Unbearably Bad Poker

So I've been watching a little bit of ESPN's WSOP Main Event coverage from time to time this year, moreso here as we wind down towards the November Nine, and I find myself struck by frankly the same thought that I've had in each and every one of the WSOP Main Events I have ever watched over the past decade or so:

These people absolutely suck shit at poker.

Yeah that's right, I said it. It's true. These people play like absolute anusshit. And that, I think, is being kind.

I mean, this is the biggest tournament of their lives by definition. Each and every one of these guys, once we're down to the final 27 players or so, is for sure playing poker for the most money they have ever played in their lives. There is not just the immediate cash payouts on the line, but the sponsorship opportunities involved with making it to the November Nine final table and with potentially winning the tournament. There is a literal lifetime of playing poker and never having to have a real job again within their grasp. All this and more is at stake here for every single player left as the ESPN coverage worked its way down this week to the final table and a half remaining in the WSOP Main Event.

And what are these players doing with this tremendous opportunity?

They're reraising an early-position raiser preflop from middle position with 42o.

They're calling large bets on the flop for a quarter of their stack with just an overcard and an inside straight draw.

They're reraising allin preflop with A7s.

They're calling allin preflop for 50% of their stack with AQs.

And, my personal favorite, a super aggro guy who's been raising all day raises again preflop, this time with pocket Aces. The guy on the other side of the table reraises with JTs. The guy with AA re-reraises again, a fairly small amount, which itself was a truly bad play because (1) it makes it very, very obvious that he has precisely pocket Aces, and (2) the small raise gives the first player now better than 5-to-1 to call the re-reraise with his JTs, well known as the literal best hand to crack what he now knows his opponent has in pocket Aces.

And then the shithead insta-folds his JTs, getting better than 5 to 1 to call the re-reraise!!!

You could not make this stuff up, and you certainly can't defend these plays from a poker perspective. I've watched the Main Event coverage on ESPN for years, albeit some years more than others. But every single year, my reaction to the quality of play I've seen throughout has been more or less exactly the same.

The Main Event is an absolute donkfest. Sure, good skill will work much better for you than no skill, and a player who has played on the big stage before and knows how to extract chips will always have a better chance of surviving than one who doesn't know shit and is quaking in his boots because of the amount of money on the line. But that increased chance of success is still utterly minuscule, given the field and what it takes to survive the kind of indefensible, thoughtless donkery you will be facing right from the first deal on Day 1A, and clearly lasting all the way up to the final table itself. Last year it was that unthinkable idiot Chino Rheem freaking six-betting allin preflop with Ace-rag with just a few players remaining and directly costing himself probably about $15 million in tournament winnings and sponsorships as a result -- if you don't know you're not only beat but crushed after your opponent re-re-re-re-reraises you preflop and you are holding Ace-rag, then you are absolutely, utterly hopeless as a poker player on the big stage -- and this year the play to make the final table is enough to make just about anyone with half a poker brain scratch their head in amazement.

Somewhere, I imagine Phil Ivey is out there watching this week's coverage with that same absolutely classic look on his face as when Jen Tilly didn't bet her boat on the river against Patrick Antonius and then proclaimed that she thought he had pocket Kings, at 2:03 of the clip below:



All I know is this: the raging clowns playing for the biggest money of their lives at this year's WSOP Main Event are doing nothing to help anyone out there who loves to argue that poker is a game of skill and not luck. Sure, there is more than a little skill involved, but for these players to have lasted this long, and to be playing for this amount of money after surviving some 6600 other entrants, while playing as unmitigatedly horrible poker as they are here even at the end, it's certainly not helping the luck vs. skill debate.