March 10th, 2010 | 
Author: An Interview With Joe Hachem By Sharla Lehrmann
Just who is this Joseph Hachem, anyway? Before the last hand of the 2005 World Series of Poker main event, Joe was virtually unknown in the world of professional poker. Above the equator, anyway. Sure, he had cashed out in many events “down under” but, when he made his winning debut in Las Vegas he took the world of professional poker by storm.
Joe was not only the first Australian to take down the coveted title of “World Champion” by topping a record field of 5,619 players, he took 10th in event #37, the $1000 NLHE event, on July 4th. Of course his $25,000 payday from that smaller event pales in comparison to the $7,500,000 he scooped up in the championship, but it did allow him the opportunity to buy-in to that granddaddy event on a free roll… and with change left over.
So, again we ask, who is Joe Hachem? I can tell you from experience that he is a kind and generous man, represents the ultimate idea of who we would like to symbolize who we are as poker enthusiasts. Of course, the main difference between Joe and the rest of us is that he now has the championship bracelet… and a ton of money. Has it changed the man? Not in the least. Before the mammoth win, Joe was a family man. After the win, Joe is a family man.
Joe was raised in Lebanon and early in life his family made the trek to Melbourne in the early 1970’s, began to call it home. He trained to be a Doctor of Chiropractics, married, and produced four beautiful children. As fate would have it, Joe developed a disorder that stopped him dead in his tracks. He quit doing what he did best, became a mortgage broker, and took up the game we call poker.
Joe admits that he has a typical Lebanese temper, his biggest bane while at the table. Keeping that temper in check and learning to overcome it has really honed his competitive nature. He has taken to heart that if he can give bad beats, he should be man enough to take them in turn. Huge step for him.
He doesn’t squander his winnings, instead pays his bills and looks out for his family. This man has a lot to teach some of the youth who are just starting their “professional” careers in poker. Joe believes that poker should be treated as a business. Keep records, track your play, recognize your strengths and weaknesses and capitalize on them. Strive to get better all the time. Joe stays away from any other form of gambling, playing poker because he truly believes he has an edge that no other form of gambling provides him.
“I go in knowing I have an edge,” he says. “It is the only way to be a consistent winner.”
I asked Joe if he considered poker to be a sport. He replied that he believed it to be very much a psychological sport, not just a game.
“It is grueling to put in so many hours and be able to sustain for that period of time. Primarily, it is a sport of the mind. [It's important] not only to outwit your opponent and play better than he or she, but to be able to take the downswings and upswings that happen naturally in the game. Because it is a card game there is that element of the unknown, an element of luck involved.”
He said his biggest asset in playing poker is absolute patience. Through years of playing live and online poker he has relied on patience as his ace in the hole. When he first started playing, Joe quickly discovered that being impatient just got him into trouble. Patience means two things: the ability to wait for a good hand in the right spot, and the wisdom to toss your cards when you know they cannot win.
Outside of continuing to work on the patience aspect of the game, Joe has a strong desire to bring the dignity level of poker up a few notches.
“I want to eradicate the view that poker players are degenerates, an idea that has been the popular opinion for a very long time,” Joe says. “[But] it has gotten better over the past few years. I am just an ordinary guy who happens to have chosen poker as his profession. I am not a degenerate.”
Joe has sharpened his game by reading numerous instructional books. He found some to be a bore, but said he particularly enjoyed TJ Cloutier and Tom McEvoy’s book, Championship No Limit and Pot Limit Hold’em. Having read the book about 12 times, it is quite simple to read and easy to grasp. Joe says it gave him him a sturdy foundation to build upon, formed the basis for honing his skills. The book may have given him the knowledge, but the rest has come from experience.
“You can read books forever,” Joe says. “But I have never seen a champion come out of just reading books.”
When discussing the ability to read other players, he said: “I like to sit for a half hour to forty five minutes and just watch how people are playing. I don’t get involved in a hand straight away unless I absolutely have to. That gives me a chance to see what their betting patterns are like.
