What kind of rag is the Chicago Sports Review? They say…“one of the more remarkable athletic achievements of our lifetimes.” Unbelieveable.
Ben Affleck’s Poker Title is a Great Sports Story
Thursday, June 24, 2004
By Tom Alexander
Sometimes here at the Chicago Sports Review we get some flak for talking about things that aren’t really sporting in nature-especially when we focus on entertainment, politics, and the like. So sometimes when there’s a real sports story that crosses over into those areas, we jump at the chance to go after it.
If you consider poker a sport, as we do, then Ben Affleck’s winning of the California State Poker Tournament is one of the more remarkable athletic achievements of our lifetimes.
Consider this: Affleck is an actor. Whether he’s a good one or not, that’s for debate, but that’s how he makes his living, that’s how he was able to put up $10,000 to play in this tournament. Affleck is not a professional poker player, or at least wasn’t before his $356,000 payday the other day. This achiement-besting 89 other people and winning a large-scale no-limit tournament against poker professionals and some of the best players around-this is absolutely nothing to scoff at. From a purely athletic standpoint, this is amazing.
I’m trying to draw a comparison, and I can’t really do it, but this is the best I can come up with. During a Major League Baseball game, a manager goes into the stands, and finds someone who really loves baseball, played in high school (maybe even college) and pitches to his kid all of the time. Maybe the guy keeps himself in great shape, maybe he goes to games all the time, whatever. And the manager says, “Hey man, come on in and pitch in this game.” And the guy doesn’t just go in and pitch-he actually wins the game, striking out seven over the course of 6 2/3 innings, and getting Barry Bonds to ground into an inning-ending double play. It doesn’t compute, it doesn’t make any sense.
Obviously this example is a little far-fetched, but so is Affleck winning a poker tournament. This is an amazing athletic achievement that would probably receive more notice if it didn’t happen indoors, sitting down. It’s certainly as notable as P. Diddy running the New York Marathon in just over four hours (which is remarkable for a whole different set of reasons).
Great sports stories are made from underdogs rising up, beating the odds, and achieving amazing successes. So consider this: Affleck’s personal life has kept him in the tabloids for the past couple of years; that his ex-fiance is now Mrs. Mark Anthony; he was in one of the worst movies in human history (Gigli); and, he was in another crappy movie (Jersey Girl). Not a great year or two. So Affleck takes up poker, and not only does he learn to play, he learns to play well, and he learns to win, and then he goes out and wins a huge tournament and the national attention that goes along with it. That’s a decent sports story.
But you know what would make it great? If there was a very public humiliation along the quest for athletic immortality, a setback that then propelled our hero into the final chapter of his amazing success. Oh, wait, there was.
Remember the first episode of the first season of Celebrity Poker Showdown? Remember when the guy from Sex and the City, whose name I think is Willie-remember when he took out Ben “Poker” Affleck on national television, early in the tournament? Remember when Affleck sat back stage, calmly deflecting the negative attention he was getting (an endeavor at which he is becoming a master)? The thing about Affleck is that he did have that one moment where America had the chance to sit back and discount his latest passionate hobby as a joke, where we could say, “Ben Affleck is a nice guy, but he’s just having a mid-30s crisis, because J-Lo dumped him. So know he’s learning how to play poker, but he sucks, and it’s sad.”
Well, it’s not sad. It’s actually pretty cool. And, if there’s one thing that’s for certain, it’s that this is a great sports story.