Scandal Rocks WSOP: Ivey Accused Of Using Skill To Steal Main Event Seat From Deserving Imbecile

Steve-Bob MacNamora sits in his La-Z-Boy recliner and smokes on in a string of filterless hand-rolled cigarettes. The smoke curls around him like a death shroud, but it isn't the only pall surrounding the 36 year-old Kentucky welder these days.

"Phil Ivey stole my seat," MacNamora seethes, refering to the well-known poker pro who just made the final table of the 2009 World Series of Poker's (WSOP) Main Event this year. "I been waiting and saving over a decade, and now my seat, it's been stolen. Just stolen. And you just know he used skill to do it. It makes me sick."

MacNamora was sure he was destined to join such poker luminaries as Jerry Yang (07), Jamie Gold (06) and Robert Varkonyi (02) as World Champions of poker, but he was unceremoniously bounced from this year's tournament in the first day of play. "I had a King and a Jack and I couldn't beat two nines," he explains, disgust ranging on his ruddy face. "You know, if it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have any."

But now MacNamora claims that there is more at play than simple bad luck. According to him, the final table place that is rightfully his has been taken from him by a player he accuses of using skill, or "mad game" in order to gain an unfair advantage. "Every year nine complete imbeciles make a million bucks on that there tournament," says MacNamora. "And I am a total imbecile."

"He is," agrees Betty, his wife of 10 years. "That should have been my brain-dead dummy up there."

"You could say that Steve-Bob is the Phil Ivey of idiots," says Preston Reedsammy, the attorney whom MacNamora has retained in his suit against Ivey and Harrah's Entertainment, as well as (for reasons that are unclear at this time) the comedian Carrot Top. "He really is completely clueless. And here you have this guy who knows the game inside and out, who has great instincts and intuition, whose focus in unparalleled. It's just sad to see somebody like that succeed in poker's marquis event. When you look at the evidence, it really seems unavoidable that this individual was using skill. And not just once, but throughout the tournament. Something has gone badly wrong, and we're merely asking Ivey and Harrah's to make it right."

For now, however, there are no answers. There are only dreams deferred and hopes shattered.

"I just don't get it," fumes MacNamara. "When I'm at the table I honestly still refer to that Hoyle card that tells me what beats what. When I see a seasoned pro like Ivey, who is clearly using skill to take what is rightfully mine? I just get mad. Real mad." McClure pauses and eats a few more truck-stop 'energy' vitamins. "I mean . .. pot odds? Implied odds? What does that even mean?"

Phil Ivey, busy making a hedge-maze out of stacks of hundred dollar bills, was unavailable for comment.

Two-Time Mookie Winner Julius_Goat Thanks You

Yeah, this happened.



I know what you're thinking and don't worry. I'll stay the same. The only difference is a little bit more cash in my account. Also, from now on I will answer only to "Two-Time Mookie Winner Julius_Goat."

What? What's that? Two-Time Mookie Winner Julius_Goat can't hear you.

You say I only won after spiking the four outer heads up to cripple TBA? You say there were two years between victories? You say there were no BBT points? You say there were only fifteen runners?

Bah. Two-Time Mookie Winner Julius_Goat can't be distracted by such nonsense. Two Time Mookie Winner Julius_Goat needs to go buy a new cape.

The old one is behind the times these days.

Your Weekly Dose Of Crazy

An important message for us all.

Haters

This is going to be an astonishing admission of geekiness - and this from somebody who has a poker blog - but that's just how it is going to have to be. It's too good to pass up.

I am an amateur photo craptioner.

That's right. You heard right. An amateur photo craptioner.

"But what is that, Julius_Goat?" you ask. "And how does one pronounce that silly little underscore that is in your name for no reason?"

"Shut up, you." I growl, but you are undeterred.

"I mean, you do have an operating system better than Windows 95, right? You do know that you can just type a space if you need a space, right?"

You're about to ask more, but that's when you see that I have an axe and an unstable glint in my eye.

A craptioner is somebody who goes to Cracked.com and suggests humorous and/or clever captions to some odd picture that is posted there every afternoon. Then, Digg-style, other submitters and readers vote on their favorite captions. Only the strong survive. Top vote-getter is totally Internet famous with their ID avatar and winning caption on the Cracked home page.

Rules are: You can't vote for yourself. Offensive posts will be taken down unless they are funny. Complaining about the quiz will be taken down unless it is funny.

