The Farmer And The Cowboy Should Be Friends

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Before this year’s WSOP got underway, a lot of the prop betting revolved around the chances of a 40+ year old winning the main event with some lumping on at 10 to 1. Whilst some considered this an excellent price, others didn’t.

Others included Doyle who seems to be of the opinion that it’s 10 to 1 about an older guy ever winning it again. The optimists received a boost when a 71-year-old and a 64-year-old nailed bracelet events despite their senility and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when 82-year-old Phil Helmuth rolled back the years to win the Razz event and his grandson presented him with his 6th WSOP bracelet.

It seems to me that a lot of the older guys who have got fed up watching guys, who by trade play 20 tables at a time online, taking four minutes to decide what size continuation bet is appropriate after a min-raise preflop are now giving the kids a clear field in the no-limit hold’em events and playing Stud and stuff like that with each other.

The truth of the matter is a lot of the kids are just too fucking good. This was so obvious that whilst watching the last few tables of the 5K seven-stud event, Scott Gray remarked that if the event was televised it would have to be in black and white. I said to Mike Sexton that I knew most of the field from the Binnion’s days and he instantly replied “Yeh, back in Benny’s day!"

I was asked on The High Roller Radio Show what was the funniest thing I’d seen so far at this year’s Series. That’s an easy one. An older player and a kid were really pissing each other off in a cash game. The old guy sucked out in a pot. The kid lost the plot and told him he’d played the pot like an idiot. “Son, I was playing poker when you were in diapers”. “You probably were. And I will be playing poker when you are back in them" One for the kids I think.

The huge turnout for the Seniors event is easily explained. Most of the guys in the field are trying to get away from the games they usually play in to play with a whole bunch of people who also don’t have a clue what they’re supposed to do but are quite happy not having this sore point mentioned every five minutes.

Obviously with such a big fields the odds against a player dying at the table during the event become shorter. The biggest danger is not fatigue or overexcitement but a suicide during Oklahoma Johnny’s speech which used to make Gaddafi sound succinct.

Thankfully anybody who felt like blowing their brains out during this painful experience didn’t have a gun handy or if they did couldn’t remember what they’d done with it. I swerved most of the speech but arrived just in time for the roll of honour.

I’m told you don’t have to have been honourable to make this list. Dead seems to be the main qualifier. I was watching a top player listening to the names as they were read out. I’m sure I saw a tear roll down his face when one name in particular got an honourable mention and thought how cool it was that such a tough guy could be so sentimental over the passing of a respected opponent.

Then I remembered how often he’d ironed this poor guy out when he was alive and suspected the sudden drop in income may well have been a contributory factor to his sadness.