WATCH: Poker Player Cracks Opponent's Aces Deep In WSOP Main Event, Rubs It In

Curtis Rystadt has been creating a stir online for his behavior at the feature table deep in the 2014 World Series of Poker main event, which recently began airing on ESPN.

In the hand above, Rystadt and Kyle Keranen get tangled up in a pot in which the latter holds aces and the former holds Q-4 unsuited. The Q-4 wins, and instead of politely taking the pot, Rystadt goes on to rub a mountain of salt into the wound of his opponent.

Keranen handled it really well. At one point, he pretty calmly informed his rambling opponent that he actually missed value on the hand. In other words, even when Rystadt got lucky with his Q-4, he played the situation poorly and got the minimum from Keranen.

Rystadt eventually was knocked out in 100th place for roughly $52,000, while Keranen exited in 24th for a payday of nearly $287,000. Sometimes there’s a lot of justice in poker.

The hand does make one recall some of the classic WSOP main event confrontations, such as the Raymer vs. Matusow battles in the 2004 no-limit hold’em championship. In the Raymer-Matusow verbal train wreck, Raymer also ended up getting the last laugh.

ESPN actually gave Rystadt some significant coverage, even interviewing him for a short segment. Perhaps there is a revamped effort to focus on the wacky characters in poker—a TV strategy that arguably contributed to the poker boom itself a decade ago.

The conclusion of the 2014 main event plays out when the final nine resume play next month.

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