Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Why Norman Chad is bad at poker




In Norman Chad's commentary on poker shows for ESPN, he likes to joke about how bad he is at poker. I think there is reason to believe that he is not merely being self-deprecating for the sake of humor.

I was just watching the first installment of the show they put together of the North American Poker Tour event held last month at the Venetian. The screen shot above is from Annie Duke's last hand. At this point, Chad says in his voiceover, "Annie needs a jack, nine, eight, or any diamond."

Pray tell, Mr. Chad, how will a non-diamond eight help her situation? She will be left with a jack-high straight. She will be playing the board, and her hole cards will be irrelevant. Her opponent, however, will still have the king-high straight that he just made on the turn. Last I knew, a straight to the king beats a straight to the jack.

These guys have a staff of people working on these shows. They do the commentary two or three times before they put it to bed. They have plenty of time to get it right. And yet they still get it wrong. Inexcusable.



Completely unrelated to the above, and just for fun, I give you the following screen shot:



Most of my readers will think that this is a picture of Annie Duke and Faraz Jaka. A few, however, will recognize that that is not what this is a picture of, at least not most importantly. But that's all I'm sayin'!

(If you don't get it, don't worry, and don't ask. It's an inside joke meant for just a few people.)

3 comments:

The Management said...

Is that you massaging the back of Annie's head?

Anonymous said...

An inside joke? How elitist. Are you trying to turn off your readers? I know I shall not read you again.

SuicideKing said...

He actually is pretty terrible at poker. He likes to play at Hollywood Park in Inglewood. He plays the 20-40 stud hi-lo/omaha8 game and I've seen him lose everytime he's there. I've taken quite a few pots where he bets into either my nut/nut or made low straight.