prince of poker no more

ok first things first many many thanks to mark cheng for helping me get twitter and the rss icon up on fourcardflush, not sure how it’ll influence the blog but it sure as hell looks better!

been wanting to blog about scotty nguyen for some time now. for those of you unfamiliar with the name, scotty nguyen is a vietnamese professional poker player. he’s won 5 world series of poker bracelets, the most recent being the 2008 WSOP $50k H.O.R.S.E event (an event that has 5 variants of poker: Holdem, Omaha eight or better, Razz, seven card Stud and seven card stud Eight or better).

the WSOP $50k H.O.R.S.E event is widely considered to be THE most prestigious event in poker today, due to the strong field of professionals that play the event but also due to how all rounded a poker player has to be to win the event. before this event, scotty struck me as one of the nicer players in poker. always making time to sign autographs, sometimes kinda cocky, but never obnoxious. that all changed in this event.

so here’s the backstory: 23 year old michael de michele, a young american pro was at a final table featuring some of poker’s greatest. barry greenstein, huck seed, scotty nguyen and erick lindgren were among the top pros at the table. anyways de michele had lots of friends and family supporting him, so whenever he took down a pot, he played it up to the crowd. this rubbed some of the pros the wrong way. check out what happens next:

the thing that sickens me is that the kid kept apologizing to scotty and the other pros, but scotty kept going at him. i mean the kid (he’s not really a kid he’s one year younger than me) said sorry what more do you want? even if you can let that slide, can you believe the way he let go at the waiter, screaming for cocktails (refers to cheap beers)? anyways scotty’s behaviour has dissappointed many fans worldwide, myself included. this incident has been the talking point of the poker world for a while, and i think it probably will be for a while to come.

~ by Tim Young on September 17, 2008.