Why It Can’t Wait Until November

Lots of Europeans think American comedy went into terminal decline after Bilko. They are sorely mistaken. My favourite comedy show on American TV is called “The News”. A few days ago they hit new heights. They opened up with a pretty good “Ten percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim.” They didn’t say what the other 90% thought. Next up was a court appearance from some guy suspected of involvement in a shooting. His name was Jesse James. For some reason he didn’t get bail.

Still laughing, I went down to the Rio to play my 5th WSOP event. During the dinner break, I overheard a girl on the rail say “All the big stars are here, this is so exciting!” She was watching level 2 of a high-low limit event. I must be missing something. Maybe this is why I got knocked out right after the dinner break. I did get knocked out in time to hear Irish man Aidan Bennett talking about one of my favourite subjects: pubs in the West of Ireland. I told him that one of my favourites was in a place called Oughterard. Of course he knew it and said that the last time he’d been in the area he went in for a drink at about eleven o’clock one morning. I took this to mean that he hadn’t woken up till after 10.30. The only other customers were two old guys sitting in the corner. They were obviously trying to give the barman a break because they were drinking whiskey by the bottle. As often happens with whiskey drinkers they soon got into a heated argument. It wasn’t over anything trivial, it concerned the writing on the label of the bottle. One guy borrowed the other guy’s glasses in an effort to clarify the situation. The lenses were the thickest Aidan had ever seen so the guy couldn’t see a thing through them and graciously said to his companion “You must be right, you must have great eye sight if you can see through these.”

Those who think having the final table of the main event in November is a good idea must be looking through glasses like these. Maybe they just want to see what suits them. Cast your mind back to 2002: Robert Varkoni won the main event beating a final table that was probably a lot stronger than this year’s will be. Lots of people will have forgotten his name but everybody remembers Hellmuth crashing the party and having his head shaved. I don’t blame Phil, he’s as good a self-publicist as he is a player. I Blame ESPN for allowing him to piss on somebody else’s parade. You can see where the TV people are coming from with this new plan. Guys who are as dry as toast in July will still be dry as toast in November. They’ll turn it into a battle of the coaches, the finalist having bit parts at best. It sounds nauseating. I don’t care, I can always watch the news.