the real simon trumper

[maurile]

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I told him to tell his daughter that poker players settle their differences at the poker table, not with violence.

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You don't know much about how poker is played in the real world. I suggest you get the first season of Tilt on DVD and watch it a few times.

[NCAces]

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As for Martin Aigner: I offered to bet Peter Costa about the time if we checked surviellance cameras I offered to bet over 2 1/2 minutes, though I think it was around five. Peter said he didn't know who Martin was. Peter said he told Simon he was wrong and he thought that length of the stall was ridiculous. Martin owes the group an apology for his fabrication.

Barry

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Why does he owe anyone an apology, and where is yours. Unless you were misquoted by ESPN, you said, " way more than five minutes," and "Finally, after 10 minutes, he says, "OK."

Now you are betting it was over 2.5 minutes, probably around 5. Seems to me that there is a plenty big difference between 2.5, 5 and 10. I don't have the experience to say whether a 2.5 or 5 minute wait in that situation is right or wrong. But, I do know that if you said it was 10 minutes, you owe Simon an apology.

I'm a huge fan of yours, and Simon may have been wrong, but either you or the ESPN writer did him a great disservice.

NCAces

[Nottom]

Barry and Simon have already talked about this face to face. There is no need for him to apologize on an internet message board just to make a bunch of fanboys happy.

[NCAces]

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Barry and Simon have already talked about this face to face. There is no need for him to apologize on an internet message board just to make a bunch of fanboys happy.

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Oh, yeah, sorry about that. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] After said "face to face" Barry comes onto said internet message board and demands an apology from someone else for an alleged fabrication. You're right ... no need for him to apologize for saying 10 minutes when it was really 2.5 minutes. I'm sure Simon is fully satisifed.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Fanboy, NCAces

[Howard Treesong]

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"tragedy of the commons"

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sadly, i'm only being a little sarcastic.

could it just be that two nice poker players by all accounts each lost track of time at a tense moment?

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Uh, no. From Simon's perspective, what's tense about it? He made the nut card and he knows he's a lock. It can't be anything but a deliberate maneuver.

It is absolutely a commons problem. Is Trumper's isolated delay a problem in and of itself? Certainly not, although I can understand why Barry is peeved. If this behavior becomes routine, the game is ruined. And it puts bystanders in the position of being either abusers or victims: if you don't follow Simon's example, you're liable to be a victim; and if you do, you're an abuser.

[pokergripes]

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As for Martin Aigner: I offered to bet Peter Costa about the time if we checked surviellance cameras I offered to bet over 2 1/2 minutes, though I think it was around five. Peter said he didn't know who Martin was. Peter said he told Simon he was wrong and he thought that length of the stall was ridiculous. Martin owes the group an apology for his fabrication.

Barry

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Why does he owe anyone an apology, and where is yours. Unless you were misquoted by ESPN, you said, " way more than five minutes," and "Finally, after 10 minutes, he says, "OK."

Now you are betting it was over 2.5 minutes, probably around 5. Seems to me that there is a plenty big difference between 2.5, 5 and 10. I don't have the experience to say whether a 2.5 or 5 minute wait in that situation is right or wrong. But, I do know that if you said it was 10 minutes, you owe Simon an apology.

I'm a huge fan of yours, and Simon may have been wrong, but either you or the ESPN writer did him a great disservice.

NCAces

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For what my two cents are worth (not as a pro, just as a guy who plays a lot of mid-limit nlh cash games for fun and profit, and cares about how the game is perceived), I totally agree with NCAces' post.

I'm a fan of Barry's as well, and have always considered him to be a classy "good guy"--everyone makes mistakes now and then, but when you have another pro getting torched and threatened as a result of one of those mistakes, the right move is to publicly say "Whoops, seems like I was originally overstating the facts a bit, and in any event I shouldn't have spread this around either way... Sorry about that [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]"

That would obviously do a lot for Simon, while also restoring Barry's "good guy" image (not to mention costing him nothing). And, since this is already being discussed in a public forum, it's the only way to really bring closure to it in that forum. IMO, anyway.

(By the way, when people discuss things like this in public forums, they are at least implicitly inviting our opinions about the subject--otherwise, they'd just do it as a story in the press, where responses from us rabble are not allowed. So it seems kind of unnecessary for other participants in this forum to then criticize a post like NCAces' as somehow being a "fan" intruding on the discussion of pros--they're the ones who joined the 2+2 discussion of the subject in the first place, and everyone is welcome to participate here... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

[Yeti]

Barny Boatman :

