2009 Was The Year Of...
First and foremost, we apologize. We had to take a month off. Cranking out our Q ratings was like giving birth. No literally. If you’ve ever given birth, it felt EXACTLY the same as what we felt when cranking out our Q ratings. No different. Ask our current/ first wives. They tell you the same thing. Except instead of telling you the same thing, they’ll either punch you or us. Hopefully you though.
Anyway, having a month to recover, we decided to approach our 7th annual “The Year That Was...” article a bit differently. 2009 was ultimately a good year for poker, and a very good year for a select few who played poker. So below, we list all of the people whose year it was in 2009... and a few whose year it definitely was not.
2009 WAS THE YEAR OF...
...Phil Ivey. At the beginning of the 2009 WSOP, after that older African-American gentleman won the Seven Card Stud $10k event and Phil Ivey captured bracelet #6, we dubbed it “The Year of the Brother”. In reality, it was just the year of one brother, Phil Ivey. While he did what he always does to live and online cash games (namely, crush them), he also did what the poker public has been wanting to see for a long time: play tournaments with more focus. He SHOULD have won WSOP Player of the Year (nothing against Mr. Lisandro, but we don’t get the scoring system) by putting on a mixed game tournament clinic that people will be talking about for ages, followed by his November Nine run. Sick.
...Jeffrey Lisandro. If you’re going to win three WSOP bracelets and Player of the Year honors, safe to say, it was your year. Lisandro’s game has been respected by the top pros for a long time. But aside from his confrontation with Prahlad Friedman at the 2006 WSOP Main Event, most of the mass poker public didn’t know him. Maybe a few mistook him for James Gandolfini, but that’s about where his notoriety peaked. Not anymore.
...Prahlad Friedman. Speaking of Jeffrey Lisandro's confrontation with Prahlad Friedman at the 2006 WSOP Main Event... the artist formerly known as Spirit Rock had a good year. Let’s face it, after being one of the primary people bilked by scumbag Russ Hamilton’s super-usering clan at UB, Friedman was due for some karmic retribution. He made another deep ME run, followed quickly by his first WPT title. He’s still got a smoking hot Asian wife and remains unaffected by the whole poker “thing”. He’s probably our favorite player that we’ve never actually met. So Prahlad, when we do inevitably meet you, please don’t end up being a total douche bag. We have such little faith in people as it is. Our entire worldview of people pretty much rests upon your shoulders now.
...Ass Girl. Has a girl whose face nobody is even sure is drunk-actionable made a bigger impression on the sports public than Ass Girl? The story is part of Girl on the Rail lore forever, but in case you’ve missed it: Ass Girl showed up one night to the WSOP sporting nothing but a t-shirt, bikini bottom, and an ass that makes Kanye’s girlfriend’s rear-end look like a pancake. Her picture circulated the so-called “Internet” like wildfire, from poker forums to mainstream sports blogs. If you didn’t think that an ass had that kind of power, you probably changed your mind after seeing Ass Girl. Or weren’t born yet when Sir-Mix-A-Lot dropped “Baby Got Back”.
...World Series of Poker. Toss aside the Day 1D debacle and the WSOP came out strong this year. Ratings on ESPN are up (and their deal to broadcast the tournament extended). Turnout was great despite The Economy(™). They continued inking new sponsorship deals. Ass Girl happened. Jeffrey Pollack kept the public engaged with regular vlogs on RawVegas.tv. Ivey made the November Nine. Good times.
And quickly, 2009 WAS NOT THE YEAR OF...
...Shannon Elizabeth. Shannon and her boyfriend, Dancing with the Stars’ Derek Hough, break up, and within days he’s paired with one of the inarguably five hottest girls on the planet, Joanna Krupa. That would be like one of the Entities getting divorced only our ex-wife ends up with another one of the Entities. Yes, we know, you reread that sentence a few times trying to figure it out.
...Daniel Negreanu. So how can you win over a milli in tournaments with many high profile top finishes and have it NOT be your year? Easy. Daniel and Erick Lindgren had big WSOP POY prop bets that Jeffrey Lisandro submarined. He finished second in two WSOP tournaments, including the WSOPE Main Event... losing the latter to the poker equivalent of Darth Vader. And he’s going to finish second to Wicked Chops Poker for fan favorite blog this year in BLUFF’s People’s Choice Awards, ending his 47-year-long reign. That’s right, we’re calling our shot in the People Choice’s Awards. It’s out there. NOW MAKE IT HAPPEN, PEOPLE. Make it happen.
...The entities who comprise Full Tilt Poker. Damn, people weren’t afraid to sue the shirt off of Full Tilt this year, were they? Not that any of the lawsuits were necessarily unsubstantiated. Plus Face the Ace ended up being the modern day TV programming equivalent of Ishtar.
And that’s it for 2009, everyone. Looking forward to another great poker year. Our predictions for 2010 are coming in next month’s issue.
