Scotty Nguyen Drunk HORSE Escapades
If you happened to catch the 50K buy in HORSE tournament last night on ESPN, you saw a touching tribute to Chip Reese during the first 10 minutes. Chip passed away last winter unexpectedly and left a legacy as one of the classiest, most successful poker players in history. Because of the mutual respect that spanned the entire professional poker-playing world, it was a nice gesture of the WSOP to memorialize Chip by presenting a trophy adorned with his name to the winner of this event. Chip won the inaugural 50K HORSE event two years ago, making his name to even the most casual poker fan.
Scotty Nguyen had an opportunity to not only win this tournament but personify his “prince of poker” alias that many know him by. Instead, once the cocktails (cocktails apparently means cheap beer by the bottle to Scotty) started flowing his total lack of class began to manifest itself. Earlier in the tournament, 23 year old Michael DeMichelle went a little over the top as he raked a few big pots. The most notable coming against Barry Greenstein when his celebration bordered on juvenile.
As several of the pros took jabs at the youngster, Scotty began to drink heavily. By the time it was three handed with Eric Lindgren in the mix, Scotty proceeded to absolutely make an ass of himself. His constant banter and repeated use of the “F bomb” and other profanities even pushed Eric to the brink. Amazingly, he was never cautioned on TV or got any sort of “Mike Matusow” penalty by the tournament director. By the time Eric was eliminated, he even took the unusual step (for Eric) of telling the young DeMichelle to take out Scotty.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be with DeMichelle losing the event to Scotty shortly after heads up play began. He was never able to overcome the 6-1 chip deficit and lost in the limit hold’em session with A 3 vs. Scotty’s A 10. By this time, Scotty was too drunk to even be interviewed on television. At least ESPN and the WSOP knew to stop the bleeding at some point. Too bad it wasn’t earlier in the tournament, it could have helped the game save some face. It certainly was the antithesis of what the tournament’s namesake represented.
Here is the video of Scotty Drunk at the table:
