Isaac Haxton speaks out against Vloggers and cameras at the poker table

It’s not often that Isaac ‘Ike’ Haxton finds himself at the centre of a Twitter spat, but the highstakes crusher’s views on poker vloggers filming at the table saw him front and centre of a mild backlash this week…

Ike Haxton

The tweet above saw Haxton come under fire for opposing what many see as one of the best drivers of poker’s reincarnation in recent years. Vloggers such as Andrew Neeme, Brad Owen and Jeff Boski have contributed hugely to poker’s recent surge in popularity with their fly-on-the-wall casino content.

Haxton, it appeared, found their means unpleasant, but he was fighting a losing battle…

…the afore-mentioned Neeme also entering the vlogging fray – although by Twitter standards it was a very polite debate!

Andrew Neeme

Gentle Twitter slapdowns…

Ike Haxton is not only one of the best players in the world; he also gained huge respect when he spoke out about PokerStars SNE theft back in 2016. This is probably why those who opposed his anti-filming views on Twitter didn’t take the usual ‘baseball bat’ approach to him.

As it turned out, both sides of the debate (i.e. Haxton versus the rest of the poker community) were arguing at cross-purposes. Unaware that poker vlogger ‘meets’ were even a thing, Ike was soon back to qualify his initial statement…

The Law is on my side…

Ike wasn’t quite alone in battling his corner, though, with Aria Casino Director of Poker Operations, Sean McCormack popping in to let everyone know that filming hole cards is actually illegal!

…but Greg Merson certainly isn’t

Sharing his industry knowledge and experience led to a brief contretemps with former WSOP main Event winner Greg Merson – the argument going off on a tangent, related to Merson’s disgust at ‘private’ games being hosted in public casinos…

Greg Merson

Pros and cons

Back to the main issue at hand – filming poker hands live – and it the discussion started to centre around ‘how’ rather than ‘yes/no’, most agree that there are many positives to the vlogs and some way of making it legal would probably be a good thing.

Incredibly for Twitter’s poker community, a positive debate had sprung up. Had it been Daniel Negreanu or Doug Polk instead of Ike and Sean, it would likely have descended into a slanging match, ending in red (or perhaps black) faces for those involved.

Although Ike was persuaded that the vlog meets were a legitimate reason and arena for filming, he still wasn’t convinced it should be allowed otherwise, but as always there is a meme (or a Neeme) to counter everything…

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