Poker Player Tweets of the Week: Forgetting "Runner Runner"

Last week, I promised that this week's column would be devoted to poker players' reactions to Runner Runner, the first mainstream film about the online gambling industry. Change of plans. As I covered in my review and senior editor Aaron Todd covered in his weekly top-10 column, Runner Runner was a collapse of epic proportion. Some players voiced their opinions after seeing the film over the weekend, but nobody had anything noteworthy to say. And that's probably because the film was just that bad. So this week we'll try to forget we ever saw such a garbage movie and instead analyze some tweets by some of our favorite recurring Twitter characters in the poker world. Friday, Oct. 11: Joe "@Stapes" Stapleton

Not the worst name I can think of for underwear, but also not the best. pic.twitter.com/XgbQLhdCLu

— Joe Stapleton (@Stapes) October 11, 2013

As Jerry Seinfeld noted in "The Raincoats" episode of Seinfeld, "… men wear their underwear until it absolutely disintegrates. Men hang on to underwear until, until each individual underwear molecule is so strained it can barely retain the properties of a solid. It actually becomes underwear vapor." An underwear brand called "Rips" is actually quite fitting, then. And there are definitely plenty of names that are worse. "Skids" or "Drips," as a couple of Ausmus' followers responded, are on the list. I'm interested to hear more. Thursday, Oct. 10: Jay "@Jay_Farber_LV" Farber

Eli Manning making a strong case for the worst QB in the NFL right now.

— Jay Farber (@Jay_Farber_LV) October 11, 2013

Eli Manning has been terrible as his New York Giants have fallen to 0-6 following a Thursday night loss to the Chicago Bears. And while at first glance I thought this was an absurd notion, Manning legitimately does make a strong case for the "worst QB in the league" title. Take noted deadbeat QB and Aaron Todd favorite Christian Ponder, for instance. The Minnesota Vikings quarterback's highest QBR in a game this year is 57.9, which is pretty awful. Manning hasn't even eclipsed that mark in any of his six games in 2013, and has posted QBRs below 30 in four of his starts. To be fair, Manning is cursed by a horrendous offensive line and has been forced to take too many shots down the field in games where his team is getting blown out. But it's also always fun to laugh at the Giants. Wednesday, Oct. 9: Jeremy "@jeremyausmus" Ausmus

Considering #kids ? I think you should know my 2 year old just went bat shit crazy cause we parked in our own garage against her demands

— Jeremy Ausmus (@jeremyausmus) October 9, 2013

Yikes. Ironically, Aaron and I were just having a discussion about my fear of having kids for pretty much this exact reason. Don’t get me wrong -- I really do want to have kids someday. But the prospect of having to take care of what amounts to an unpredictably insane tiny human being is frightening to me. I do think that things like this would be funny. But if, as Ed Norton's character Worm in Rounders was right when he said, "In the poker game of life, women are the fucking rake," kids are the bad beat jackpot that never hits. Wednesday, Oct. 9: Phil "@PhilGalfond" Galfond

Biggest fantasyland hand of my short OFC career. Punished @FarahFromKY for $0/point. pic.twitter.com/3LsSw6OSse

— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) October 9, 2013

I'd feel way worse for Phil Galfond if he wasn't already a complete luckbox in life. This hand is insane and would be worth 42 points against one opponent (assuming Phil scooped and his opponent, Farah Fath, didn't have any royalty points). And that's not even factoring the potential points gained from being in Fantasyland! This is the kind of Open Face hand that comes around once in a lifetime -- or if you play it as much as the degenerates in the poker world play it, once every couple of weeks. Tuesday, Oct. 8: Matt "@MattGlantz" Glantz

Strategy article by my friend @olegsmith explaining how badly I played a hand of NL against him on @PokerNightTV http://t.co/p8a7J26npB #jbl

— Matt Glantz (@MattGlantz) October 8, 2013

This is hilarious. Gavin Smith decided to write an article about a hand he played with Matt Glantz on the Poker Night in America cash game. Glantz won the pot with a nice semi-bluff against Smith (he was actually ahead after flopping bottom pair and a flush draw with 5-2 suited), and Smith opined that Glantz played the hand terribly. Smith makes some valid points in his critique of Glantz's play. But nothing makes a poker player sound like an amateur more than complaining about an opponent's play in a hand, especially in one where the opponent took down the pot with a bluff. Glantz and Smith are both top pros, and though Smith's critique could be correct in a vacuum, he's only considering his own perspective. Glantz obviously had a completely different read on the situation, and it helped him beat Smith in the pot.