Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 09 September 2008 / Leave a comment

This is a video of Scotty Nguyen winning this years $50,000 buy in WSOP H.O.R.S.E event.

Throughout the film he is drinking heavily, constantly berating and criticising his opponents, as well as acting in an extremely hypocritical manner at points - telling players off for overly celebrating after winning pots, and then doing the exact same thing himself.

Even compared to Scotty Nguyen's usual cocky and arrogant style, his behaviour here could be seen as not only breaking WSOP rules, but also as extremely insulting to the memory of the man this tournament has come to represent - the great gentleman gambler Chip Reese. It may just be that the occasion got to him (this is, after all, arguably the most prestigious tournament in the world) but his behaviour is still right on the edge of acceptable practice. Todd Brunson makes a good point when asked about it afterwards:

"It's hard to defend him after the display [he] put on, but Scotty truly is a nice guy and a gentleman gambler 99.9 percent of the time. ESPN just caught him during that 0.1 percent when he went freakin' crazy."

I actually found Scotty's behaviour quite refreshing in this video. The reality of live poker is that you regularly have to sit down with drunks, people with bad hygiene problems and abusive and prejudice people - and this is true all the way to the top. It is important not to let them get to you and focus on what you're there for - winning their money. If your playing with cry babies and abusive idiots, just aim to give them something to abuse or cry about.

This video also highlights one of the greatest features of online poker - the ability to shut people up easily. Being able to turn off players chat and not having to deal with the endless tirades of these sorts of players is just so useful. I can't imagine how much the other players would have paid to just turn Scotty off during most of this final table, and only having to think about his actions in each hand, but I'm guessing it would be quite a lot.

People often complain about the lack of tells and personal interaction in online poker, but it is a two edged sword in reality. There is a fine line between a player getting under his opponents skin and just being totally out of order - in live poker you will often just have to deal with nasty people face to face. They might well be giving off tells, but they will often also be giving off a nasty odour or torrent of abuse - and this is one thing the internet can immediately let you avoid.