“For instance, what hands are they playing from what position? What do they do with their chips when they have a good hand, and what do they do with them when they have nothing?
“I think to be a good poker player you have to have a good memory. If you don’t have a good memory, you are not going to make it. What happens is that you don’t consciously, actually memorize. It is all subconscious. Say I see someone at a table make a bet who has not gotten involved in a hand in over an hour. My subconscious will tell me if he has it or not. It isn’t a conscious thing that I am working to do, it is because of all the hours of practice. It becomes what we call a ‘gut feeling’. If you listen to that, it will work for you 99% of the time.”
Culminating with the essence of who Joe Hachem is, it has to do with “paying it forward.” His kindness and generosity start at home. He brought home a huge amount of money from his championship win in 2005 and he says he will take care of his immediate and extended family first. The next step is to see how he can give back to the world, particularly within an area that truly touches his heart, “children who don’t have dads.” As soon as his reign as defending champion ends – assuming he doesn’t make it back to back wins – he would like to put more time into that. While winning the World Championship meant everything to Joseph Hachem, he contends that if it ever had a negative affect on his family he would give it back in a heartbeat.
“I have raised my children to value money, to respect money, and to always be appreciative. We were living a comfortable life before I won the $7.5 Million, so my children were not wanting for anything. While school is out, my family travels with me from casino to casino as I play the circuit. But they will never hear me say, ‘I just lost hundreds on the craps table!’ It will just never happen.
“I want them to know how to invest in something with a positive expectation, whether it be in something they are good enough to play, real estate, or finance. I take that part of my responsibility very seriously. I get a lot of flack from people saying I am ‘exposing’ my children to poker. As far as I am concerned there is nothing for my kids not to know about. I want them to know about everything. I am a good parent, and my wife is a good parent as well. As a gambler, they see me practice what I preach all the time.”
Joe finished with his advice to young and/or new players of poker: “Take your time. There is plenty of time. I think a lot of [new players] jump in too deep, too quickly. We all have bad runs and we have all had things go up against us for long periods of time. If your bankroll isn’t correct and you find yourself playing in games that are over your head, it will break you. Build your bankroll, slowly, in the smaller games, and concentrate on maintaining it.”
The World Series of Poker is just about to start. It will assuredly beat any record for attendance, even as we sit in awe of the 5,619 who contended in 2005. Here is to Joesph Hachem, as I toss out my own rendition of “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi !!!” What a pleasure to have met such a great poker player, husband and father.
A true gentleman and scholar.
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A Conversation with Jimmy Sommerfield
By Tim Lavalli
I had a chance to sit down and talk ‘all things poker’ with Jimmy Sommerfield during the first days of the Canterbury Park Fall Poker Classic in Minnesota last week. Jimmy is in my opinion one of a very few truly gifted tournament directors. He not only runs a great event. He also balances the needs of the players and staff and does so with an uncanny sense of humor and a unique style. Jimmy also plays poker and is always thinking about ways to improve the game. So when I tapped him on the shoulder during a late night $15/$30 HoldEm game, he was more than willing to set up a poker conversation for the next morning.
Since we were in Canterbury Park, my first question was about Jimmy’s big win there last year. Yes, after running the satellites (single table and super) last year, Jimmy had nothing to do that last day so he took off the coat and tie, put on a Canterbury Park ball cap, and won the final event to the tune of a cool $108,914. Unfortunately, he told me there would be no defense of the title because he was running the tournament side this year.
I watched that win last year and I must say Jimmy was in control of his table for most the afternoon and evening. By the final table the result seemed inevitable to many of those in the gallery. Since then Jimmy was involved as a principal in a poker ship operation out of Florida and rumors were that it was his 100K Canterbury win he used to float that venture. Happily, he was more than willing to dispel such a myth (an urban poker legend?). The Canterbury prize, Jimmy told me: “Bought my family a very nice house in Florida.” He went on to say that he had invested only “my career” in the poker ship venture but none of his own cash. The poker ship enterprise did eventually… well…. sink.
