Along about 10:30 or 11:00 pm on a Sunday evening is the time I usually fire up Full Tilt and Poker Stars to check on the big Sunday tourneys for the online wrap that appears on Mondays at PokerNews.com. It's been a few weeks since anything oddball has happened, despite the fact that I've seen several plays at the final tables of these major tournaments that I'd be embarrassed to make in an event with a $10 buy-in. Don't ask for examples... just trust me on that one.
It'd been a while since I'd seen any of the 'red names' make a deep run in the big weekly event at Full Tilt, and that's where this post is headed. This being the monthly $500 buy-in version, there were deeper stacks to start with and more tables in play when I logged in, perhaps a dozen. Two were red-lined. One held Lee Watkinson, the other Jim McManus. McManus?? Wasn't he doing something with Poker Stars last summer at the WSOP? Well, maybe, though he's certainly one of the "Friends of Full Tilt" now, though he's still playing with a generic avatar, a la David Chiu. (McManus was using a pirate, whereas Chiu has used that goofy monkey thing every time I checked.)
Anyhow, McManus, like every famous name on FT, drew quite the railbird action as he moved deeper and deeper into the money. And, just like Baptists and Mormons banging on your door, the railbirds had to take their cheap shots. With McManus that means bringing up the Ellix Powers episode, from the WSOP a few years back, with the famed "He called me with jack high!" utterance from a reportedly drunk Powers on one storied hand.
Anyhow, some railbird now reports that Ellix is again homeless and living under an L.A. overpass, and takes to working McManus over for this. (Whether it's true or not I have no freakin' idea.) The following is an example, before McManus stopped responding to the trolls:
pokerscience (Observer): i saw him sleeping
under a bridge in los angeles
Jim McManus: me and ellix smoked a peace pipe
thre years ago
.....
pokerscience (Observer): ellix powers sleeps under
the 405 - 10 intersection in los angeles
After this, the pokerscience dude got progressively nastier and started actively rooting for someone at the table to take McManus down. Like if it's true about Powers, it's somehow McManus's fault? I expect this stuff when I sweat these tables, but I gotta admit, it'd be nice if just once the collective rail on Full Tilt could show a bit of class and maturity. Why the site doesn't stifle these morons remains beyond my understanding.
As for McManus, he took an ugly beat to go out around 40th, if memory serves. He got all the money in with A-Q versus someone who made a move on him with A-4, then watched the board come 10-2-J-J-4. Ugly.
1 comment:
I actually sat next to McManus for maybe 30, 40 minutes until I got busted about 2 hours in to the 750k on Sunday night. I would say that there was tons of railbird chat for sure, but while I was there, nothing particularly rude or mean about McManus himself. Frankly, I don't see what could possibly be said bad about the whole Ellix powers thing. Like McManus cares (or somehow should care) if that donkey is sleeping under a bridge somewhere. Powers was an ahole on the telecast, and he sucks at poker as far as I can tell. And I wish I could say I've never called someone with Jack high, but it's happened on occasion.
To tell the truth, I find the chat directed at Wil Wheaton every week during the WWdN tournaments to be worse than anything I've seen against any of the full tilt pros in the times I've played at their tables. I'm not sure why Wil continues to put up with this stuff to begin with.
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