Nice touch, Ali!

In this week's installment of the NBC Heads-Up Championship, we see Erik Seidel paired against Andrew Robl. In their final hand, Seidel flops a full house and improves to a better boat on the river. Robl starts with pocket queens and has two pair on the river. Seidel moves all in. Robl is tortured about whether to call and possibly thereby lose the match. In the voiceover, Ali Nejad intones that Robl "cannot win this hand and yet he doesn't know it."

I laughed out loud. It was a wonderful tidbit of a reward for viewers who know their poker history. When Erik Seidel got heads-up against Johnny Chan, those were the exact words used by the TV commentator in their final pot, and Nejad even aped his tone and pacing. You can watch that hand play out here.

I heartily approve of such nods to history.

Poker gems, #337

Andrew Robl, in Poker Pro magazine profile, January, 2010, p. 29.


My friend Alec [Torelli] topped his trip to Vegas by finishing first in the $1,000 buy-in tournament at the Bellagio two days in a row, taking down around $200,000. That's an accomplishment worth noting. So we celebrated by going to the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace and playing The Price Is Right.

In our version of the game, we visit stores like Tiffany, Gucci and Diesel, find thiings that we both like and each guess the price. Whoever is closest, the other guy has to buy the item for him.