Here\’s a storyline that ESPN somehow missed/didn\’t feed us on the media-prep conference call … It\’s a very Jewish WSOP main event final table.
The Jewish Daily Forward points out what may or may not be a statistical anomaly: Four of the November Nine — Jeff Shulman, Steve Begleiter, Eric Buchman, and Kevin Schaffel — happen to speak Hebrew, at least during family holidays.
From a stack perspective, these Jewish players control 49.6 percent of all the chips in play. How stereotypical …
The J-article also offers a rich history of Jews in the game … from Jack Strauss to Jamie Gold … and most recently Barry Shulman\’s Yom Kippur victory at WSOP-E. Back in the day, of course, the World Series was all about Jews vs. Texans, but Texans have been sucking it up in recent years now the game has a more widespread international appeal that has prevented any one region from owning pwning it.
Full Disclosure: I used to make an annual pilgrimage to a Dallas synagogue in an effort to bring people with money to the Lodge convert non-gentiles to the poker way. So yeah …