I do this. Yes, my family is proud.

I like doing this because it seems to me to approximate what I've read about being in the writer's room of The Simpsons (and probably other shows), where you're given a situation and basically have to compete to get the best joke out there. You have about 30 seconds, and the only judge is the laughter of the other people who are trying to beat you. Very neat.

This is very similar, except that you have about 5 minutes before there are so many captions that you're buried and you may as well not bother. So, time-cost is low, and it's a fun little diversion.

It's a "craption" because then you have the word "crap" in it! Crap is funny! You see what they did there?

So every afternoon I take a break and spend 5 minutes or so with the new picture, typing whatever dumb thing comes to mind. Then I do a quick search on the word "Goat" to make sure my entries take (they don't always). Then I click refresh for another couple minutes, see how I'm doing, and then return around quitting time to see if any of the monkey poo I flung at the wall sticks.

I've done OK. I usually have one or two that get decent traction, and I've won a few times.

Now. Go back and look at the picture I posted. That was the photo for captioning that posted today. I posted a few, then did my search, and the first thing that came up was:

"Julius_Goat will be too busy masterbating [sic] furiously to this image to post his usual lame captions."

The next one was:

"This is a box of the heads that actually think Julius_Goat is funny."

About five minutes later, the "masterbating" one was winning - WINNING - by a large margin. The other one was in third place.


That's right, my friends. I have caption haters.

I'll repeat. I have caption haters. There are people out there that I have put on such caption tilt that they are now venting their caption hate for caption me on the caption site. I am Caption America! I am Caption Courageous! I am Caption CAAAAAAAAVEMAAAAAAAAN!!!


This is the best thing ever (though I am unnerved - how did they know that I was masturbating to that image? HOW? HOW?? HOW DID THEY KNOW???). I did the only possible thing I could do. I voted for them.

Sadly, they are down, now. I guess the admin decided they broke the "don't complain about the quiz" rule (or perhaps the "don't misspell the word "masturbate" or its derivatives" rule) and deleted them. But fear not, we have a happy ending. I just went on this morning and (I'll admit) did another search on "Goat" just to see if there was any more.

I found this:



Now excuse me, I gotta go vote for it.

Your Weekly Dose of Awesome

Wow, guys. I guess I just do video links now. I don't have writer's block, I just have Bartleby Syndrome. For now, I guess I would prefer not to.

Soon the dam will burst.

This week, we'll switch things up. Awesome before crazy.




P.S. PokerStars 180 SNG turbos are good.

Friday Is Kids In The Hall Day

Hello, I'm Julius Goat and I'll be your blogger today.

And, since I've been a lazy blogger, I had to also choose one that could double as your weekly dose of crazy.

This being KITH, it wasn't too hard.

Ebb

Hello, hello, hello, is there anybody out there?

I'm starting to get the rhythm of the blogging seasons. Ironically, summer is when poker bloggers Internet-hibernate. There's too much warm weather, too many lakes to play in, too many parks to sit and read in.

Oh, who am I kidding. You're all either in Vegas or hitting refresh on Pauly and Al's WSOP Twitter feeds. You degens, you.

But it's quiet, that's for sure. Not just around here, either, unless I miss my guess. We're in recovery from 7,000 blogger tournaments over the last 18 months or so, and need to go lie down until we remember how much fun they are again. Was I dreaming or was the Mookie only 14 runners? What. The. WTF. (tm Tripjax). I put the BBmT on hold this quarter because it would probably have drawn 2 runners. Oh, and I am busto. Heh.

This is my way of saying: So long for now, Donkament. I'll miss you more than Michael Jackson, and much more than Robert McNamara. Come back and make us happy some day.

Other items of note:

Hoy won fifty large. Well done, sir. Now please, post something about it.

LJ nearly final tabled in WSOP HORSE action. Superstoner actually DID final table in the WSOP. Peel me off the floor. She and Lucko are alive in the Main Event for Day 2. Blooogers represent. Hoo-ha.

What else for the future?

I will say that nine of my very closest friends have entered the WSOP Main Event. I can't say definitively, but I think they all have a very good chance of making the final table. They're just that good.

More videos will be coming as soon as Xtranormal coughs up the greatly expanded software they're promising, which will let me do all sorts of keen (and maybe even nifty) new things.

Peace.