Wow, baby, wow...

Yikes. I'd vaguely remembered assorted coverage mentioning Scotty's drunken shenanigans in this year's $50K HORSE, but I wasn't at all expecting THAT particular streak of mean-ass, belligerent drunk that emerged (at least in the ESPN coverage).

I can't pretend to have much inside knowledge of either the situation or Scotty, so maybe that's just par for the course when he's pounding beers. Maybe DiMichele was asking for it based on douchebaggery behavior that wasn't shown on the ESPN broadcast. I dunno.

But that was pretty painful to watch. Interesting, don't get me wrong (and I'd argue that episodes like that are actually better for poker's popularity in the grand scheme of things than yet another slick, instantly-forgettable ten minutes later final table where everyone acts gentlemanly and some unknown person wins). But man, Scotty, that was a fucking poor performance, on all streets.

You know you've stepped over the line when Lindgren of all people goes from casting you occasional baffled, slightly amused looks to outright telling you to fuck off, in no uncertain terms. Very justified, no doubt, especially when Scotty was openly alluding to collusion, or lack thereof.

Equally sad (again, just based on the hands that were shown) is the fact that Scotty was playing like he was hammered, as well. I'm making no claims to be a better HORSE player than Scotty (I'd probably struggle to outplay one of his monkeys), but I have no clue what he was even doing in half the hands they showed, much less what the hell he was doing when he'd somehow river some junky two pair to scoop and then suddenly decide to check-raise.

Aside from seeing Scotty live up to his general perception as one of the better ambassadors to poker at event after event when he'd always take time to stop and talk to the adoring masses (even if it meant it took him a half hour to get the hell out of the hallway outside the Amazon room0, my one personal encounter with him at the 2007 WPT Legends event was pretty positive. I was working in the joke of a media room they'd set up in the sushi bar, huddled on a piano bench, and for no reason whatsoever he stopped to talk to me, asking me why the hell they made us work there, shot the shit for 15 minutes or so, and bought me a beer.

Just a weird, weird display. I guess the take-away is to never underestimate the power of alcohol to turn some people into raging assholes. Or, you know, something much deeper about demons that we all carry around, lurking under the surface, yada yada yada.

Those Crazy Bonus Whoring Days of Yore

Back before I got sucked into Vegas and the WSOP, I got a request for a paid review here of BonusWhores.com, which despite its prony-sounding name is a great place for poker bonus info, including no deposit poker bonuses and more.

I turned down any payment for such a review, offering instead to do one on the house (sorry for the delay in getting my ass in gear and posting this), as the BW site was what got me involved in the whole world of cashing in on casino bonuses, so many moons ago, which in turn led to me making a ridiculous amount of money on the affiliate side of things when I ran out of good bonuses for myself and started singing the praises of such things to others via these pages. So I felt like I owed them, at the very least, some linkage here and there and a few positive words.

'Tis kind of crazy to think back on those days now, in all sorts of ways. I definitely miss the affiliate money and the chance to gambool it up (and do it +EV style) with sticky casino bonuses, and it was nice to generally have a decent amount of cash always sitting in Neteller, as it took some pressure off to watch the poker bankroll like a hawk as I do these days.

But, at the same time, it was definitely a bubble economy, and doomed to come to an end, UIGEA or not. That little piece of legislation definitely sped things up, but the writing was on the wall already as far as gobs of free easy money drying up.

In a bit of a holding pattern poker-wise of late, as I've been playing more MTTs and, unfortunately, realizing I'm pretty much a break-even MTT player at the moment. Had two baby cashes in FTOPS events so far but nothing major, and a lot of other satellites and smaller events (including a dumb-ass fit of stubbornness when I pissed away nearly $300 playing the cracktastic 100 chip super turbo SnGs trying to qualify for a FTOPS event I didn't even really want to play) ate most of that profit.

I should honestly just stick to grinding the smaller satellites to various events, as I've got about a 40% ROI in those, but I inevitably end up giving the profits back looking for a big score in either a FTOPS or big guarantee event.

I've been catching up on HSP of late, as for some reason I stopped watching the last few seasons, so that's been fun to get back into, especially the Jamie Gold episodes. Sweet Jebus. I can barely sit through any WPT episode these days but have been watching the new ESPN WSOP broadcasts on Tuesdays, which I've thought have been pretty good so far.