The First Time a Player Tells Me Off

Posted by icemonkey9 on Mar 5, 2011 in Insider stories | 2 comments

I've worked for a poker media outlet full time for the past year and overall have worked for various sites in various capacities for a few years now. Frankly, I'm a little surprised this hasn't happened sooner, but it finally did at the recently LAPC Main Event here in Los Angeles. What I'm talking about is a pro poker player coming up to me, giving me a piece of his mind over something I said and then leaving. It's almost a right of passage in the industry and I think any media covering anything goes through this, but to be honest, it wasn't all that bad. Let's get into it.

First - I am sure you are wondering who the heck I will be referring to. Unfortunately, he is hardly household name so if you don't know who it is, don't feel bad since i am guessing maybe 10% of you poker buffs will know who this is. The person this story is about is one Andrew Frankenberger. He's a 37 year old player from New York who recently won the WPT Legends of Poker event at The Bike I covered in 2010. In fact, prior to the final table, Andrew and I had lunch (along with a friend of his that joined him) and it was really pleasant. He's a nice guy and I was impressed with his demeanor and intelligence. When he went on to win, I was happy for him.

In one of my weekly recap news shows I talked about his win. Now, I absolutely have no recollection of what I exactly said, but it was something along the lines of:

1) Nice guy
2) He's had financial success before in life
3) The money may not mean everything to him, but success does

Fair enough right? That was my impression and unlike most media members out there I actually had met him, ate lunch with him, talked to him and then drew my conclusions from that experience. Obviously, most "impressions" you read from media types, especially in poker, come from reporters whose interactions with the players usually doesn't go beyond the first name hello when they walk in to take their seat.

Anyways - I'm at the LAPC in media row and Andrew Frankenberger walks by and I get up to say hello since I hadn't seen him since his win. My first words were that I wanted to congratulate him since we hadn't run into each other since his win. Unfortunately his first words weren't so kind.

Now - Andrew was totally civil in this and never used profanity or raised his voice. Again - nice guy, don't get me wrong. But he immediately went into how he took strong exception to what I said about him in my show. Honestly, I really thought he had me totally confused for someone else, first because he said "tv show" and second because he took exception to something I said and I had been complimenting him. We went back and forth on this since I was so absolutely shocked and confused but in the end he apparently was very much insulted about the "money" issue in my comments.

Once he was done with his polite but fairly insulting rant (note, this was in front of *everybody* in media row) I simply said "Hey, fair enough" and shook his hand and he went on his way.

A friend of mine, Paul Ellis who you can find at Twitter (@coolwhipflea) was sitting next to me. I turned to him because he (along with everyone else there) had heard the exchange and asked what the heck that was about. Paul's first words were classic, "Sorry but isn't not being affected by the money A GOOD THING?!". Paul's right of course, but that's not how our poker pro friend took it.

In the end here I'm not worried or upset about this at all. Again, this is the first time this has happened to me and frankly this was the diet-cola edition of what I've seen happen before to some media folks. If/When I walk away from poker I'll be sure to share those stories, but for now, this is mine and it wasn't all that bad, but I always get asked about stuff like this so I figured to share the first time it happened.