Poker Pro Layne Flack Gets Heat: Plays Golf With The Devil

Back in December, poker pro Layne Flack implied poker legend, Doyle Brunson, may have bought his earlier World Series of Poker bracelets.

In an interview with Card Player Flack was quoted as saying:

"Poker pro Layne Flack won the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha rebuy event this year, dismissed the notion that a bracelet could be bought.

'That's bullsh--," said Flack. "It's not like there is no play. The field is huge.'
Flack pointed out that a player can only rebuy when he has as many chips as when he started the tournament (or less), so it isn't as if someone could just buy a dominant stack.

"You want to talk about buying a bracelet? Let's talk about Doyle's bracelet when there were eight people in the tournament," said Flack. ‘The critics should look back in history and see where a bracelet has been bought'."

In a follow up interview with the popular poker mag/website, Flack clarified his earlier comments.  He insisted that he respects anyone who has won a bracelet, regardless of the year he or she won it, and talks about the difficulty involved in some of the smaller tournament fields.

Needless-to-say, when Flack first made his comments, Doyle Brunson wasn't exactly happy.

"As a rule, I don't say anything about things people say in interviews.  But I can't help being deeply offended by (that) article" Brunson said.  "I thought this man was a friend of mine.  Back in the early days of the WSOP, I certainly didn't even consider that a bracelet would have any value.  I only played in 2 or 3 events a year because Jack Binion expected me to.  I actually didn't pick up two bracelets in the 70's-80's because I already had a couple.  I never won a tournament that had 8 people in it.  There were only 14 entries in a mixed double tournament that Starla Brodie and I won.  If I could find that bracelet, I would sent it to Layne and tell him to stick it where the sun doesn't shine."

Gambling911.com reported this weekend that Flack has really taken some flack this past week for an interview that aired on RawVegas.tv, a subsidiary of the uber popular WickedChopsPoker website.

It was the first public interview (err ambush) with accused "insider poker cheat" Russ Hamilton (you might remember his name mentioned during a 60 Minutes segment covering the scandal).

The poker community wasn't necessarily focused on what Hamilton had to say (he didn't say much) as they were with the person whom he played golf with.  That would be Layne Flack.

"This crowd already sees Hamilton as the devil," explains Payton O'Brien, Senior Editor of the Gambling911.com website.  "They now see Layne Flack as someone who is selling his soul to the devil perhaps."

One member of the PokerRoad forum community had this to say about Flack playing golf with Hamilton:

"Look if people in the poker community want to pretend like it (the cheating scandal) is a big deal in public but then behind closed doors they don't care, why should anyone believe any of these (poker sites) are fair. One of the only reasons we trust sights like Pokerstars or FullTilt is because people like Berry or Ivey say it is a fair game. No outsiders are ever let in to audit it. Now if sponsored pros are hangin' out and being friendly with supposed cheaters or at least some one who is accused of cheating it should make everyone feel unsafe."

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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher