Tao of Poker

Sands Tournament

I watched several hours (out of six total) of the Sands Tournament on FOX Sports yesterday. That tourney happened this past weekend with nearly almost 200 entries. You can visit: Sands Results to see who won what. FOXSports cut & spliced the event fairly quickly. Howard Lederer was one of the announcers. They showed Ben and J.Lo (one of the only celebs who forked over the 10K buy in) and it apeared that Ben got bounced early. There is a difference between the coverage on ESPN, Travel Channel, and now Fox Sport's coverage of poker. I liked the new added feature of "heart monitors" but it seemed that they only used that gimmick once or twice. They didn't have a graphic that showed the flop, so at times, it was easy to forget what cards fell. TJ Cloutier made it to the final table and finished in fifth place. Phil Hellmuth was rowdy at times, and gregarious at others. He gave one kid a ton of shit for calling a pre-flop raise with 4-7 off suit. Hellmuth held an Ace (?) and the kid flopped a 4. When Hellmuth folded, the kid showed him his cards and Hellmuth was fuming! The next hand, he pushed the action and both he and the kid both had A-K and split the pot. He was bounced early. Olga Varkoyni, the wife of 2002 WSoP winner Robert Varkoyni, made it to day 2 and was featured at the TV table.

Ironically, on ESPN, they aired the 2003 World Series of Poker at the same time!! I didn't watch too much football because of the entensive amount of poker on TV.

If you want, you can visit: Day 2 Recap and read the final table profiles.