Terrence Chan recently made the humorous observation that not only is the hand reporting from major poker tournaments largely inaccurate (this is well-known) but that the reporters tend to reconstruct the details in ways that make “name players” look good. He cites two recent examples from his own experience, one in which he was the lesser known player and one where he was the more famous.
Although I thought this was funny and probably not without some truth, it doesn’t gel with my own limited experience. For instance, this blurb about me busting Barry Greenstein from the 2007 WSOP main event makes it seem like he made an overly large re-raise with QQ:
“Andrew Brokos made it 6,000 to go and Barry Greenstein raised it to 33,000. Brokos made the call and saw a flop of {J-Diamonds}{10-Diamonds}{7-Clubs}. Greenstein found himself all-in on the flop with pocket queens against Brokos pocket aces. The aces held up and Greenstein was eliminated. After the hand, Brokos is up to 285,000.”
In fact, my raise had already been called in front of him, so there was something like 20,000 in the pot already, making his reraise to 33,000 perfectly reasonable.