Sitting on various barstools across the United States – hell, perhaps the world – there can be a wealth of arguments between poker players and fans. Who is the greatest player of all-time? Who is the best player right now? What was the worst bad beat? In many of these cases, it is tough to figure out the proper answer because there isn’t any evidence of what happened. Surely “Wild Bill” Hickok death while holding the “Dead Man’s Hand” would qualify as a huge bad beat, but it is the stuff of legend and not factually documented. What if, however, you could have a contest where there was plenty of documented evidence to let poker’s fandom decide?
The online poker news site PokerUpdate.com took on this task when it comes to what is the most memorable televised poker hand of all time. A few weeks ago, 32 contenders stepped up in an NCAA “March Madness” bracket style pool looking to determine by a fan vote what the most memorable hand in television poker history would be. All of the hands in contention for the award were chosen by the staff of PokerUpdate.com, with poker journalist Robbie Strazynski in charge of tabulating the results.
With voting on the Final Four open until Tuesday – and with the Final Round being conducted following the completion of the Final Four voting – Strazynski took a few moments to sit down with Poker News Daily to tell us more about the competition and perhaps some of the surprises he has seen during the run of the event.
Poker News Daily: Were there any hands that didn’t make the 32 hands that you thought should have?
Robbie Strazynski: I was pretty surprised that Daniel Negreanu didn’t feature in any of the 32 selected hands. He has obviously appeared in a sizeable percentage of televised poker hands and I found it strange that not a single of the most memorable poker hands selected by our panel of experts featured ‘KidPoker.’ His cooler hand vs. Gus Hansen, where his boat lost to quads on High Stakes Poker comes to mind in particular.
One other generic comment is that none of the hands selected were taken from Poker Night in America. Plenty of interesting and exciting poker action has featured on that show, including the memorable Shaun Deeb slowroll of Mike Matusow. Perhaps the show is still not as ingrained in our collective memories as all those great old WSOP broadcasts are from poker’s golden days.
PND: Now that we’re down to the Final Four, have there been any surprises along the way?
RS: Well, we didn’t “seed” any of the 32 hands, we only categorized them (each bracket was a category – funny, impressive, exciting or shocking). So, strictly speaking, there weren’t any “mathematical upsets” like a #1 seed beating a #8 seed. With that said, I was shocked that the Matt Affleck vs. Jonathan Duhamel hand didn’t even make it out of Round 1 into the Sweet 16.
Matt Affleck’s wide-eyed reaction was one of the most memorable, in my mind, to ever grace our screens. Another hand I thought would ease into the Final 4, but which got ousted in Round 2 (Sweet 16) was Filippo Candio’s “Suckgasm”. It was in the “Funny” quadrant of our bracket, and Candio’s reaction to sucking out on Joseph Cheong was quite simply the funniest reaction I’ve even seen in a televised poker hand. Nevertheless, the people have spoken, and its fan votes that count, not my personal opinion.
PND: What has been the most surprising thing about the competition to this point?
RS: I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised by poker media outlets, like yours, many of which have been kind enough to give our bracket some coverage on their sites. What warms my heart about that, specifically, is that despite the friendly competition we poker media outlets obviously have amongst ourselves, that hasn’t gotten in the way of providing coverage of an engaging poker event like ours that fans are clearly interested in hearing about and voting in. So, kudos to you and much thanks to every other poker media site that has also covered our bracket contest.
In the same way, the PokerUpdate team is always happy to give poker fans what they want, including when it means supporting the initiatives of and content produced by other poker media sites.
PND: The “Most Memorable Hand” concept works great as a one-time thing…what other tricks do you have coming in the future?
RS: While I can’t reveal to you any specific initiatives at this time, our general outlook is to try and be a site that informs and entertains poker fans. All of the content we produce, whether it’s written articles, infographics, or videos like the Weekly Burn & Turn on the PokerUpdate YouTube channel is produced with fan engagement in mind. In this day and age, we feel that passive consumption of poker media needs to evolve into something where fans are more actively engaged. So, the best answer I can give you is that whatever our next initiative will be, it will be guided by those same principles.
Many thanks to Robbie for taking the time to answer a few questions regarding the “Most Memorable Televised Poker Hand of All Time.” We also will remind you that the voting will be continuing as the “November Nine” approaches and the actual winner of the competition will be named prior to the next World Champion being determined. To be able to place your vote on who the eventual winner will be, be sure to head to the dedicated PokerUpdate website.
