Poker: The return of the Wheel of Morality

Does anyone else remember the catchy segment from "Animaniacs" where they'd bring out the Wheel of Morality? There was that catchphrase: "Wheel of Morality, turn, turn, turn, tell us the lesson that we should learn." They'd spin the wheel and inevitably something totally senseless would end up being the moral of the day. At the Jack Binion World Poker Open on Wednesday, the Wheel of Morality was making an absurd comeback.

It's been something like two weeks without a fresh WPT event, and especially since I had to interrupt my Padres game for this (after having been lured away from the earlier airing by my muse being back on TV with "L.A. Dragnet" of all things), I wanted something really worthwhile. After looking at the action from Tunica, Mississippi, I'm not sure if it was worth giving up the 11-0 shutout for, but it was certainly just as weird as that.

Tonight's "Kevin Walker Award" goes to James Tippin, who gets it partly in sympathy for the nine million car wash jokes made by commentators Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten. Memo to them: just because the guy used to own a car wash does not mean Turtle Wax jokes are funny.

Here's how they started:

1. Randy Jensen - $1,085,000 2. James Tippin - $842,000 3. Chip Reese - $780,000 4. Barry Greenstein - $575,000 5. Can Kim Hua - $279,000 6. Tony Hartman - $111,000

You know a poker table's going to be bizarre when people are being referred to by names like "Dream Crusher" (Jensen), "Robin Hood" (Greenstein), and "The Big House" (Hartman). All I can say is, I want a cool nickname like "Dream Crusher." Like, maybe "Hope Killer" or something else that sounds like Bill Engvall coined it first.

Twenty-two minutes in, the short stack got the short end of the deal. Holding A-J, Hartman went up against Jensen's A-Q, making it a dead even race for victory. The flop came A-K-K, followed by a turn of 10 and a river of 8. With his queen the higher kicker, Randy Jensen sent "The Big House" backstage, where he could also be free of all Sexton and Van Patten's Elvis jokes.

Forty-one minutes later, Greenstein and Jensen found themselves locked in a pot together. Jensen executed a truly baffling bluff reraise of a reraise, which to write down would have more back-and-forth than a ping-pong match. Let's just say it was indicative of things to come.

A mere two minutes later, "Dream Crusher" terminated Can Kim Hua when the latter matched his A-10 against Jensen's 10-10 on a meaningless 2-6-8-J-7 deal. It was now down to four players.

To this point, the game had been relatively boring, with the two chatty players, Tippin and Jensen, rambling on while everyone else shut up and played. I was flipping back to ESPN2 and the Padres' rout of the Giants, looking for some sort of action. Given another 20 minutes, however, something truly strange and memorable would take place.

Chip Reese, now the short stack after being hammered at, held K-5 and went all in. Tippin joined him, holding a pair of queens. Barry also leapt into the pot with A-K, giving him a chance to knock out two players in one blow, something never seen before. The community deal went A-K-6-8-A, and Robin Hood shot down two people with one blow, drastically cleaving at the opposition. Only one man now stood in his way: Randy Jensen.

Now, I've just spent the last two hours muttering about how sick I am of somebody else named Barry, but the poker table is different from the baseball diamond. Over the course of the table, and especially the last hand, Jensen had become truly annoying. He wasn't even involved in the three-way brawl, and yet he's continuing to chirp in, pulling for the cards that he wants. Memo to Randy: If you're not involved in the pot, I don't want to hear you. Thus, this time I was actually rooting for the guy named Barry.

It was an ironic showdown: the loudmouthed one against the guy giving all his winnings to charity. They went back-and-forth for almost half an hour. It was basically all the same: Randy tries to read Barry, who's looking like me -- unimpressed and nonplussed -- and then makes up his mind. Back and forth and back and forth in what was potentially one of the most boring heads-up periods I've ever seen, maybe because the choice of victor seemed to be so one-sided, if only to shut Randy up.

Finally, six minutes shy of two hours, Randy went all in with his 7-4 against Barry's Q-10. The deal went 3-4-10-9-A, and Barry Greenstein became the winner of the Jack Binion World Poker Open. In a true class act, the first thing he did was quietly go over and hug his girlfriend. No pomp, no circumstance, no celebrating -- just a respect for the moment.

The final finish:

1. Barry Greenstein - $1,278,370 2. Randy Jensen - $656,460 3. James Tippin - $328,230 4. Chip Reese - $207,304 5. Can Kim Hua - $155,477 6. Tony Hartman - $120,927

All in all, it was a languid and bizarre night. There were weird nicknames and bad jokes. There were chatty players acting like immature school kids, waving their arms around and talking carelessly ("It's the best hand I've had since I sat down," Tippin said of one hand at one point -- to the whole table) and players who were Zen masters of patience. In the end, it came down to flash versus skill, personal glory versus heart, and heart won out.

In this spin of the Wheel of Morality, the moral of the story was that the good guys sometimes do finish first.