In My Taxi: Did The Prince of Poker Cheat at the WSOP

I just watched the second hour of ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker's $50k HORSE tournament. It seems to me that Scotty Nguyen cheated several times during the final table.

Without question, he benefited from special treatment, as the tournament director ignored dozens of uses of profanity by the dark "Prince of Poker". Any other player, at least, one who isn't a star that helps the casinos thrive, would have been penalized ten minutes for each utterance. No penalties were assessed during portion of the tournament broadcast by ESPN.

I say he cheated from several things Nguyen said and did during the tournament. While the table was three-handed, during Omaha, Scotty folded what appeared to be a winning hand to Erick Lindgren, making statements implying he folded to give Lindgren a break. Lindgren probably would have gone broke if the hand had played out, but Eric had a rush -- with Scotty's help -- and eventually Erick was chip leader after being nearly felted.

As he folded, Scotty said, "Just for my boy, I give him life. I had you, right baby?"

Norm the commentator said, "I don't know how he did that," and Scotty's odd folds, raises and calls to Erick received much attention from the commentators. Norm's best observation: "If this keeps up, Scotty's going to have to put Erick on his tax return as a dependent."

Erick Lindgren clearly believed Scotty had crossed the line, stating several times for the record to Scotty, "You're on your program, I'm on mine." Obviously he didn't want to get kicked out of the tournament if a collusion accusation was levelled by DeMichele.

The clincher came after a three-way pot where Scotty raised a bet by Erick in an attempt to protect Erick's hand by getting DeMichele to fold to the double bet. DeMichelle called, as did Erick. Eventually Scotty folded and Erick lost the hand.

After Erick called DeMichele's final bet Scotty said, "I try to fucking help you, you can't even raise."

"Pardon me, Scotty" asked Erick, in disbelief.

"I ... I ... I tried to protect your hand, I raise it, and you come out and fire," responded Scotty.

Erick apologized, and Norm said that "Scotty's out of line in more ways than one here," but that was as close as the commentators would come to addressing Scotty's cheating.

Even Lindgren later acknowledged that Nguyen was feeding him chips: it was obvious. But the third player, DeMichele didn't complain, and of course neither did Lindgren, who eventually busted.

But why is it okay for a player to feed another chips? I'll tell you why. The same reason it's okay for him to use profanity at a table: it isn't allowed. It's against the rules.

But "it's okay" because the people who run the WSOP have two different standards of behavior for "poker personalities" like Scotty Nguyen and Phil Hellmuth but another for everyday players who aren't known to the public.

One day, a tournament director is going to cross the wrong player, say a motorcycle club member, and find himself headfirst inside a garbage can.