[HoldingFolding]

The thing that really became apparent to me is that Gold played excellent *live* poker and that I personally cannot expect to be able to compete in live tournaments unless I start to practice playing live tournaments a lot more. I think when you're doing well online you can convince yourself that the tells, the table talk, the ability to work out stack sizes & pot odds with physical chips, the stamina requirement etc. are peripheral parts of the game, but I think Gold proved that they are of central importance.

Personally I thought Gold was a worthy winner and I take greater issue with some of his opponents. Firstly, the massive pre flop raises & all ins just seemed very amateurish - I seem to recall players raising to 30x the BB. Secondly, I thought the players were very slack in standing up to Gold. In particular, and please correct me on this if I'm wrong, I seem to recall a couple of occasions when Gold would raise on the river & his opponent would then call. Gold seemed to then turbomuck his cards, but that is information you have paid for and should demand to see. I couldn't believe that they were allowing him to get away with it.