Barry Shulman's Bad Tempered Display At Caesars Poker Room
October 27, 2009 1:15 pmCardPlayer Magazine CEO Barry Shulman may have let his World Series of Poker Europe triumph go to his head if reports from the Two Plus Two Poker Forum are to be believed. One forum member posted the unpleasant details of an encounter he had with Barry Shulman while playing a $550 MTT at a Caesar’s poker room.
Apart from the fact he believed Shulman was playing badly by limping and limp-calling preflop 50% of the time with a 20BB chip stack, Shulman then set about criticising the play of a female player after she had been knocked out of the tournament and was in the process of leaving the table.
The particular hand involved 300/600/75 blinds and the female player in question seated in the cut off position. Barry Shulman limped UTG, was called by 3 limpers who were then re-raised to 6k by another player shortly before the cutoff and short stacked player pushed her last remaining 2,400 chips into the centre with Qd 9d only to be called and eliminated by A K.
The polite forum member reassured her she had got 3-1 value on her cards, followed by Shulman insisting that she had played terribly and another player who voiced his opposition to Shulman’s advice was told: “oh ok hahaha, you have no chance to win this tournament, that was a horrible, awful call”.
Heckles had risen around the table at this point and after one player insisted she had infact got equity from the move, Shulman turned his attention to the forum member and said: “NO!, You’re wrong, believe me, you dont need to teach me how to play poker. If you think thats the right play you’re awful and you have no chance to win a tournament.”
Later on in the tournament the forum member describes an argument Shulman had with a female dealer whom he insists had already cut a deck of cards. The players around the table seemed to have agreed with the dealer but Shulman nonetheless picked up the deck, cut it and said: “That is cutting the deck and thats what you did”.
The dealer insisted once more she hadn’t which angered Shulman who apparently launched into a blistering tirade of obscenities and said words to the effect of: “Yeah I know exactly what you did, you’re just a xxxxxx lazy ass, This is what they take extra money out of our prizepool for to pay xxxxin xxxxty lazy ass dealers”.
If the report is correct then Shulman certainly did not conduct himself in a manner befitting a WSOP champion let alone that of any respectful poker player. Let us hope his son Jeff Shulman shows a bit more modesty and restraint than his father at next months WSOP final table.