Now that he is back on the road as perhaps the country’s best traveling tournament director, I asked about life on the road and whether he had considered taking an offer from one of the big casinos. We both noted that Dave Eglseder, the former tournament directory at Canterbury Park, could now be found in the luxurious new poker room at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas where he is a shift manager. Deborah Giardina, also formerly of Canterbury Park, is the director of poker operations at the Wynn. I assumed that Jimmy also had offers to make the move to a prestigious room in Las Vegas or elsewhere. He was empathetic here: “The family is happy in Florida and I enjoy the road. There is no move to Las Vegas pending.” His schedule includes a variety of events in Reno, including the Hilton’s Pot of Gold where he was just prior to Canterbury. After the event here in Minnesota expect him at the Paris/Bally’s WSOP Circuit event in Las Vegas. He will also continue to work the World Series and many of the WSOP Circuit events.
On that note I had to ask about his annual trips to Shakopee, Minnesota for the Canterbury Park Fall Classic, not exactly a WSOP or WPT size event. Jimmy again was quite clear: “I would say this even if we weren’t here. Canterbury Park is the best-run card room in the country. I really enjoy this event and this venue.”
Next, I wanted to ask Jimmy about rules and rule changes that he has been responsible for. First on the list: Was it another rumor or is he the inventor of the ‘third man walking’ rule. Indeed he was but the circumstances of the invention are not what you might think. The ‘third man walking’ rule simply says that if two players are up from a ring game that any additional players up will be informed that they do not have the normal ‘away time’. This usually means that while you can walk away from a table for dinner or for two or three rounds of blinds (whatever the house rule), the third man up gets only 5 minutes (or less in some rooms) before their chips are picked up and their seat given away.
Jimmy explained that one night he was running a room and had two $30/$60 tables, one a ‘must move.’ Three players were up walking from the main game and then another player left. When a player was ‘must moved’ from the second game, he complained that he was being moved from a full table to a short-handed one and that the ‘must move’ rule was supposed to keep the main game full. Good point! How do you keep the main game or any table full, if players all have the right to walk for an extended period? Thus, the birth of the third man-walking rule.
Moving right on to another Jimmy Sommerfield creation: the “seat reassignment/chip balancing” system. This was first implemented by Jimmy in Reno several months ago and was the subject of a Mike Sexton article a few months back. An amazingly simply idea (you know one of those ideas we all hear for the first time and slap our foreheads and say: Duh!) but one that needs an innovator like Mr. Sommerfield to implement. Here is how it works.
A tournament is down to the money and there is about to be a seat redraw. The problem is that the random draw can put all of the big stacks at one table or manage any combination of stack reseatings that give an advantage to some players and put others at the great disadvantage. One example of this I saw just this week at Canterbury. Final three tables, redraw for seats; the big stack gets put at a table with the six smallest stacks and two medium smalls. The big stack had more chips then the other eight players combined. Any doubts about how that table is going to go? There are clearly lots of random reseatings that give certain players an advantage at this late stage of a tournament. You can’t do much about who is on your left or right but Jimmy has found a system to avoid the chip stack advantage.
Let’s say we are down to the money, 27 being paid, and a redraw for the final three tables. First, all of the stacks are counted. Then a seat (not a table) is drawn. Let’s say seat two. The big stack gets table 1, seat 2. The next stack-table 2 seat 2 and the third stack table 3-seat 2. The next seat is drawn and the order is reversed. The fourth highest stack goes to table 3, the fifth table 2 and the sixth table 1. Go through this order for each of the seats and you will get tables as closely balanced in chips as possible and still random. It works for three tables; it can work for three hundred. All it takes is a break at the redraw and a tournament director interested in improving the game.
Jimmy noted that the players seemed to like this change. Hoyt Corkins got a terrible redraw a week or so after the Mike Sexton article came out, he came to Jimmy and told him that he “got it” why the new system works. There has been very little player resistance but implementation by other tournament directors has been slow. If you like the idea, remember you are the paying customer, ask the tournament director if the Sommerfield Redraw System is being used in your next event. By the way that’s my recommendation and my title for the innovation and not Jimmy’s, he will probably not like that I am attaching his name to idea but someone has to say: “Nice job and thanks for thinking of ways to make the game better.” In my opinion, Jimmy has done just that.
