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First hour: DeMichele takes a bow for every pot he wins. He was running hot, and obviously excited to be there. His actions clearly get under the skin of several of the ‘big names’ including Barry Greenstein, Erick Lindgren, Scotty Nguyen, and Lyle Berman. On one hand, DeMichele miss calls his made hand on 7th in Stud, having made a flush, calls two pair vs. an all in Huck Seed who had one pair. Honest mistake I’m sure, but his overall table presence was certainly aggravating to say the least. Surprise surprise, he’s wearing an Ultimate Bet patch. Notice any trends with that company? Kids, when you make your next final table, please just say no to UB.

Second hour: Down to three – Scotty, DeMichele, and Lindren. Scotty is on complete monkey life tilt. He beraides DeMichele for excessive celebration, and proceeds to do a little excessive celebration/high fives himself. Granted, Scotty appears to have had one too many drinks during this final table. And he also chose to ‘dump chips’ to Erick during an O8 hand in which he had the best low draw and an overpair of AA on a 73JJ board, he folded on the turn, Lindgren had the second best low draw and an overpair of QQ. This was obviously because Nguyen didn’t want DeMichele to get to heads up. He was clearly on life tilt. But such a blatant chip dump was pretty sketchy.

Lindgren handled himself with class throughout the final table, although even he got a little heated at the end, apparently fed up with Scotty’s antics. Can’t say I blame him, but there also appeared to be a back log of history between them when Erick said “I’ve never been on team Scotty…and never will.” DeMichele and Nguyen definitely got into heated ego-driven debates. This happens a lot at the poker table, someone loses a big hand, or personalities conflict after several hours of play, but unfortunately this is the biggest tourney of the WSOP.

Overall, I wish the 50k was a ‘better’ final table in terms of skill being showcased rather than brash conflicts, and a lot of what’s wrong with poker. It is fun to watch these guys go on tilt on tv but for the grander scheme of the poker world, I think having say a Barry Greenstein and Erick Lindgren get heads up and play for the title would have been much better. Scotty lost it a little bit and it turned into a shit show. I still love Scotty, and I was rooting for him while I was there this summer, but at the end of the day perhaps he tarnished his prince status just a touch for letting the 23 year old get under his skin. I’m pretty sure Chip Reese would have handled some of these situations quite a bit differently. Let’s just try and keep that in mind next time the monkey tilt comes out.