Prisoner Of Poker: The Poker Freak Show

The world is a freak show. -Goethe

[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]

The final table of 2020's King of Poker tournament will always be remembered as the beginning of The Poker Freak Show. Viral videos like Leave Brittney Alone!, Star Wars Kid, and Don't Tase Me, Bro have, overnight, made their subjects instantly famous. The 30-second video of Ivan Jakes urinating all over the KOP poker table was called The Pissed Off Poker Player. Overnight Jakes became a famous Internet phenomenon.

The pissed off poker player himself was made doubly famous when the (so-called) Poker Czar, who had no legal authority to do so, banished Jakes from professional poker for life. Lifetime banishments are nothing new. Both Shoeless Joe Jackson-the subject of two books and three movies-and Pete Rose, the subject of countless non-apologetic apologies, suffered similar punishments from commissioners. They had also, simply because of by their lifetime banishments, become far more famous than if they had simply played out the rest of their careers and retired into obscurity. Jakes became the best kind of money-making famous-he became infamous.

Big money offers from Gee Wiz, Adult Diapers, The Golden Shower Hour, and UrineNation.xxx poured in to the pissed off player. Jakes turned all these offers down. He knew that there was only one way to be truly famous. He wanted to be on television. When The Rox Network offered him a prime-time reality competition called The Poker Freak Show, he was ready to sit down and play.

Placed in Rox TV's schedule after American Idle, Jakes' starring role in The Poker Freak Show was to publicly humiliate contestants specially chosen for their physical or mental weaknesses. Joining America's favorite pissed off poker player on his first show were born poker freaks that included a severe stutterer, a cross-eyed midget, and a grossly fat teenager, made poker freaks-a woman with all 52 cards tattooed on her body, and a man who had legally changed his name to The Flop-and wannabe poker freaks, sad and sorry contestants vying for their 15 seconds of shame disguised as fame. The show was a smash hit.

Suddenly the mass television-viewing public perceived poker not as a game but as a game show. Other networks were quick to cash in on the poker game show craze. Poker Survivor, Playing Poker With the Stars, and Who Wants to be a Poker Player? soon made their network television debuts, while Strip'em Poker and Holding the Nuts were grabbing cable viewers.

While Ivan Jakes, a.k.a. The Pissed Off Poker Player, was the original poster child for lewd, rude, and crude poker table behavior, the fame and fortune that had come to him as a result of his banishment was lost on the other bad boys of poker.

Taunts, verbal and physical, were hurled across the poker table as trash talk became common. Extended fingers, crotch grabs, and cutthroat gestures were soon added to the game as were spiking the cards by throwing a winning hand into the air, and the river dance, an in-your-poker-face, over-the-top victory celebration. Soon poker became a contact sport featuring push-and-shove, swear-and-dare tactics that turned off serious poker players.

The (so-called) Poker Czar let each one of these incidents sink into the public consciousness before banishing the offending players. He, like everyone else, enjoyed a good freak show.

(To be continued in the next issue of Poker Player)