So, what’s next I had to ask, any more innovations. Indeed, Jimmy had just tried out another one at the Hilton’s Pot of Gold. Usually when there is a Best All-Around player award, points given for first, second, third etc. for each event in a tournament. This means the winner of the Stud Hi-lo event with 70 entrants gets the same All-Around points as the winner of the 470 entries NL HoldEm event. Jimmy’s solution? If you are in the money (which means they take down your name) you get as many points as the number of players you outlasted in the event. First in the 470 player NL event gets 469 All-Around Player points and second gets 468. The only disadvantage to this system: “The Best All Around Player award is probably going to go to a Texas HoldEm player and more than likely a No Limit HoldEm player, since that is the game of choice right now.” But that may change; I heard Razz is making a real comeback.
Are all innovations good? Apparently not. I asked Jimmy about the “Blinds Reset” that has been used at several tournaments. He is against it. Basically, a blind reset attempts to prevent the ‘crap shoot’ that many tournaments become at the final table. You know the situation–blinds are 2,000/4,000 with a 500 ante and the average stack is 10,000. Average stack has one round of blinds and the big stack may only have two. Short stacks have no choice but to push at once and it becomes showdown not poker. Some events have tried to avoid this by announcing in advance that based on the average stack at the final table (they know this as soon as the number of entries is announced); based on that average the final table will start so that the average stack has at least three rounds of blinds. This means that the blind structure will go back down as needed.
Jimmy opposes this for two reasons. First, the player on the final table bubble gets a royal screwing. The short stack who had to push in tenth place because the blinds were 2k/4k, certainly would not like to go out and then see the blinds dropped back to 500/1000. In fact, players out 10 to 18 and perhaps more get hammered by such a rule. Secondly, Jimmy points out that structure is what can and should be used to prevent the ‘crap shoot’ kind of final table. As he says: “At some point to have to knock players out of a tournament. More starting chips and longer rounds lead to ridiculously high blinds at the final table. It’s a trade-off; you can’t have lots of play at the beginning of a tournament and also expect reasonable blinds at the final table. Tournament directors have to make a choice and that choice should be made with the structure on the event and not with some alteration of the blinds just because nine players remain.” Fairness to all the entrants in a tournament versus a good final table for television? It is an interesting question and I think final table blind resets will be debated for some time yet.I had one final question: “Is there anything in the current Tournament Directors Association (TDA) rules that you think needs fixing or are there additions you would make.” Again, I hit on something Jimmy and apparently several other tournament directors feel strongly about. He said immediately: “Take out all of the ‘mays’ in the rules. Either it’s a rule or it isn’t.”
Just for reference, six TDA rules use the word MAY:
7- A penalty MAY be invoked if a player exposes any card with action pending, if a card(s) goes off the table, if soft-play occurs, or similar incidents take place. Penalties will be invoked in cases of abuse, disruptive behavior, or similar incidents.
21- Verbal declarations as to the content of a player’s hand are not binding; however at management’s discretion, any player deliberately miscalling his hand MAY be penalized.
30- Verbal declarations in turn are binding. Action out of turn MAY be binding.
33- Penalties available for use by the TD are verbal warnings, 10, 20, 30, and 40 minutes away from the table and MAY be used with discretion. These may be utilized up to and including disqualification.
35- A player who exposes his cards during the play MAY incur a penalty, but will not have his hand killed.
37- Verbally disclosing the contents of your hand or advising a player how to play a hand MAY result in a penalty.
I see Jimmy’s point here. At first I thought that giving tournament directors discretion was a good idea but note in rule seven where it says: ‘Penalties WILL be invoked in cases of abuse, disruptive behavior, or similar incidents.’ One wonders what is the difference between “WILL” in part of the rule and “MAY” in the others? Have we not all seen abuse and disruptive behavior go unpenalized? So, is it a rule or isn’t it?
