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All Other Sports

Phil Hellmuth humiliates himself again

We haven’t ever met anyone who likes Phil Hellmuth; sure, he’s a great poker player, yada, yada, yada, but at the end of the day, he’s a whiny brat that has the capabilities to get us more riled up than those crazy chicks on Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School. So, needless to say, we were more than thrilled to come across this video of Hellmuth behind the wheel of a race car for an UltimateBet promotional shoot. The main reason being that he went Nick Hogan on the track and ended up going head first into a pole.

We’re pretty sure that he completely blamed the crash on the car.

Links:

[BaltimoreSun.com]: Poker pro survives crash, shrugs shoulders

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All Other Sports

Apparently you can’t trust Jamie Gold



Make that $6 million

A television exec by the name of Crispin Leyser is suing WSOP winner Jamie Gold for half of his earnings. According to the lawsuit, Leyser was promised a split of the earnings in exchange for getting a couple of celebs (Dax Shepherd and Matthew Lillard) to play for Team Bodog, which is Gold’s team.

While there isn’t a written contract, Leyser received this message from Gold just hours before the final tournament table:

I promise you — you can keep this recording on my word — there’s no possible way you’re not going to get half after taxes.

So please just be with me. I can’t imagine you’re going to have a problem with it. I just don’t want any stress about any money or any of that [expletive] going on today, or even after the end of the day.

But please just trust me. You’ve trusted me the whole way, you can trust me a little bit more. I promise you there’s no way anybody will go anywhere with your money. It’s your money.

So if he can be trusted, why the need for a lawsuit? Shouldn’t he have have just forked over half the money? If there’s one thing we know, it’s that when someone says “trust me”, you should never trust them. Along the same lines, if someone says, “to tell you the truth”, it means they’ve been lying to you.

Links:
[MSNBC]: WSOP winner sued, may have to split prize

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All Other Sports

The Problem with Strip Poker

Look at the photo below. See how many dudes are at the table? 8. See how many women are at the table? 1 (not counting the dealer). And there is the problem with the Paddy Power’s World Strip Poker Championship. Why would anyone want to play strip poker against a bunch of dudes? In order to have a Strip Poker tournament, you have to have a ratio somewhere close to 60/40 men/women. Otherwise, even if you win, you still lose.

Now the
World Series of Strip Poker sounds like a much better event but one that you can’t get into. In the WSOSP, former playboy playmate Colleen Marie and her friends go up against the finalists from the WSOP. We’re pretty sure that anyone making the final table at the WSOP can beat a playboy playmate so this event is just so the girls have a chance to strip down. While we firmly recognize the appeal of naked women, it defeats the purpose when said women already will take off their clothes for money. See, the point of strip poker is to see chicks naked that you might not see naked otherwise — it’s the girl next door appeal — exactly the appeal of Jenna Fischer from The Office. Playboy playmates playing strip poker sounds good until you realize that they play against a bunch of ugly pro players. What happens when one of them sucks out on the river and we’re subjected to seeing someone like Greg Raymer naked? That is a scenario too horrible to imagine.

We hate to be chauvinistic but the only way that an entertainment spectacle of strip poker could succeed is if there were no dudes. Like most things in life, too many dudes always ruins the show.

Links:
[Reuters]: Strip poker championships bring mass a-peel

[Gambling 911]: World Series of Strip Poker?

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All Other Sports

Odds and Ends: Kobayashi sets World Bratwurst record


Kobayashi broke last year’s record of 34 1/2 brats by a whopping 23 1/2 and setting the new record at 58. Those 58 brats = 16,820 calories, 1,450 grams of fat and 45,000 mg of sodium. It looks like American Joey Chestnut continues to be his main competition. Chestnut almost beat Kobayashi in the Nathan’s hot dog eating championship on July 4 but lost to Kobayashi in the brat eating competition by 13 brats.

In other news..

[USA Today]: USA barely beats Brazil in warmup to the world basketball championships

[AL.com]: Alabama HS football team beats heat by practicing at midnight

[Hawks Suck]: If you want to laugh at a team worse than yours. (Knicks fans need not click.)

