Michael Craig's Journal

I’m sorry if I hurt some peoples’ feelings but I am required to write this. I really like several of the people I know who work at Card Player, but I have to unload. I was talking with Amy Calistri about how I decided, in yesterday’s post, to spare the magazine a full assault on its mediocrity because I couldn’t make it past page 32 of the August 30 issue. Then I saw something that made me hang up the phone and run for my Journal. (I never really take Card Player to task in yesterday’s short entry, but I did quote a couple priceless bits out of the first few pages of the issue before losing my appetite for the task. My favorite: “The bouncer soon became the bounced.”)

Card Player has a cheesy feature called “Poker by the Numbers.” It’s the sort of thing every popular magazine has, collecting ironic numbers. Completely forgivable nonsense - total number of bracelets and WSOP earnings by Chan, Hellmuth, and Doyle Brunson vs. Tex Barch, Aaron Kanter, and Steve Dannenmann, etc.

But they have three entries about Annie Duke that just boggled my mind:

(1) Highest finish by a female player in WSOP main-event history - 10th;

(2) Months pregnant that Annie Duke was during her record-setting 10th-place finish at the 2004 World Series of Poker - 8;

(3) Number of events in which Annie Duke eliminated her brother Howard Lederer, from the 2004 World Series of Poker - 4.

DOES ANYONE - INCLUDING THE WRITER - READ THIS STUFF BEFORE IT GOES OUT??????

Barbara Enright, fifth place, 1995 World Series of Poker. Anyone?

Susie Isaacs, tenth place, 1998 World Series of Poker. Anyone? [Thanks to Amy for reminding me of this.]

These women aren’t hiding anyplace, either. Between them, they’ve finished in the money in the last two Main Events, and are indelibly etched [my bad: typo in the original; thanks to the reader who notified me] in the history of the World Series of Poker, each winning the Ladies Event at the Series twice and Enright won an open event, pot limit hold ‘em, in 1996.

And what’s this business about Annie eliminating Howard four times “from the 2004 World Series of Poker”? I’ll let them off the hook for, in consecutive sentences, referring to the “World Series” as the main event and as all the events - Card Player, above every other publication, ought to get that one right. But I’m pretty sure that’s inaccurate. I know Annie has eliminated Howard that many times from tournaments EVER. Not in one year of the World Series.

I think Card Player should apologize for sweeping Barbara Enright and Susie Isaacs toward oblivion as well as to everyone who ever learned to read.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 11:44 am and is filed under My favourites:.