An Inside Look at the World Poker Tour

Paul Phillips comments on his own appearance on last week's installment of the World Poker Tour, in which Paul won Bellagio's Five Diamond World Poker Classic.

Paul makes the telling point that the story of the TV show, although it has the same ending as the actual tournament, is different from what the participants might have thought it was:

The other misconception that's endemic is that the edited TV show represents real-time action. OK, I know people SAY that they realize that you're only seeing a very, very small percentage of the hands at the final table, but they don't appear to genuinely believe it. The editors choose hands to highlight a "story", either for the show or for a string of hands. The heads-up "story" was that Dewey was moving all-in on me every hand... even though that's not even close to true. ...

I enjoyed the show was good overall, but they left out two hands that I thought were key to the result.

1) The first orbit, Abe made a small opening raise and Gus called in the small blind. Being priced in at 5-1 I called with KJo. The flop came J32 rainbow: Gus checked, I checked, Abe bet, and we both folded. I later found out that Abe had AA that hand. I could easily have lost many more chips.

2) Heads-up, Dewey limped the button and I checked KT in the big blind. It turned out he was limping with AJ hoping I'd make a play for the pot. We ended up checking it down all the way. When I saw his hand at showdown I knew I'd dodged another bullet.

Paul comments with no little venom about the quality of the commentary on his play appearing on rec.gambling.poker or on the Two Plus Two discussion boards:

I read what commentary I could easily find. The most striking feature of the majority of it is how little effort people put into getting the facts right. What is the point of analyzing a poker situation if you're not going to take the trouble to confirm the details? Do people think that little factors like who raised whom, what the cards were, and how many chips everyone had are irrelevant filler?

Relax, Paul. Life is too short to worry about what the yammerheads are saying about you on the Internet. Besides, look on the bright side: some people's big concern about the WPT format is that people get to see how finalists play their cards. Isn't it reassuring to know that many of the people who do so are getting bad reads on you?

Alas, I didn't get to see Paul's moment of triumph. I was in Las Vegas last week, staying at the Mirage, and the Mirage doesn't include the Travel Channel among its video offerings to guests. Not to worry, though, my companion and I were able to find even more fascinating pastimes.