Great day for spectating

Between a the final table of the World Series of Poker, a Magic Grand Prix in Paris, and a couple of good college football games, today is shaping up to be a day full of checking in on the TV and the computer in between playing games with Kira.

I'm actually quite torn when it comes to (American) college football's lack of a championship game. On the one hand the gamer in me is horrified at how patently unfair the whole set-up is. It feels wrong that you can run the table without even getting a chance at winning the title, plus the lack of a playoff or a real national championship game both feel like lost opportunities. However, I have to admit that the set-up makes me much, MUCH more interested in every random weekend of games. If they actually had a playoff system, there's no way I would care about a random Iowa game on a random weekend in November. Without that playoff system, though, I was delighted to find it on ESPN 360, stunned to find out that Iowa's come-from-behind miracle-maker at QB was out injured, and watched much of the 4th quarter attentively as their national championship dreams ended.

Now I might have watched Alabama - LSU anyway since I went to school in the SEC (at Vanderbilt) and still follow SEC football and basketball reasonably closely, but the BCS implications raise the stakes significantly and turned it into must-see TV for me. All in all the fact that their system is patently unfair somehow works out to make it more compelling to watch. While I do love "March Madness," I also know in my heart that I watch very little regular season college basketball. And if there's enough people like me (and I suspect that there are), then can you really blame them for not having a playoff?

As far as the Grand Prix goes, I'm disappointed to see that martin Juza just got eliminated in the last round of day 1. 1961 players makes it the largest Magic tournament of all time, which is certainly a cool storyline to follow, but I feel like Martin has caught a couple of bad breaks this season and deserved to catch a good one here (esp. with Watanabe not in attendance). For those who don't follow Magic, the Player of the Year title is almost certainly the most prestigious title given out each year. Juza is in 2nd place despite being DQed on a pretty bad judge call late in a GP that he was poised to make Top 8 in, plus going 6-0 on day 2 of another GP only to discover that he missed Top 8 on tiebreakers because they weren't running enough rounds (a rule that has already been changed as of Paris). Anyway, seems like a really quality player and if he doesn't catch those two bad beats then Watanabe's 9-point lead would be much smaller, and possibly completely gone.

The WSOP always sucks me in as well. I think Magic is a more pure test of gamer-skill than poker, but the fan in me loves all the history and context around the World Series. As I type this Phil Ivey is chipping up nicely having risked moving his chips all-in once without getting a call already. I think they're playing down to 2 today and then they play the heads up battle late Monday night / Tuesday morning so that they can broadcast the final table Tuesday night on ESPN without having had the result scooped by that day's newspapers.

The winner gets $8.5 million dollars, but Ivey apparently has enough side bets going that if he pulls this off he would win another $6 million! In a weird way that actually means he could win more than the $12 million that Jaime Gold won a couple years ago, which is still the record for the biggest tournament payout ever (across any sport ever, if I'm not mistaken). I have found pokernews.com to be the best site for following hand by hand updates. I'm tempted not to follow it so that Tuesday's broadcast will be more dramatic, but they cut so much and I enjoy knowing the details of who is playing tight versus who is opening a ton of pots so I think I'll be refreshing all day.

And that's just Saturday! Tomorrow has day 2 of the GP plus I'm in two fantasy football leagues plus I still have to figure out who to take in my NFL "suicide pool" (where you must pick one winning team per week but you can never reuse a team). We're down to 5 people and I still have the nice, safe Indianapolis Colts available to me, but there's never going to be another week where Seattle is an option (they're decimated by injuries again this year, but they're hosting the dreadful Detroit Lions). I think I'm going to split the difference and save the Colts for later by picking the Falcons over the Redskins.

Looks like an in-person Through The Ages game is coming together for Sunday evening, plus I've got a couple of late night Dragon Age sessions to look forward to so it's going to be quite a fun weekend of not actually doing anything consequential.
Posted by Randy Buehler at 11/7/2009 3:33 PM
Categories: uncategorized

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