I have been asked to give an account of what happened in the Trumper/Greenstein pot. I don’t really think it’s necessary as, so far as a can tell, most of the facts - if not all- are not in dispute. Simon was calling Barry down with the nut flush draw. When he rivered the flush he then played what turned out to be the best way to get all of Barry Greenstein’s chips. He checked the flop, and Barry after a brief deliberation, bet what looked like half his remaining stack (17,500) – roughly half the pot.
Simon counted his chips and thought for a long while before counting out a re-raise of 17,500 more (I’m not sure whether he realised that Barry had less than that much left). I’m sure that whilst he was thinking he did a lot of looking around…he often does.
Frankly, Simon might as well have held up a sign saying he had the nuts. He cannot raise without the Ace of spades in his hand because if he doesn’t have it Barry might. Therefore a small flush is out of the question. A small flush would check and possibly call Barry’s bet, as would a straight. He had called the turn with something and if it was either a straight or trips with the bare Ace he probably would have moved in on the river.
His only chance to get Barry’s remaining chips was to think long enough to convince Barry he didn’t have the hand, then try to convince him that he was making what would have been a suicidal bluff.
Barry, not surprisingly, thought for a long time…probably longer than Simon had. Although he did of course actually have a decision to make. As he considered his options, half the other players gathered around the table. It must have been very unpleasant for Barry to have all his peers stand and stare as he prepared to relinquish most, if not all his stack to Mt Trumper.
As far as I know, no one mentioned calling a clock for either player. Certainly, no one did it. I personally have never asked for anyone to have the clock put on them and I understand that Barry, who is known to be a very courteous man, is not in the habit of doing so. In any case, neither of them would have considered it to be in their interests in this particular hand to call time on the other one.
. To me Barry’s call was understandable simply because there were so many chips in the pot and there was just that slight chance that Simon had seen an opportunity presented by the size of Barry’s bet and was attempting a move.
Simon did turn his cards over on at a time, although I think it would have been much more of a slow roll to turn over the Ace first. Simon was enjoying the attention and the drama of the moment, and looking around for approval. I’m sure he would be mortified to have the action described as a slow-roll but it is understandable that Barry saw it that way. I would just have said ‘nuts’ and turned over my whole hand at once. However, Simon says he did say something to indicate he had the nuts before he turned his cards over. Presumably Barry didn’t hear.
The following day, just as we were starting to play, tournament director came up to Simon. “Are you Simon Trumper?” he asked. ‘There has been a complaint about you taking ten minutes before raising with the nuts’. He then proceeded to ask the whole table how long Simon had taken before raising! I said it was about a minute and a half, Huck Seed said that it was about thirty seconds to a minute and everyone else answered in a similar vein. Really, the most that the tournament director should have done is listen politely to Barry Greenstein’s story and advise him to call the floor at the time if he had a complaint about a player. There was certainly no call to conduct a house to house investigation the following day. It can’t have got Simon’s day off to a very good start. If he thought it was necessary, perhaps he could have even had a quite word with Simon away from the table to get his side of the story.

This whole thing is a ridiculous storm in a tea-cup which seems to have been blown out of proportion by people not directly involved. People are entitled to their opinion about how long someone should think in a particular situation. Dave Colclough is of the view that we should take up the speed poker model and have a standard thinking time for every decision. I’m not sure, but it’s an interesting idea.
Simon did not think for anything like the ten minutes some people seem to have suggested. I think it was closer to one minute, which in any case is quite a while. He was perfectly within his rights to do so. As I have said to Simon, he does irritate some people by the way he talks and showboats at the table. Sometimes the cumulative effect of this may result in someone reacting more strongly to a particular situation than they might normally have done. There no excuse for the way people have been attcking him over this incident. Particularly the threats. It is outragous.
I understand that the journalist who wrote the story that started this whole row has apologised to Simon. Normally this minor incident would be forgotten about by now and I’m sure neither Simon Trumper nor Barry Greenstein needs the whole world going on about it. I hope they shake hands and we can all get on with playing poker.

[drewjustdrew]

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I'm a huge fan of yours, and Simon may have been wrong, but either you or the ESPN writer did him a great disservice.


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"great"? c'mon. i think we're blowing this a little out of proportion. this is a minor disservice at best.

[pokergripes]

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Thanks guys for post on here and settling it.

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The bad news is that people are theatening to kick his teeth in. And worse news is that his daughter was crying and afraid. I told him to tell his daughter that poker players settle their differences at the poker table, not with violence. Too bad all differences aren't settled that civilly.

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you people are moronic clowns. if anyone actually made a verbal threat to Simon at the Rio, they should be immediately ejected and never be allowed at the WSOP again. anyone else with me on this? doesnt seem that hard to implement and is just punishment.

respectfully,
temp

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See, that's the problem with moronic clowns, it's almost impossible to get smart views from them...you really should post this in the "smart clowns" forum if you're looking for constructive feedback (and you could cross-link it to the juggling clowns forum, if you'd like to see it tossed in the air, flipped over a few times, and then caught)... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

p.s. Is there a reason the rhetoric becomes so heated so quickly in the WPT forum? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[-Skeme-]

Seriously Barry, how in the hell do you confuse 30 seconds to 1 minute with 10+ whole minutes? That's insane.

Also, do you have a problem with Simon taking 1 minute to give off the illusion that he might be running a bluff of some sort? Or the illusion that he doesn't have the nut flush? Your gripe was that he took 10 whole minutes, right? Not that he didn't just immediately raise?

Thanks.