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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Form Over Function

ESPN hit a new low in this week's WSOP broadcasts, as they stooped to showing the chooch cheering sections of no-name players chanting and yelling for the cards they wanted to come. I mean seriously - come on. In the same broadcast we had to endure Phil Laak - which is another subject altogether, but at least Phil is playing. He's COMPLETELY A.D.D., and possibly legitimately nuts - I'm not sure it's part of his game - I think he's really loony - but he's mildly entertaining in small doses.

It's really sad when the best segment of the show is the "The Nuts" featurette, which starred Erik Lindgren, Mike Matusow, Ted Forrest and Robert Williamson in a prop bet tourney, with a seat in the $10k Main Event at stake. Each competitor chose one event that they'd all compete in:

Forrest: ping pong
The Mouth: card pitching into a hat
Williamson: Air Hockey
E-dog: spelling bee

Great stuff. Maybe ESPN should make a full show out of the Ferguson in the Freezer "Hold'em or Fold'em" gems, and the other Milwaukee's Best Light "Men should act like men" commercials, with some "The Nuts" segments thrown in for good measure, and maybe even some shots of Phil Laak acting crazy.

It wouldn't do any harm, since the viewers have no idea how the eventual winner of the $2,500 NLHE event, Farzad Bonyadi, built his 200k in chips to 1.4mm in chips to overtake Lars Bonding, who was the chip leader at the start of the event with about 1.2MM in chips. What the fuck ESPN? Did Bonyadi fold his way from 200k to 1.2MM? Because that's all we saw...

The broadcast also featured Johnny Chan winning his 10th bracelet, defeating Phil Laak in heads up play.

I can't believe these broadcasts are so bad, and I'm sitting here with a dogshit stock position in WPTE (World Poker Tour). Jeez. At least we got a glimse of Pauly in the background!

until next time,
KD

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