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PlayingTheBoard

Some interesting articles that seem to indicate ESPN may be making guesses about players hole cards in some instances--or asking the players what they held and taking them at their word. Poker players never lie...right?

Poker pro Paul Phillips has been working on exposing this trend...he discusses the Lisandro vs. Ivey confrontation (TT vs. 99 on board of 4445) here:

http://extempore.livejournal.com/110018.html

...and gets an admission from ESPN, in a roundabout way, here:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=rosenbloom_steve&id=2143832
(ESPN admits that at times the hole cards are unclear, they will ask the player what they had and take them at their word.)

Other evidence frequently cited is a Hellmuth-Tony D hand from the 2003 WSOP:

http://www.improving.org/paulp/poker/tonyd-vs-hellmuth/

...a (supposed) big laydown by Scotty Nguyen, also at the 2003 WSOP:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.gambling.poker/msg/6fabf39db07170c?q=g:thl3602960599d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8

...and a player alleging that ESPN misstated the hand where he was eliminated:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.gambling.poker/msg/35f8797417d6c20c?q=g:thl1870891822d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&safe=off

(The links to the google groups are, obviously, meant to be one line rather than split in two. Just paste 'em together.)

I'm not coming down on one side or the other--just presenting some food for thought. I dunno whether hands are guessed, made up, multiple hands spliced together, etc. All I know is finding these articles helped me waste a solid 90 minutes at work. Very Happy

Jaconda78 · Message Board Junkie Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 4177

In Moneymaker's book (which sucks, by the way) he talks about a hand where he pushes another player all in (or goes all in himself - I dont remember). Anways, in the ESPN footage, it shows the other player giving Moneymaker a blood freezing glare. It turns ou tthat this glare was from a completely different hand. So they definately splice hands together - I wish there was more live poker on tv. I'd watch that. But then, I'm hopelessly addicted Smile

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PlayingTheBoard · Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:28 pm Post subject:

Well I don't so much mind them altering relatively innocuous things like that than purporting to know players' hands when they are simply guessing or constructing a hand to make for good TV.

Somewhere along the way, someone rightly pointed out that the hole cards would be much easier to see (and completely unmistakeable) if they used the glass table tops like the Late Night Poker from the UK, or the glass panels like they use on Poker Superstars Invitational.

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