I had skipped ahead to glean the "Poker Fact" from the second part of this week's WSOP broadcast (so that I could write up my post on it) without watching the entire hour, until just now. I noticed a moment that showed one participant's delusional beliefs, reminiscent of those displayed by Jerry Yang at last year's final table.

Joe Bishop's father died earlier this year (April, I believe they said). At one point in the show, he has called David Rheem's all-in bluff with pocket sixes, and his hand is holding up. After the turn card, we see him sitting by himself, away from the table. He looks upward and says, "Come on, Dad. Come with me. Come on, Dad."

Now, admittedly this is not quite as explicit as Jerry Yang saying, "Lord, give me a set" before the river card is exposed. Still, it certainly seems that it's basically the same thing. Bishop appears to believe that his dead father (1) is physically somewhere above him (hence the looking up), (2) can hear him, and (3) has the ability to alter the order of the cards in the dealer's hand, such that if Bishop pleads with him correctly, his dead father will magically cause a good card to be transported into the second position in the deck, so that after the dealer burns the top card, a good one for Bishop's hand will be dealt as fifth street.

Probably by now I don't have to explain how insane this is. Believing that unseen dieties and/or ghosts and/or other mystical forces or entities can and will re-order the shuffled deck in the dealer's hand is just plain looney. It's delusional. Such beliefs are a sign of an unwell, unsound mind.

As it turns out, apparently Bishop's father isn't a particularly powerful ghost (maybe he hasn't earned his wings yet, like Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life")--or perhaps Bishop just didn't ask the right way, or maybe his father wasn't paying attention at the critical moment, because Chino Rheem caught one of his six outs on the river to stay alive.

Heck, maybe Rheem was silently praying to one of his own dead ancestors--one who had stronger magical mojo and floated that king into position at the last second. That would be amusing, to have competing ghosts wrestling for control over the cards in the deck--much like the bizarre image we had last year of God's influence being invoked in opposite directions simultaneously by Yang's faction and Lee Watkinson's fiancee.

Will the madness ever stop?



On a more benign and more amusing note, I noticed that Nick Sliwinski's friends and family were all wearing t-shirts that they apparently had had made for the occasion, emblazoned on the back with the words, "Whose the bully now." (No question mark.) I'm guessing that not one of them noticed that it should have been "Who's," rather than "Whose." I wonder if the guy printing up the shirts noticed that his customers were asking to have their atrocious spelling/grammar skills advertised to the world, and diplomatically just kept his mouth shut and did as they directed, or whether he, too, didn't know the difference.

Oh well. Either way, being ignorant isn't nearly as bad as being delusional.