This brought us to the “F” word. Jimmy mentioned the Mike Matusow incident at this year’s WSOP. He felt that taking a player away from a heads up final table showdown for 10 or 20 minutes or more simply ruins the game. In fact, Jimmy and Johnny Grooms have decided that in tournaments they run and while “MAY” is still in the rules, they will apply their own standard, which is: When down to five players or less, the maximum penalty short of disqualification will be missing two rounds of blinds.
The problem with discretion is perhaps best illustrated with an example (with apologies to the players I use here). Let’s say you are running a tournament and at the final table the lovely, sweet, kind and gentle Jennifer Tilly takes a horrible bad beat (runner, runner to a double belly-buster straight). In her wonderful (sweet, kind and gentle) voice the marvelous Ms. Tilly (defending WSOP Women’s Champion) utters: “Oh f***! Oops I mean oh darn!” Do you penalize her? No? OK, then change Ms. Tilly to a nasty tempered pro (fill in your own Mike or Phil or whomever image) who has been badmouthing the table for several hours and generally being an obnoxious toad. He tosses out the F-bomb.Is this a different situation? Is the penalty cumulative? Does beauty count? How about testosterone? How about revenge?
Discretion is a slippery slope but so is three strikes… And what about what one dealer at Canterbury mentioned. He said: “What if your table is four guys from Jersey and five from Brooklyn. F*** is every other word from dez guys, you toss them for that and you are dealing to an empty table.”
Well Jimmy doesn’t like the ambiguity of the “MAY” in the TDA rules. I see the problem but I asked him if he wanted to have some strict “Emily Post” rules for playing poker? No cussin’, no drinkin’, no off color jokes, wasn’t throwing the smokers out enough? He smiled and said he really liked living in Florida.
Poker Articles
F-Bomb Rule: Part One (Little Boy)
By Tim Lavalli
There is a lot of talk at the tables about the F-Bomb rule. Is it a good idea or not? Is it applied uniformly or not? What about those incidents at the World Series this past summer? And who the hell cares? or not? To some extent, we all have to care because as of right now the F-bomb rule is the law in many poker rooms and at all major tournaments (except perhaps those in New Jersey).
So let’s talk a bit about the rule, how it is applied and why. Then I will tell you about some interesting conversations I have had with several of the players and officials involved in those two well publicized incidents at the 2005 WSOP.
The F-Bomb rule says that you can’t say the “F” word at a poker table without incurring a time penalty. Let’s deal with the word itself first. Well the “F” word is apparently so evil or tawdry that I am not allowed to type it here. So for the sake of this article let’s just substitute some other word. Instead of ‘F***’ or ‘F___’ I am just going to use the word—‘jelly.’ Yes, jelly not jam not marmalade, just jelly. Now you might assume that by choosing jelly, I am ridiculing the F-Bomb rule, not true! I just want to be able to write this article without having to leave the subject out. Sort of like writing about the First President of the United States but never saying G***** W*********.
It is unclear who thought up the F-Bomb rule. Abusive behavior in general is regulated more and more in cardrooms around the world, although not necessarily uniformly. What passes for acceptable behavior in the States will get you booted out of most gaming rooms in Europe and acceptable behavior in the Far East has quite different standards from the US or elsewhere. But specifically why ban a player for saying ‘that’ word? Why not simply a tighter enforcement of the abusive behavior rule?
TDA RULE #7 Penalties: A penalty MAY be invoked if a player exposes any card with action pending, if a card(s) goes off the table, if soft-play occurs, or similar incidents take place. Penalties WILL be invoked in cases of abuse, disruptive behavior, or similar incidents.
Interesting wording in that rule: ‘MAY be invoked’ versus ‘WILL be invoked.’ What exactly is ‘abuse’ or ‘disruptive behavior’ and what are ‘similar incidents’? I know where the TDA is trying to go and lots of players want a game with less of ‘THAT’ type of behavior but who is to decide? While floor personnel are poker’s behavior judges, they appear to have little discretion when it comes to the F-Bomb. At recent tournament events I have attended the only rule announced prior to the event is the F-Bomb rule and at these events (including the WSOP) the announcement was: “This is your warning, use of the F-Bomb will result in a 10 minute penalty, there will be no additional warnings given, this is your only warning.”
