Tag: wsop

My Full Tilt Fantasy Poker Wrapup

The results of the main event of the World Series of Poker are in and the fantasy poker season at Full Tilt has been settled. By virtue having picked Phil Ivey and Eugene Katchalov, I came in 739 in this last event, earning $4.9M of the fantasy dollars. To point out the “Ivey Effect” of basically having the baseline of this event be over $4M: my brother had Ivey as an A and one other guy that cashed low so he had $4.2M . He came in over 10,000th place. More than 9,000 places were determined by the 700K in the middle.

By virtue of my 39th place overall, I came in 4th in the Poker Road Forum league and have already been paid a cool $15 American into my Poker Stars account. I’m pretty sure that the Poker Road Forum league kicked the absolute ass of every other one. PR had 13 people in the top 100 of the overall season.

This was an unbelievable amount of fun, and I picked up a little cash between the PR payout and cashing in the freerolls associated with the events. I can’t wait until next year.

ESPN 360 Infuriates

I have a vested interested in the outcome of the $50K HORSE event at the World Series of Poker. I have three guys from my Full Tilt Poker fantasy picks at the final table, and if they finish high or one of them wins the bracelet, I have a good shot at finishing in the top 100 overall. This qualifies you for goodies, so I’m invested. I went to ESPN360.com to watch the streaming and this is what I saw:

ESPN360.com is available at no charge to fans who receive their high-speed internet connection from an ESPN360.com affiliated internet service provider. ESPN360.com is also available to fans that access the internet from U.S. college campuses and U.S. military bases.

Your current computer network falls outside of these categories. Here’s how you can get access to ESPN360.com.

1. Switch to an ESPN360.com affiliated internet service provider or to contact your internet service provider and request ESPN360.com. Click here to enter your ZIP code and find out which providers in your area carry offer ESPN360.com

My response to all this: ESPN can kiss my ass. I’m not changing ISPs in order to accommodate their weirdness. If you want to stream the thing, stream the thing. Put ads across the screen and give it away. All you did was make me angry at the ESPN brand.

Not only that, it is inept as all hell. I have two cable internet choices, which puts me ahead of most of the country. I followed the link out of morbid curiosity to see if other providers had access. I clicked Time-Warner and they showed no access with a link for “request access to ESPN 360 from Time-Warner”. I clicked the one for HTC – “Horry Telephone Cooperative” and it sent me to the “Nebraska Telephone Cooperative”. Whoever keyed this in confused an “h” and an “n” somewhere. Brilliant. Now ESPN 360 isn’t merely scumbaggy but inept too. Nice.