Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)

[Kevmath]

From Steve Rosenbloom's mailbag column at espn.com:

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From Darren of Chicago: "Steve, great poker column. I wanted to get your thoughts on the current climate of distrust concerning ESPN poker broadcasts. There have been numerous and substantiated claims that the production teams have manufactured drama by creative editing and, at times, flat-out guessing the hole cards. It's frustrating that the game's integrity is not being maintained by the standard bearer of progressive sports television, ESPN.''

Darren, I know there has been a lot of discussion on poker sites about this, especially ESPN's World Series of Poker circuit event involving Phil Ivey's and Jeffrey Lissandro's hands.

So, I sent your entire e-mail to ESPN and received this response from Keri Potts, the associate manager of communications for ESPN and ABC Sports: "We log every hand played and record every hand played at our table. All our shows are edited down to show the main 12-15 hands. We cannot possibly air 12 hours of unedited footage from an event's final table. But we do not manipulate the result."

And I received this response from Bob Chesterman, head honcho for ESPN's original entertainment broadcasts: "We do not reshoot any hole cards. The cards in question were not clear. In some cases, when we can trust the player, we ask them what they had afterwards.'' The first year we did reshoot some hole cards because we had cameras that went down. We have learned from our mistakes and do not do this anymore"

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Other good questions in the mailbag can be found over here.

[shaniac]

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And I received this response from Bob Chesterman, head honcho for ESPN's original entertainment broadcasts: "We do not reshoot any hole cards. The cards in question were not clear. In some cases, when we can trust the player, we ask them what they had afterwards.'' The first year we did reshoot some hole cards because we had cameras that went down. We have learned from our mistakes and do not do this anymore"

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Okay, so in the Lissandro case where the cards were not clear--did they "trust the player" or what? That part remains unclear.

[sketchy1]

i did ask a friend of lisandro, who confirmed with me that jeff had tens. unless jeff lied to his friend (who is a good friend of mine), i'll take their word for it.

[niwotyalpi]

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i did ask a friend of lisandro, who confirmed with me that jeff had tens. unless jeff lied to his friend (who is a good friend of mine), i'll take their word for it.

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Yeah I know what you mean. I talked to my Uncle Buck whose had a daughter whoses boyfriends cousin saw Chan lay down quad K's in the 88 World Series on a board of Ks Kh 9h 10h 2c. Seems Chan was positive that the guy had JQ of hearts and this lay down allowed him to save his chips and go on to win.


Anyway....am I the only one tired of these friend of a friend of a friend talked to Mr. X so it must be true posts.

[sketchy1]

did i ever even try to convince you with my post that he had tens?

i'm telling you from second hand information. you can accept it or not. i accept it because i know the source well. you don't know them, so you don't have to accept it.

no need to be a dick. so what i posted a friend of a friend told me. it's second hand information, not fifth hand information. believe me or not, i don't really care.

now get back to your message board flaming since you have nothing better to do.

[niwotyalpi]

No offense bro your story could or could not be true I have no idea. But,,,,there are 10 posts a day on here saying,,,"my cousins buddy is a dealer at the bellagio and he says gus hansen is in debt 40 million dollars" so i am skeptical anytime somebody posts what a friend of a friend says on here.

[shaniac]

I believe sketchy and know his source. So it's likely true that Lissandro did in fact tell sketchy's friend (a friend of mine too) that he (Lissandro) did in fact have TT.

There ya go folks, you heard it here first: A friend of mine told a different friend of mine that the hand Lissandro folded was in fact TT.

But I have a theory to debunk the veracity of this gossip, too: If Lissandro had already told the ESPN producers that he had folded TT (as the ESPN producer implied was the case), he'd certainly keep the story straight if he told anyone else.

[Paul Phillips]

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And I received this response from Bob Chesterman, head honcho for ESPN's original entertainment broadcasts: "We do not reshoot any hole cards. The cards in question were not clear. In some cases, when we can trust the player, we ask them what they had afterwards.

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Are people finding some way of reading this that doesn't validate my original contention one hundred percent? Of course lisandro told ESPN he had two tens, that's the whole point. He told them that and they believed it. It doesn't even matter if lisandro had two tens (and nobody can ever know for certain except him) when ESPN doesn't know whether lisandro had two tens but represented it to the viewers anyway.

More simply, the use of the phrase "when we can trust the player" is game, set, and match.

[shaniac]

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More simply, the use of the phrase "when we can trust the player" is game, set, and match.

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Ace!

I outplayed Lissadro he just got lucky. Donkeys always draw.