Here is the first problem–enforcement. Who calls the floor after another player mutters: “Ah Jelly!” Is it the dealer? Are we now asking the dealers to be cops? Should another player at the table call the floor? Under the rules you can, but do you really want to? Isn’t that just one step above shooting an angle? And as I asked before–who really cares? Are there that many 9 year olds sitting in cardrooms that we need to protect them from the infamous “F” word. Or is it the lady players? And if it is the ladies, which ones? Annie? Clonie? Liz?
But for the moment, let’s just take it for granted that we have and will have an F-Bomb rule of some sort. Here is what I am hearing at the tables from many, if not most, of the poker players. (You tournament directors and casino managers remember the poker players; the ones who put up the money for the events and feed the rake hole and ultimately pay your salaries.) Players are saying the rule is wrong and wrong for two reasons.
Wrong Reason #1: The F-Bomb rule is not equally enforced. Anyone who has sat at the table in the last six months has heard someone say “F-this” or “F-That” or even “JELLY! that card or bet or flop!” and nothing happens. The dealer does nothing or they say: “I didn’t hear that.” So first, the players are saying: “either it’s a rule or it isn’t.” Quite frankly I have no idea how anyone ever expected to fairly and uniformly enforce such a jellyin’ rule.
Wrong Reason #2: The rule is meant to punish abusive behavior but it is being used to punish speech. You all remember that little thing called the First Amendment; you know that one that talks about Freedom of Speech. The players are clear on this one. If anyone says F*** You! to a dealer or staff or another player, they should get a penalty. Even the meanest, nastiest, jellyin’ players agree with that but when a player takes a horrible beat, the worst kind of suck-out, the one-outer on the river and they say: ”J*** me!” Is it really any worse that Damn! Or Shucks, Darn, or …well you get my drift. Directed abusive language should be controlled but come on boyz, it is still a poker room. Have we not gone just a bit too far here? It’s a word; no one pulled a gun, or a box-cutter. A current online poll on one of the major poker forum sites has 85% of the players opposed to a penalty for “just saying a word.”
On a personal note, I think the tournament staff and dealers do a good job with most rules and most enforcement. Somewhere back in ancient gambling times some public relations idiot thought that “the customer is always right” was a good rule for a casino or a cardroom; they were wrong. The idea that a dealer should take the stupid crap they are required to take from a minority of jellyin’ morons posing as poker players or blackjack players is just nonsense. No tournament director should put up with some of the stupidity that players get away with at the tables. I think the F-Bomb rule was a way to start to turn this inequality around. I just think it was the wrong place to start. Cleaning up the game should begin with real abuse not silly word games. But this is not the fault of any dealer or brush or floor you ever encounter in a cardroom. The decisions start a whole lot higher up the corporate food chain (have those people ever even played a hand of poker in a cardroom?).
The real issue is that some of these rules, of which the F-Bomb is just the first example, were not completely thought through, which is to say they have not been tested in the real world ‘on the felt’ before tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are being won or lost based on the new rule. Both major incidents at the 2005 WSOP illustrate different aspects of this problem; what I like to call: “No rule before its time, time, time.”
Two F-Bomb incidents at the WSOP this year have caused quite a stir. There were, by informed estimates, over 200 penalties handed out for the use of ‘jelly’ and all of its derivatives during the entire WSOP, I have heard no estimates lower than 200 and several much, much higher. These two examples, however, illustrate why the rule needs some rethinking. Incident #1: The Mike Matusow 4 X F-Bomb. By now you have seen this on ESPN or at least you have seen the ‘edited for television’ version. Let’s review what happened.
