Look Back in Anguish
terça-feira, agosto 19 2008
By: Gene Bromberg
I'm watching ESPN's broadcast of the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament, which I covered back in July. H.O.R.S.E. nearly broke me--live-blogging stud games is hell on earth. It was a long, long night, with some of the game's biggest stars in the stands to watch the action (and, of course, cheer for the players they had pieces of). There was a different vibe in the room, in part because of the prestige this event carries in the poker world, and because the man who won the first $50K H.O.R.S.E., Chip Reese, passed away earlier in the year. When Doyle Brunson addressed the crowd before play began, let me tell you, there was dead silence in the room. The man commands respect. And certainly everyone respected Chip Reese just as much.
There was a lot on the line, even for we humble bloggers. We knew that there would be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people following our updates, and there was a wee bit of pressure on us to write fast, write accurately, and write with a little bit of style. There were times when I was gritting my teeth and sweat was beading on my forehead...I can't IMAGINE the pressure the players must've felt. Maybe they're used to it. Maybe they ain't human.
It took about 15 hours to play that final table, and ESPN will boil it down to two. I am very interested to see what Norman Chad and Lon McEachern have to say about some of the, ah, controversial behavior that took place on that long night. I'll post more about the broadcast as it moves along.
UPDATE: They just showed a confrontation between Scotty Nguyen and Michael DeMichele, which I remembered seeing but of course we couldn't hear what they were saying. I thought Scotty was congratulating Michael after the hand, but it turns out there was quite a bit of sniping between the two. And I remember things going downhill from there.
And now there's Scotty showing his cards to the crowd. At the time everyone in the crowd was like, "Uh, what's he doing?". Don't get me wrong, they loved it, but it was really strange.
And poor Matt Glantz. The guy played great all through the event, and at the final table he got about six seconds of air time. And most of that was the hand he was knocked out on. Which should give you some idea of how truncated most poker tournaments on TV really are.
UPDATE 2: I'm a bit surprised that ESPN showed as much of Scotty Nguyen's antics as they did, even though that was the big story of the final table. There were times when I really thought Scotty wouldn't be able to finish out the table, he was that messed up. When we came back from the dinner break, he looked like he'd aged 20 years. He gave a nice and coherent speech afterwards...though he still took the time to take some potshots at DeMichele. I really had no clue that the two of them had verbally battled back and forth as much as they did, which just goes to show if you truly wanna experience all that poker has to offer, you gotta sit down at the table.
I'm just glad they didn't show me walking into the shot when they were interviewing Erick Lindgren. The one ESPN guy nearly dislocated my shoulder yanking me away. Covering poker tournaments is a contact sport.
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