HORSE Coverage Surprising and Not Surprising
Monday, June 30, 2008
I figured it was worth mentioning that the Yahoo front page currently (2:44 pm, EST) lists Man beats out 148 players, wins $2M at World Series of Poker as one of their 6 or so front page stories.
I clicked through and sure enough, the article discusses Scotty Nguyen's impressive win in the $50K HORSE event at the WSOP. The article is especially noteworthy and surprising because it is a cover-page story about a non-holdem, non-Main Event game with a top prize that is a mere fraction of recent Main Event prizes. I could understand mainstream media picking up the story of the ME winner or even a really high payout winner, which could be considered particularly newsworthy because of the sheer numbers involved. However, for the mainstream news to pick up and place on its front page a story about a smaller field, non-NLHE event with a payout that is rather typical (or at least not atypical nowadays), is just...well, weird and refreshing.
This may be a good sign for poker's acceptance into main stream culture (beyond advertising) and it is probably a great sign that a non-hold'em event is getting a little bit of love. Hopefully, casual observers will be interested enough to find out why a guy won $2 million for playing HORSE.
Not too surprising is the fact that the article incorrectly lists Hellmuth as the person with the most WSOP bracelets, numbering 12. In reality, he has only won 11. [Ed. note: Ironically, while I called out the article for incorrect information, I also initially incorrectly noted that Brunson and Chan were tied with 11 bracelets as well. Thanks to Peaker, my error has been corrected. And lest one think that I am a hypocrit, (a) I am not an official media outlet, (b) my intern is on vacation, visiting his family during the Ganga Dussehra festival, and (c) I am a hypocrit).
Until next time, make mine poker!
posted by Jordan @ 2:43 PM,
2 Comments:
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At 4:48 PM,
Unknown said...
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Hellmuth, unfortunately, is not tied. He's in the lead with 11. Chan and Brunson have 10. It's my hope that one day someone beats Hellmuth.
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At 7:39 PM,
RaisingCayne said...
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Just catchin' up on my blog perusing... I see I won your little "nickname-the-nickname" contest last week!!! W0000t! Boom! Roar! Choo-choo! Etc...
And well, since you offered the prize to be on FT OR Stars... (and since my FT bankroll is pretty healthy currently, and since I haven't been on Stars for what seems like forever...) I'd love it if you could hook me up with a tourney buy in over at Poker Stars! My (ghey) user name over there is: "3mates" (long story)... and I forget what that site uses to confirm, but the relevant City is Federal Way, WA... the icon picture is a (VERY VERY GHEY) picture of a kitten. (Longer story.)
Thanks man! I LIKE your contests. ;-)
