Poker Cheating, Angle Shooting, and Incompetence

I appreciate your thoughts on this Ed. I have never cared much for Annie Duke, but why a person of her experience/stature in the poker world would behave like this is a mystery. Also, why is Steve Dannaman totally drunk and at the final table? Shannon Elizabeth’s celebrity status/preferential treatment is yet another annoying aspect.

Exceptional post, Ed.

Terrence is a great player and comes from my hometown (Vancouver, BC), and he deservedly has a good reputation as a stand-up guy. He got screwed here.

Wow, what a mess. I greatly appreciate your thoughts, Ed, and I equally sympathize with Terrance regarding this situation.

Okay, yes, the context of this charity event is the Playboy mansion and it’s all for a greater good, but clearly that doesn’t explain away the donk-tactular outcome of this poorly planned and executed poker tournament.

Poker players live by their word and the respect they uphold for the game. Period. Annie made a huge mistake for a professional of her stature (I hope her brother Howard takes her to task on this one). Shannon made a mistake you’d expect from a vapid high school cheerleader. And Joy simply seems to be drunk on power. If popularity and money are undermining poker all the way down to this level of “competition,” then we’re all in trouble.

Any reasonable person could have handled the unfortunate turn of events better than Joy did. Just about anyone could have rendered a better and more fair decision. A five-year old with one season of Sesame Street under their belt gets it. Why can’t Joy? I think it all turned out the way it did because no one thought the details of the story would leave Hef’s backyard.

Personally, I think Annie should pay for Terrance’s seat at the WSOP, Shannon should be disqualified from the prize pool, and Steve should get the TV and like it. What a bummer, eh?

According to Terrence, Annie has personally contacted him, apologized, and insisted on setting this right. So she’s being a stand-up gal.

I was once at a silly free roll tournament hosted by a big internet poker site among others. Two WSOP champions were there. This was in 2004. It was mostly a bunch of journalists. Anyway, top prize was a bunch of money on the site. Something like 6-8 tables were going to play, then the winning few would play again for the prize. Anyway, there was a cute PR girl. As the silly, super fast freeroll drew to a close and chips were being counted, one of the big wigs said, “she wins” and pushed a bunch of the chips over to the cute PR girl. I remember thinking “how is anyone ever going to believe internet poker isn’t rigged?”

Ed,
I think your relating of the incident in the context of the bigger picture was a well- thought-out and well- written article.

Of course, anytime there is a “hierarchy” like in most jobs and in tournament structure you have inherent problems develop. This usually ends up affronting most people’s sense of fairness sooner or later, due to power trips, egos, incompetence, etc. Now this rubs the normal guy the wrong way so of course, a poker player, whose career choice goals probably include the avoidance of just this type of scenario, is going to have a major problem with it.

I never heard of Joy, but first off I see the not uncommon problem of poor decision making by higher-ups of putting a non-person person in a person position. ( I’m basing this on her reaction to Terrance).

Also, while faking it while you learn just using your brain would go a long way. You don’t have to be an experienced organizer to see what was going on wasn’t fair. And you don’t need to be a mogul to see that running a charity is a business and this is bad for business. If it costs 30,000 more dollars, so what ? Pay it, still make the charity a lot of money, and learn that next time to allocate the time for the tournament differently.

I can’t blame Terrance for his approach even if he had been as interested in money as fairness. I have ethically been where he was before and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Probably a -ev decision on my part, but being able to look at yourself in the mirror and respect yourself is +ev in itself.

I thought one of the most annoying things Joy did in her response was to keep referring to the “poor children” and “innoculations” and T.C.’s earnings, to me this is an outright admission of guilt and a blantant ” I don’t have a real leg to stand on” statement. It’s kind of like “vote for me because I go to church”.

I really feel for Terrance because it sucks so bad and he really doesn’t have any recourse. And I don’t care how worldly one is , deep down you want to believe that dishonesty, disregard for fairness, the abuse of power by position or notoriety, that these things belong in the dark or in a seedy alley somewhere. And when it happens right out in the light of day, to you, with cameras no less, and nobody even appears ashamed of the act, a little something is loss.

Whoops. sucks so badly, not bad. lost, not loss.

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Ed
thanks for liniking the blog…
Truly sad story.
Pawel

So now, when someone says ‘I believe this and that site is rigged’, you just can’t claim he’s tilting and you just can’t say ‘man. why would they do it? they earn millions per hour’.
Oh yea.
For a few dollars more.

OK maybe I a little exagerated. My point is that if we can not assume that those who maintain the game are concerned to maintain a fair play, we can not say it’s not rigged that or the other way. What’s making me even more sad, is that in the tournament I got knocked out in a set-over-set hand (you may read about it here:
http://www.notedpokerauthority.com/board?forum=1&topic=53&page=1)
there was a guy who started complaining that the site’s rigged because he repeatedly saw similar things happen in the preceding tournaments (it was a series of qualifiers to a $100K final). Then the other person, who had just busted that guy out, asked me why am I not complaining while I have even a better reason (and it was in the AJ v AA hand; the T-set v A-set hand was later). And I said ‘I am not insane’.
And well, I just hate to say it, but my father would definitelly say I’m very naive to believe that a site giving away bonus money and a huge price in a tournament is just going to maintain a fair play.
And I’m getting more and more sad.
Pawel

Ed,
I’m new to poker so sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would the first prize be 2 WSOP seats? You can’t play twice can you? What do you do with the spare seat - sell it on ebay?
Are you allowed to sell or give your seat to someone else?
It just seems an odd prize structure to give one person 2 seats
Karl

Did they explicitly say that both seats were for the main event? Maybe one is for the main event and the other is for a side event.

Reminds me of incompetence I encountered when I was in a video poker tournament about 10 years ago. In the semi-finals, I was tied for 3rd in a heat where the top 5 players advanced to the 10-person finals (with about $15,000 on the line). The person running the tournament announced that the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th place players advance and I will do a playoff with the other 3rd place finisher to see who advances.

The more and more I tried to explain the when 2 people tie for 3rd, then the next-best person is in 5th, not 4th, and that we both are “in the top 5″ and it wasn’t getting through, the more incredulous I became. Finally, she put 11 people in the 10-person final (still a crappy decision) but was the best I was gonna get by that point.

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>>Cheating and incompetence are issues poker players have to deal with these days.>Cheating and incompetence are issues all people have to deal with these days.