Tao of Poker

Favre Trumps WSOP?

By Pauly
New York City

Did anyone else say, "What the fuck?" when the WSOP was bumped back 20 minutes because of the Brett Favre press conference?

I hope Favre didn't fuck up your TiVos like he fucked up the Jets last season. Ah, I'm just bitter as a lifelong Jets fan. Favre was good, but he was no Browning Nagle. It looked like Favre was about to lead the J-E-T-S to the promised land until Favre's aging body and Coach Mangini's ineptness sent them spiraling to the depths of ugliness for the second half of the season. But heck, we have Mark Sanchez to the rescue. Let's hope he doesn't turn into a Ryan "Grand Theft" Leaf.

Otis wrote an open letter to Brett Favre. Worth a peek.

Drizz had a witty remark about his new QB... "It's like Jessica Biel standing naked at my front door ready for sex with my wife standing right behind me."

Anyway, enough about football. My brother and I watched the Main Event on ESPN last night.It's been a tradition. The first WSOP we watched together was the epic Moneymaker year. The next year, we eagerly anticipated Raymer's victory since we had already knew he won. The 2005 WSOP was my first year covering the event and Derek I spent plenty of time scanning the background for glimpses of myself. Even Derek got a few seconds of air time during a preliminary event when E-Fro won his first bracelet.

In 2003, just before poker programming exploded on TV, there were only a few places to get your poker fix. TheTravel Channel (for the WPT) and ESPN (for the WSOP) aired the only bits of poker programming. How dated in 2003? Back then, I played Party Poker on dial-up and I used to tape episodes of the WPT on my VCR (4 per tape) and send them to Iggy because he did not have cable TV on the farm he lived on in the sticks. That's a true story.

These days, you can watch the episodes within an hour of airing thanks to something I recently discovered call the internet. Aside from a shitload of porn and Armageddon warnings about 2012, there's plenty of opportunity to get your poker fix. Shit, I haven't watched an actual episode of High Stakes Poker on TV... it's all bee via YouTube.

If you missed any of last night's programming, someone out there has a torrent or YouTube'd it already. So if you missed the last 20 minutes of the first batch of episodes of the 2009 WSOP because of the Favre press conference, then you have a chance to get caught up to speed.

Speaking of speed... it was cool to see Mike Matusow plugging his book Check-Raising the Devil that Amy Calistri and the Poker Shrink helped write. Matusow got a lot of face time but Winky Wright did not. One of my favorite boxing names of all time failed to advance to Day 2.

Chris Moneymaker looked hungover in every single shot. I mean, I've seen Moneymaker in the most random places all around the world as the money with the grinder helping plug PokerStars. He's in a perpetual state of jetlag and hungover (which is par for the course for mostly everyone involved on the international circuit from players, staff, dealers, and media). However, he always looks so exasperated on ESPN and they always seem to catch a perfect glimpse of the subtle pressure that Moneymaker is constantly under.

On a separate note, Moneymaker ran good down at Tunica. He won a $500 PLO tournament and then made the final table in the Main Event of the Gold Strike World Poker Open. That $60K score for third place was his largest live cash since he made the final table of the WPT Bay 101 in 2004 when Phil Gordon won.


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