VH1 Classic’s Celebrity Poker Tournament

January 21, 2008 | Posted by admin

Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, Ace Frehley of KISS, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Sully Erna of Godsmack, Vinnie Paul of Pantera, plus 2 amateur online players from UltimateBetTV and a representative for a Vegas Casino (sorry forgot the guy’s name) all took part in VH1 Classic’s Celebrity Rock Poker Tournament hosted by Phil Hellmuth. Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak “The Unibomber” made special guest appearances to give coaching lessons before the game and to help out with interviews after players were knocked out.

The tourney started with Ace picking up a lucky pot from Scott Ian when he picked up trip 4’s on the river. I started flipping back and forth on the remote after I saw that happen. Sully Erna was announced as the longest lasting celebrity at the ’06 WSOP, no mention of his ’07 run. The info button on the TV told me it was from ’07 so I’m assuming early ’07. VH1 Classic was added to my TV package 2 days ago so it was new for me.

Basically think of the old Celebrity Poker Showdown show from (I believe) Bravo that was on back in ’05 combined with the Ultimate Bet poker show that used to be on Fox Sports Net. For some reason the VH1 Classic logo had to cover the third flop card and the turn card leaving only the suits visible which made the hands kinda hard to follow if you weren’t paying complete attention to the show, which a lot of the time I wasn’t.

Vinnie Paul went out first, followed up by one of the amateurs, then (I believe) Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, who not only lost the hand but his keychain to Sully. Next was another amateur. Sully knocked out both Ace and the Vegas casino guy with pocket rockets leaving the game heads up between Sully and Scott. Sully had something like 65,000 chips to Scott’s 15k. Sully’s basically a pro, Scott has barely played poker.

Scott calls away all his chips and catches a flush on the river to double up. Next hand Scott doubles up again because Sully can’t read newbies. Even Phil and the other announcer guy called Scott a newbie. Long story short Sully tries to make a move on Scott who keeps picking up ace something and the new champ is Scott Ian of Anthrax.

Every player that winds up eliminated gets to play for a trip to Alaska on a cruise in a head’s up tourney in the back. They show the knock out hand for each head’s up game. The Vegas guy winds up going against Sully for the title. Sully wins. In a side note Vinnie Paul of Pantera knocked out the first two opponents in the head’s up challenge. Each player had a check donated to charity.

The big winner of the night winds up being Sully since he wins the Alaska trip. I feel bad for Sully, I really do, as we all know that I cannot stand playing against new players. There is no rhyme or reason to how they play and Sully tried to play against Scott as though Scott had some idea of what he was doing, which against newbies is always wrong. So the outcome of the tourney wound up being something like the way it usually went on Celebrity Poker Showdown with the “pro” Hollywood player almost winning but then losing in the end.

I know that Scott Ian knows that he got lucky against Sully during this tourney. He knew that Sully was the huge favorite to win the whole thing. Then again maybe winning this tourney will get Scott Ian playing a lot more poker and he may grow into a great player. On a side note I saw Scott Ian at a Stone Sour concert in Hollywood back in ’02. He was in the upstairs bar section of the House of Blues.

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