Wednesday, November 09, 2011

The Main Event

So I watched way more of the Final Table of the World Series of Poker than I should have last night. Let's just say it was multiple hours and leave it at that.

For the first time, the Final 3 (which became the Final 2 after only four hands) was shown "almost live" on ESPN, with just a 15-minute delay. On the down side, showing it live has the major drawback of not being able to see the players' hole cards. But on the up side, the commentary of Antonio Esfandiari was absolutely brilliant throughout. I still can't believe how often he was correct about what cards each player was holding. I guess that's why he's a professional.

While I was rooting for the Czech Republic's Martin Staszko (who proves my theory that great chess players are now going for poker instead!), I have no problem with the victory by Germany's Pius Heinz. They both seem like entirely decent guys (albeit a little short on the charisma side), unlike some (Jamie Gold) who have won the title in the last decade. When I finally gave up Staszko still had a lead, but based on the way Heinz had chipped away at it before the close of the $1/2 million blind round, I had a funny feeling he was going to catch up.

But hey, you've got to sleep sometime.

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