Poker Madness with Doug Polk

“What a ****show. Disgusting. What picture of the sport does this show paint to the casual viewer? Why not have some class on the show? Some sportsmanship?”

Not Doug Polk’s words, but enough to get this poker writer to pay attention to what appears to have been a train-wreck of a Poker Night in America cash game!

You wouldn’t think it was that bad as our man Doug happily makes his way to the Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma to take on the likes of Mike Dentale, Brandon Cantu, Shaun Deeb, Kyle Bowker and the ‘Hashtag King’ Salomon Ponte.

For most fans and insiders of the game, this was destined to be a horrendous table, at least half-full of horrible people, and the 2+2 forum weren’t slow in adding their diatribe to Polk’s somewhat glossy coverage of the first day.

"Hashtag King is clearly the worst human being of all time," wrote Kenny S. "He's not funny, has no charisma, he's not nice, he's not entertaining, he's constantly inaudible so he's even annoying to try and listen to him. He's just the nut low at every aspect of humanity."

The, how to say it, ‘less-than-popular’ Brandon Cantu came in for some serious abuse too:

"Cantu is repulsive as well but he mixes in long periods of being invisible with short stints of repulsiveness so he's slightly better. Even if you hate Dentale (I don't) he's not even in the same league as these two guys as far as 'disgusting to look at' human beings."

‘WTF. Cantu sits and says... I left my money at home. Who the f**k goes to a poker game without the main thing they need to play… douche,’ wrote badbeatles, and between Ponte’s foul-mouthed abuse and Cantu’s squabbling with Deeb, it’s a wonder any poker got played at all.

But it did, and Polk happily takes us through some of the more interesting hands he was involved in, only a consummate pro and multi-millionaire being quite happy to say he thought he’d played well while nursing a $15K loss!

Chicago Joey Ingram quickly put together a little show to cover the controversy surrounding ‘HashtagKing’ Ponte’s abusive approach to the table, although ‘restorativejustice’s’ forum reply was:

"Joey, great job at trying to gloss a turd; but, the high scum-bag ratio around that table was bad for poker. It was more cringe than entertaining."

Polk is no stranger to controversial viewpoints and public arguments himself, but not at the low-level, scumbag–type, shit-talking we saw here, ‘mrno’ explaining that Polk "was in the most awkward spot because he was by far the biggest 'ambassador' at the table."

"He had to remain composed (not a live poker scumbag piece of s*it like almost everyone else there) and not let himself get walked over at the same time. It's very difficult to find the balance and I think he did a good job."

Well, what do you think folks? Good for poker and likely to draw players into the game? Or an advertisements of all that’s wrong with the game?