gg Mansion Poker Dome

[private joker]

I think I've only seen maybe 15 minutes of the MansionPoker.net Poker Dome Challenge or whatever it's called. It's a terrible show full of like 90% donks and 10% decent internet players.

The "speed" poker rules are lame, the stacks start really short, the blinds go up super fast, and it's basically worse than a PartyPoker $10 SNG.

Anyway I decided to watch this week's tournmanent when there was nothing else on, and what I saw was the biggest joke I've seen in televised poker history.

With 6 players in and 50k starting stacks, there was 300k on the table. By HU play, it was maybe 175-125 in favor of a big guy. The little guy outplayed the hell out of the big guy for like 12 straight hands, and eventually it was pretty much over but for a formality.

Little guy had 271k and big guy had 29k. Blinds were like 8/16, so in 2-3 hands it would be over unless big guy kept getting dealt monsters that held up.

But in the first flippament, big guy had K8 and little guy had T8 or something (it was dominated) and little guy sees the shape he's in and lets out a harmless "f**k, I'm dead" kind of thing.

The tournament director (lol gg Matt Savage) decides to penalize little guy -- for 5 minutes! You get 15 seconds to act on your hand, and with the blinds at 8/16, 5 minutes was like a 200k penalty!!! The guy was down to only 40k by the time he was back in. By the way, big guy was not being a good sport about it -- he raised every hand as quickly as possible to make sure he played the most hands he could with no opponent.

So little guy gets back to his seat to see his decimated stack, and is totally distraught -- he was this close to winning the whole thing (it's winner take all obv) and now he's less than 3 big blinds from death. He plays one hand, posts another BB and counts his paltry chips -- as he's looking at the chips he shakes his head in defeat and lets out a steaming little "s**t" under his breath at his chip stack.

Big guy and the dealers both call over Savage to report it. Savage gives him another penalty, and the tournament ends in the next 3 hands while one player is sitting out and the other guy just raises until he steals enough blinds to end the thing.

Yup. A guy with a 271-29 chip disadvantage won the HU match because of the word f**k. And that word was not directed at anyone else, it was said towards the felt in frustration. An expression of dismay, not of abuse towards another person. It isn't like he said "f**k you ass hole" or anything.

Obviously I'll never watch Poker Dome again or even consider it any type of legitimate televised poker, but this is a sign for all of the poker world -- if competition can be ruined by retarded decisions like this (as a compromise, if Savage really wants to be a prick and penalize the poor guy, he could just take 10% of his stack away or something), then it's not a game I'd ever want to play.

gg MansionPoker.net. You're the anti-poker.