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In Case You Haven't Found Sufficient Ways to Fritter Away Hours Online ...

Filed under: Imported

The World Series of Poker is nearing conclusion at Binion's Horseshoe. So far 26 of 33 events have been completed. Scott Fischman is the top winner at the moment, having raked in $408,360 by finishing in the money in four tournaments. The main event, the $10,000 buy-in, no limit Texas hold 'em tournament--essentially the world championship of poker--gets underway Saturday.

ESPN is taping 13 different events and will begin showing them on June 8th. (Hopefully this means the station will finally stop airing last year's main event, which was on again last night as I channel surfed. Pathetically, I believe I've now watched Dutch Boyd bust out of the tournament on four different occasions.)

For those who can't wait, Poker Pages is posting clips of each final table. I just watched several of the videos. It's a pretty miserable viewing experience, frankly. The action is severly edited down, in most cases to just a few minutes. The camera bobs and weaves. The commentator, some Brit named Mark Napolitano, does little more than continuously update how much money each player has left.

I will say, though, that watching Annie Duke win her first bracelet (in the $1,000 buy-in, Omaha Hi/Lo event) was sweet. (Duke is perhaps best known for making the final table of the main event in 2000--while nine months pregnant.) She jumped into the arms of her older brother, fellow poker pooh-bah Howard Lederer, and then broke down in tears.

(On a related note, the third Lederer sibling, Katy, has written a fine memoir chronicling her odd childhood spent among card sharps, Poker Face. It will be out in paperback in August.)

Posted by Paul Demko at May 17, 2004 5:29 PM

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