Any time you reference last year's $50K HORSE event it is de rigeur to have some jokey equine title. I couldn't think of a good one so I thought I would just jump the shark and have a stupid one. By the way I only found out the other day that it's called "jumping the shark" because Fonzie water ski-jumped an actual shark in Happy Days and that was the point when everyone realized that TV, in fact, sucks. You can see it on You Tube it's really lame. Although jumping the shark itself is generally accepted to have jumped the shark about a year ago. I get there in the end.
Anyway, back to the HORSE event which I downloaded and it was so good that I managed to sit all the way through it. Well, in three sessions. That's pretty damn good I can tell you. To refresh your memory, the basic idea of the event was "no riff-raff". They could have made this happen by simply having Daniel Negreanu say whether you were allowed to enter or not, but they decided that making it $50K HORSE would have much the same effect. So the table isn't full of the usual eggs. I'd better not start, but if I just say "I have to call Joe" you'll know the kind of thing I mean if you've seen that one.
The main difficulty with the HORSE episode is trying to see what's going on behind all the smoke they're blowing up everyone's arse. It's like a Sisters Of Mercy gig. But I have to admit that there is some very good poker being played. Brunson Sr makes a hell of a laydown with no fuss whatsoever, Reese plays very solid and Ivey, much to my smug satisfaction, plays every hand just like I would. Also there was an unusual surprise ending because for some reason I had thought that Bloch won it. I not only failed to realise that Bloch didn't win, I didn't know how unlucky he was. He was in front on the flop for all the chips three times, and two of them were very tough calls. But The Greatest Player In The World Ever [1] sucked out every time. Which tells us something. That we already knew. But really, if you only download one WSOP final (and that's what I recommend), it should be this one.
[1] Well, according to the smoke there were three GPITWEs in this final but he was the only one left.
