The end of one year and the start of another means awards season, darling, and what a year it’s been.
So join us as we hit the red carpet and celebrate some of the more unusual moments and stories from the year gone by…
Fight scene of the year
Was everybody kung-fu fighting? It sure felt that way when Phil Hellmuth made his traditionally eye-catching entrance to the 2024 WSOP Main Event. Flanked by the roughest, toughest-looking bunch of thugs the Horseshoe could provide, Hellmuth entered the main room channeling the spirit of - if not the venerable karate masters of old - at very least the Hollywood chutzpah of Cobra Kai.
Sarah Herring, Joe Stapleton, Scotty Ngyuen and more donned the gear, Shannon Elizabeth dropped Jungleman with a roundhouse to (very nearly) his face, and a table full of poker players sat and watched, kinda.
Best on-screen couple
Be honest: when celebrity couples take part in reality TV shows, we’re all just waiting for them to argue, right? The WSOP Paradise Super Main Event put a fresh poker twist in that formula when real-life couple Alex and Kristen Foxen were both seated at the feature table on Day 3.
Did they stay out of each others’ way? Hardly - these two are pure competitors, and would never let something as trivial as the eternal bond of matrimony get in the way of the button applying pressure to the big blind.
Of course, once they’d both busted out of the Super Main Event they each just went back to work, doing what they do. And found themselves in the $50K High Roller, not just at the same table, but right next to each other. Ahhhh.
Honorable mention: Daniel and Amanda Negreanu
No random table draw put these guys together; the Negreanu’s have been co-hosting their own podcast in recent months, by the name of the Mania Podcast. Need to know what they argue about, their attitudes to drugs, or to hear Daniel sing? Of course you do, and you can find it all right here.
Best supporting actor
Thanks to his victory in the WSOP Main Event, we all know Jonathan Tamayo’s name. Would that be the case if it weren’t for Dominik Nitsche and ‘the Macbook heard around the world’?
A player, coaching entrepreneur, and friend of Tamayo’s, Nitsche famously pitched up at the rail for the Main Event final table with a laptop. Tamayo found time between hands to give his friends a few high fives - and take a quick look at the screen.
Were they checking hands from earlier in the stream? Running solvers? Doing the day’s Wordle? Whatever went down, it was widely agreed that at the very least it was a ‘bad look’ for pros to be seen ganging up on a plucky amateur with the use of technology.
“If Joe [McKeehen] and Dom [Nitsche] weren’t here, I likely do not win this tournament” said Tamayo in the immediate aftermath. The result was rule changes across multiple tour operators, and a small internet flame war (Nitsche vs the world). What are friends for?
Best comedy performance
We’re just going to say it: put any of Caitlin Comeskey’s videos here, and we’ll call it the winner. A recent addition to the PokerStars Team pro roster, Comeskey has been pumping out razor-sharp videos satirizing the poker world for long enough that she’s got a whole heap to choose from.
Here’s one about ACR that even made CEO Phil Nagy laugh:
All we can say is: keep it up, Caitlin.
Honorable mention: all those people who tried to make Phil Ivey laugh
When the WPT promised to give away a Golden Passport to the $5M freeroll if you could just make Phil Ivey laugh, the sheer improbability of anyone succeeding in the task was funny enough. Then we saw them.
Feel-good moment of the year
As the face - and voice - of the RecPoker podcast, Jim Reid wears his status as a recreational player with pride. Heck, Jim even writes a PokerOrg column called ‘The Rec’, just in case anyone were to confuse him for a full-timer. And if there’s ever a better story to come out of a major tournament series, it’s a recreational player going deep and sticking it to the pros.
So when Jim made a deep run in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event in the summer, we definitely weren’t the only ones pulling for him.
Through every lucky scrape, bad beat and ladder-up, Jim and his lucky shot glass were cheered on from a virtual rail that stretched around the world. Of course, we were there from the beginning, and seeing Jim go deep - eventually finishing in a profitable and respectable 210th place - gave us all a feel-good moment to remember.
Honorable mention: Barny Boatman wins the EPT Paris Main Event
A quick wit, a long legacy and a hilarious X account are all well and good, but they don’t necessarily pay the bills. €1.2M, on the other hand, now that’s the type of respect you can take to the bank.
For those of us who watched him back in the day, seeing Boatman emerge victorious at EPT Paris was certainly one of the feelgood moments of the year.
Feature image courtesy of Triton Poker.
