then becomes barely readable as he appears to almost unapologize, saying he's only sorry that he let his fans down, but not sorry for the actions themselves.

Apparently we have superstar calls in poker as well, I guess. In the Card Player forums, in response to someone criticizing the TD, a poster said this:

"If you knew anything at all about what actually happened in that tournament, you'd know that Brooks [the TD] was called over to the table after Scotty called the dealer a motherf*cker and gave Scotty a two round penalty. Scotty went so nuclear that security got involved. At that point, Jack Effel came over and spoke to Scotty. Several ESPN producers got involved, too. At the end of the conversation, Effel ruled no penalty for Scotty, pulled Brooks aside and told him ESPN wanted them to be hands off with Scotty, and that was that. Of course, ESPN edited the whole thing out. Note the big gap where they skipped straight from Razz to Holdem."

This is just some poster's account, I have no info to back up his description of events, but with the way "reality TV" is run, it certainly sounds plausible, and in fact, likely.

I wonder how it all would have played out if DiMichele hadn't been excessive with his celebrating early on, which seemed to light the fuse of the whole thing...

Nice montage of his behavior linked in the Poker News article Sushi Cowboy linked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IjdQnWmUAo&eurl=http://www.pokernews.com/news/2008/08/other-side-felt-vol-13-scotty-nguyen.htm

Sushi Cowboy said...

I have not heard anything about anyone overturning a ruling against Scotty and I can't even find the statement which Ryan quoted anymore. Perhaps it was deleted by the OP or a mod.

Ryan said...

I agree that the lack of any known corroboration from such a widely-attended event suggests that the poster I quoted was full of shit.

However, that simply leaves the question: if none of the tournament rules were enforced against Scotty, why, and who made that call?

The why seems pretty obvious: he's a poker superstar, and a poker superstar repeatedly crossing multiple lines on camera makes for compelling reality TV.

But is that what the TD sat there thinking and let it all go, or was turning a blind eye to Scotty a decision made by someone other than the TD?

Sushi Cowboy said...

If the producers of Project Runway want to allow someone to advance even though their design was utter crap, fine. That is a reality TV show and they are free to warp the competition however they want.

If the WSOP wants to bend the rules at the whim of the ESPN producers then that is a far more serious situation especially given the amount of money at stake. There are plenty of other screw ups by Harrah's/WSOP so, unfortunately, this doesn't surprise me.