Card Player Poker Mag's Shulman How Not To Win Friends

Written by:
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Published on:
Oct/26/2009

What follows is an interesting account of an incident that transpired at a Caesar's poker tournament featuring Barry Shulman, who just won the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe. 

We at Gambling911.com weren't there to witness the incident, but it is pretty fun (translate: sad). 

The player in question described what transpired via a posting on the popular Two Plus Two forums:

Today I played the $550 mtt at caesars and had the pleasure of being seated near who I later found out was Barry Shulman.

About 2-3 hrs after I was moved to his table, I had overheard his wife loudly bragging to a nearby table about how her husband just won the WSOPE and that her son was at the WSOP final table.

I suppose I didn't recognize him cause he played really bad. He limped and limp-called preflop about 50% of the time with a 20 big blind stack.

A female player from another table had just sat down in the cutoff.

Blinds were 300/600/75. Barry limped UTG (this wasn't unusual so he didnt have a scary range). 3 more players limped and the Hijack-1 made it 6k.

The cutoff, who had about 2400 chips decided to ship and everyone else folds.

Hijack-1 had AK, and the cutoff had Qd9d. The board ran dry and AK won the pot.

As the player is gathering her things, Barry starts discussing outloud what a horrible call she had made. Luckily, she didnt hear, or pretended not to be phased by it.

I pipe up and vocalize towards the hijack that it was a really good spot for her to ship since she was getting like 3 to 1 on her money, and so much of the hijack's range was AK, and shes been isolated and gets to showdown, etc, etc. He agrees and says forsure and that he would call all day.

Barry hears this and says "oh ok hahaha, you have no chance to win this tournament, that was a horrible, awful call". I elect not to educate the fish and keep my mouth closed. A few players at the table pipe up and say "no, he's right she got it in with really good equity" etc. Barry looks at me and loudly says "NO!, You're wrong, believe me, you dont need to teach me how to play poker. If you think thats the right play you're awful and you have no chance to win a tournament". He then mutters something else about me under his breathe and I say "what's that?", he simply replies with "hahaha Nevermind". I consider challenging him to play me heads up because I might get action from his ego, but eventually just laugh out loud and let it go.

I later end up at the same table as Barry again. A big pot ensues between 2 other players, which gets to showdown. The dealer riffles(not sure if this is the right word) and drops the deck into the muck while counting enough for the call from the losing player's stack. While counting, the clock runs out and the players are now on break. After throwing in their green chips for color up, 4 or 5 players leave the table.

Barry then throws in his small blind and ante and says "you already cut the deck". The dealer then claims not to have done so (the remaining players agree and we all think its pretty obvious as half our table has left for break). An argument ensues and ends briefly. After the dealer has finished coloring up chips, Barry picks up the now neatly organized deck cuts it over the table and drops it back on the table and says "That is cutting the deck and thats what you did". The dealer once again says she didn't. Barry is visibly livid at this point and says "Yeah I know exactly what you did, you're just a ****** lazy ass, This is what they take extra money out of our prizepool for to pay ****in ****ty lazy ass dealers". She replies with "you can think what you want, I know what I did". He of course emphasizes "Well thats what I do think, I think your a f***** lazy ass".

At this point the seat beside me says "we'll, I'll never buy another cardplayer", and I plan on doing the same.

As I'm going to the bathroom I walk past him and his wife who is in the process of saying "Shes lying, people lie every single day, it is not your fault and there is nothing you can do about it".

Thats the end of his obnoxious behavior, but he did cap off the night with a comical hand.

Barry returns and raises his button to 2400 at the 400/800 Level. The big blind makes it 6400. Barry snap calls and they see a flop of 235. The BB leads for 10k and Barry shoves for 13k more. The BB has AK and Barry shows up with 64 offsuit.

Boy I sure hope he teaches me how to play poker some day.

Anyways I thought I would educate all you cardplayer readers on the behavior of the individual receiving your money.

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