Mike Matusow did or did not throw his cards at the dealer. Most, if not all, players at the table say Mike did not throw his cards at the dealer. Some players do admit that Mike did roughly muck his cards and that on the rebound, off the third rail; they did strike the dealer’s hand. But the floorperson (and WSOP Super Satellite Director) Louis Jones was called and after everyone was polled and all stories heard, Mike was given a warning; basically no harm, no foul. Then while discussing the incident with the player next to him, Mike utters the infamous and first of several F-Bombs. The dealer calls the floor, as the dealers (employees) are instructed to do. The dealers were warned of the consequences of not calling the floor (possible loss of job). At this point the same floorperson, Louis Jones, who was called for the rough mucking incident about two minutes earlier (I know it appears like less time on ESPN); Louis comes back and hears not just from the dealer but from another player (the one Mike was talking to) that indeed he did use the F-Bomb. Louis gives Mike the mandatory 10-minute penalty.
Mr. Matusow does not take this well. He says over the course of the next several minutes: ‘you must be jellyin’ joking,’ and ‘it’s a jellyin’ stupid rule,’ and finally to Mr. Jones ‘Jelly You!’ That last bomb for some reason is the one no one seems to want to report in print or on the Internet, it was a direct statement to Mr. Jones and clearly is exactly the kind of behavior no one wants condoned. With each of these violations, the penalty climbs from 10 minutes to 20 then 30 and finally 40 minutes away from the table. In fact, it could have and technically should have been more.
TDA Rule #33: Penalties available for use by the TD are verbal warnings, 10, 20, 30, and 40 minutes away from the table and may be used with discretion. These may be utilized up to and including disqualification.
Later, while discussing the incident with his superiors (fellow TDs with more experience), Louis was told by several of them that they would have penalized 100 minutes (10 20 30 40) and at least two senior tournament floor staff told him that on the final “Jelly You!”, Mr. Matusow would either have been disqualified from the tournament or at least gone for the rest of the day. Remember this was day one of the WSOP Final 10K Event and Mike Matusow went on to win $1,000,000 for 9th place. Now that’s one big jellyroll put at risk with not one, not two, not three but four F-Bombs.
Louis told me that he felt a disqualification from the Final Event was just too much and that he thought at the time he was acting “in the best interest of the game and as fairly as possible.” Clearly a penalty had to be given and also fairly clearly four penalties had to be given, if you got a rule (and someone breaks it on TV) you have to enforce it. Louis also told me that he believes the entire incident was a publicity stunt for the television cameras. To Mr. Matusow’s credit he later gave Mr. Jones a hug and told him he understood that Louis was only doing his job. Later, by the way, does not mean 40 minutes later.
Back to the F-Bomb rule as it relates to the 4X incident. Should the dealer’s job now include the task of “potty mouth police?” Is there going to be a punishment for dealers who don’t report incidents? Are the penalties for repeated use in a single television taping going to be: 10 10 10 10 10 10 or are they 10 20 30 40 disqualification? Is it really in the “best interest of the game” that floor personnel make decisions based on . . . hmmm, based on what? Well according to TDA Rule Number ONE:
[TDA Rule #1: Floor people are to consider the best interest of the game and fairness as the top priority in the decision-making process. Unusual circumstances can, on occasion, dictate that the technical interpretation of the rules be ignored in the interest of fairness. The floorperson’s decision is final.]
So, OK just like every other sport there will be times when the referees, umpires, officials, zebras make the call that decides the game, at least for individual players. We can live with that, we have to. In the 4X WSOP incident clearly because Louis Jones was considering the “best interest of the game” and was very aware it was the Final Event of the WSOP; he strongly resisted the urge to toss Mike Matusow out on his butt. Result: Mike wins a million bucks (and someone else does not). One might well say that every place in the entire 2005 WSOP Final Event was affected by that decision because well, they were. It is also true that every bad call of an all-in and every river suck-out changed the finishing position of every other player. The players more than the tournament officials determine the outcome of any event; that is the way it should be, but what about those situations where the official does or could or might actually determine the winner with a call. That nearly happened in the second, less publicized F-Bomb incident at this year’s world series of poker, which I will take up in F-Bomb Part II.