Celebrity Apprentice

Joan Rivers beat Annie Duke on Celebrity Apprentice. I didn't watch the final episode, although I did watch most of them during the season. I watched Breaking Bad last night and switched over in the final moments to see who Trump was going to pick as the winner.

2+2 has a long discussion on the show, most of which focuses on personalities and conspiracy theories. The best analysis of the show I've seen is Danny Boy's. He does a really good job of analyzing the show.

He's so much more coherent when he's not drunk.

(I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. I just don't have it in me to be able to compliment Danny without an insulting followup.)

Although I do think Danny Boy did a good job in his overall analysis of the show, I do have to disagree with him about one thing. He says

I wasn't all that thrilled with how the profession of poker was portrayed on the show and I'd like a crack at giving people a different perspective. Too much emphasis was put on words like "deceit" and "manipulation" and while those are tools used at a poker table, I don't believe that if you play poker for a living those tools are something that are necessary in order to succeed in life, or in a game like Celebrity Apprentice.

I think that as a general rule poker players are a bunch of weasels. I don't like most of them and I don't trust most of them. That probably has something to do with why a lot of them don't like me.

Danny himself is a good example of the kind of weasels poker player's can be even away from the table.

A few years ago, before he got rich and famous, Danny-Boy was insulted by me and he challenged me to a duel, a heads-up poker match. Normally I ignore such school-yard pestering, but Danny offered 10-1 on a cash wager on the outcome of a 40 hour heads up limit hold'em match.

That was almost impossible to turn down. Even if Danny was a better player than me (something that's entireely possible) there's no way he would be a 10-1 favorite.

The initial problem was that I had no money. I also think that Danny-boy was busted at the time (this was before he was rich and famous) but he wasn't going to admit it. I tried to get Danny to give me a number, a maximum bet he would be willing and able to cover. He wouldn't do it.

By offering investors 6-1 on their money I thought I could raise $100k. So I suggested that to Danny -- my $100k versus his million dollars. He agreed. But the way he behaved I still wasn't convinced he wasn't busted. I don't think he really had the money and I don't think his tournament backers would have been willing to lay 10-1.

But I went to work on it anyway. Trying to raise cash. I found a video film maker willing to produce a documentary on the event. I found a backer to finance a series of vidios on heads up poker. I got a radio DJ to do a live internet braodcast of the event. I even talked to a Swedish TV producer about doing a reality TV show on the event. This was all before poker on TV was widespread. One of Danny's stipulations was that we play in either Las Vegas or Los Angeles. The match would have been legal in Texas and we could have done it rake free (I had a volunteer with many years of WSOP dealing and floor experience to deal it). But Danny wouldn't go for that. So I found a casino in Las Vegas that would sponser the event.

Then Danny balked. His new stipulation was that I just come out to Vegas and find him at the Belogio and we'd sit down and play right then. No advance planning, no fund-raising, and if I showed up on a day he wasn't in town that's just my tough luck.

That stipulation was presented after he had a friend call me (I think it was a potential backer of Danny) and talk to me about backing me. He wanted to know why I thought I had a chance to beat Danny. I was fairly open about that and would have told have told Danny if he'd have just asked. I thought I could play close to a game theory strategy and that Danny would likely beat himself with FPS trying to dance around.

Anyway, when it came time for Danny to call the casino that would be hosting the event to make arrangements for him to deposit his buyin (I didn't want to go to far in the planning until I actually saw the money -- I had some commitments from backers but didn't collect the monies because I never did think Danny would actually follow through). When it came time to show the money Danny Boy went berserk and the match clearly wasn't going to happen.

Basically I think Danny Boy is a worthless pestering weasel and that his lack of character is very typical of professional poker players.