The Most Hated Player in Poker

Who is the most hated player in poker?

Is it Phil Hellmuth, Jr., known for his temper and his arrogance, who was chosen as the most disliked player in a poll at Games-Poker.biz? Is it Josh Arieh, who showed no class at the final table of the Big Dance at the 2004 WSOP, broadcast on ESPN to a worldwide audience? Barry Shulman? Sam Grizzle? Dutch Boyd?

My pick for the poker player who is hated by the most people is Richard Brodie. He plays online at Full Tilt using the handle "Quiet Lion." He writes a blog, Lion Tales, that describes his life as a poker pro.

I've played with him a couple of times online at Full Tilt. He is polite and well-mannered, responding amiably to the people who talk to him about his notorious past.

But what is this notorious past, you might ask, and why is he hated?

Richard Brodie was employee #77 at Microsoft, hired in 1981, to join the small but growing firm's four-person Application Division. After writing a p-code C compiler that Microsoft would use for multiple-platform development of its applications, Brodie went on to create a word-processing program, intended to have a user interface compatible with Microsoft's new spreadsheet program, Multiplan.

Brodie's word processor was called Microsoft Word.

In every office in every business across the land, and in countless homes as well, you don't have to wait very long before you hear a cry of anguish and the exclamation, "I hate Word!" from people who have never heard of Phil Hellmuth, never saw Josh Arieh's bad sportsmanship on ESPN, and don't know Barry Shulman from Adam. Millions of computers work like demonic prayer wheels at gigahertz clock speeds, all adding ill-will and resentment to Richard Brodie's karmic burden.

Compared to that, Phil Hellmuth is a piker.