No place for the idiots!!

Its recently become more and more 'de rigeur' to stamp your feet, bang your drum and generally bereft your opponent when winning a pot these days. Certain poker playing individuals take great pleasure in ridiculing opponents in circumstances that are best left in the play pen!

With the advent of TV poker this behaviour has become more & more gross. None more so than recent incidents involving Phil Hellmuth and Tony G.

ESPN in the USA seem to have taken a certain pride in spending several hours filming Phils antics at the WSOP $10k event. You know the story...here's Phil showing up 1 hour late in a limo...here's Phil winning a pot with AK...here's Phil shitting himself when he sees he's behind to two-pairs etc etc.

Whats more gauling, to me anyway, is that ESPN seem to take great pleasure in filming Phil not for his poker skills, cos lets face it the guy has won 1 tournament these past 10 years, but because of his unpleasant nature when he loses. Players now refer to Phil as Phil 'The Donkey' Helmuth and was even presented with a toy one at the final table of the WSOP tournament of champions (in which he hustled himself a freeroll into).

Tony G, an Aussie playey, on the other hand, is a totally different animal entirely. Not satisfied with upsetting counteless players with RUB-DOWNS after sucking out on them in a given pot in a recent tournament in Monte-Carlo he then goes onto say, quite publicly on a public forum, that certain other players are 'hopeless' and 'wankers'. Obviously he's decided that to get air time on TV he needs to be noticed and as poker is a fairly sedate game he needs to liven it up a bit.

Personally I'd ban these individuals from the game at the first sign of trouble but as they themselves have put up the money to play it would take a very brave man indeed to censure them to such a degree that they could then sue the organisors for what would amount to stopping them from earning a living!

I, personally, have no time for such antics at the table as Phil & Tony give out and if we allow this kind of behaviour to manifest iteself then things can only get worse.