[The Futon Report]: Matt Leinart’s holdout starting to look kinda silly

[MSNBC]: Jet’s Curtis Martin might miss entire season

[ESPN]: WSOP contender would give his millions to charity

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NHL General

Odds and Ends: Rick Tocchet gambling ring update


The former New Jersey state trooper that was linked to Rick Tocchet in the sports gambling ring has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, promoting gambling and official misconduct. By offering to help the authorities, he has reduced the maximum sentence from 25 years to 7 years. For anyone who has watched a crime drama in the past twenty years, this doesn’t bode well for Rick Tocchet as now he’s got no one to pass the buck to unless some shadowy kingpin emerges. It’s hard to believe but Rick Tocchet was the “brains” behind an operation.

In other news…

[Wicked Chops Poker]: Anna Benson is a Bitch

[MSNBC]: USOC bans Gatlin’s coach

[Sportsline]: Landis is now claiming dehydration caused high testosterone… even though he was hydrated enough to win the stage

[Kuklas Korner]: The St. Louis Blue’s shady marketing website

[Alligator Sports]: Stupid athletes on Facebook and MySpace

[Sheboygan Press]: ESPN continues its fine tradition of sports coverage

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All Other Sports

Poker Playing Chimp denied entry to WSOP

Remember that publicity stunt we told you about last week where a company was training a chimp to play poker and wanted to enter him into a WSOP event for $10,000? Well, the WSOP people have nixed it.


He will not be registered, nor will he play,” said Gary Thompson, spokesman for the World Series of Poker. “We are not letting any chimpanzees in. It would be cruel to the chimpanzee and unfair to our players.

Too bad this didn’t happen. It would have been hilarious to see one of the poker “stars” get knocked out by a chimp or get some feces thrown on them. By the way, who are these people lining up to get autographs of poker players? It’s not a sport, people!

Speaking of chimps…

[Miami Herald]: Nick Saban turns down invitation to have dinner with Bush

In other news…

[Yahoo]: Kellen Winslow says he’s misunderstood…blah blah blah

[NY Post]: Jeremy Shockey calls Tom Coughlin an “ass”

[Sports Chanting]: Top 10 Hottest Female Sportscasters

[10000 Takes]: Brett Favre Is Like A Snow Globe

[Subway Serial]: New Mets Team Rules

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All Other Sports

The Poker Playing Chimp and other tales

Man, poker isn’t even a sport that we should be covering at SC but when you combine a chimp and anything, it becomes a must-see event. (Well, except for that movie with Joey Tribiani.) Anyway, PokerShare.com is rumored to be entering a chimpanzee into the August World Series of Poker. SignOnSanDiego is correct in pointing out that it sounds like a viral marketing experiment but we’ll happily play along anyway.


Alex Van Klaveren of GameShare, the Gibraltar-based parent group for PokerShare, responded thus to an InfoPowa enquiry about the rumor:

“Thanks for your e-mail. Your sources are accurate. We have been training Mikey for the past four months, and he is now ready to play the WSOP main event. We will be issuing a press release by the end of the week.”

Van Klaveren did not comment on whether this ploy had the cooperation of the WSOP tournament director, saying in response to a direct question on this: “I agree, it should be interesting to see what people make of it. Mikey has a blog which is starting soon where you will be able to follow his progress.

Check out the video of him playing poker below. This is absolutely just a publicity stunt. Hell, even Vince Young could beat Mikey at poker.

In real poker news, 21-year-old film student named Jeff Madsen has won his 2nd WSOP bracelet in a week. His combined take home since turning 21 in June has been over $1.4M. He says he’s going to finish up school at UC Santa Barbara. A year in college surrounded by hot bikini clad girls in socal with over a million to your name? That was a hard choice.

Links:

[SignOnSanDiego]: Chimp might not be chump in poker
[ABC]: Poker-Playing Chimp Knows When to Hold ‘Em
[ESPN]: Madsen, 21, wins second WSOP bracelet in five days