King Fore!

There's recently been a lot of fuss over a certain game of golf between two well-known poker players - Britain's Ram Vaswani and the USA's Phil Ivey. For weeks this was one of the most heavily debated topics on internet poker forums. Even Daniel Negreanu took time out of namedropping in his blog to voice his opinion.

I am not a golfer, despite my Granddad's best efforts to turn me into one when I was younger. I'm something of a blunt instrument at ball games - I can hit a ball quite far, but when it comes to hitting it in the right direction I'm useless (that also applies to football and pool). So I'll have to explain what happened in non-golfer terms.

Actually, let me turn you over to Victoria Coren, who put it better than anyone (I wish women like Vicky existed in real life and not just on TV and on the internet):

'Phil said he hadn't been playing, when in fact he'd been playing a lot and got much better and could now make the ball go in the hole after hitting it a lot less times than he did before. So they played for a couple of days and he won loads of money.'

Victoria Coren, a true gem in the coalface of British Poker

As a result of all this, Ram refused to pay up, feeling that he'd been deceived by Phil. Phil argued that he'd not lied about his handicap at all.

Personally, I don't understand the problem. After all, surely betting on golf is all about misrepresenting your skill level, and hustling your opponents out of their cash that way? Imagine if loveable rogue Amarillo Slim had made the bet. Would there be so much fuss?

Apparently, yes. I've been reliably informed by golf playing friends that lying about your handicap is a serious breach of golf etiquette. So the question really is whether Phil had lied or not.

I realise the irony considering I am about to discuss this on the internet, but I think it's a shame that this was made public. I don't understand the celebrity culture that is invading the poker world at the moment. What's next - a poker version of Heat magazine? I can just imagine the pictures - Lucy Rokach getting clumsily out of a limousine, Doyle Brunson's beach pictures, how to dress like Barry Greenstein, Rhowena Colclough shows off her new boyfriend.

Quite frankly, I am not qualified to make a judgement about Phil Ivey or Ram Vaswani. I don't know either of them - I've not even spoken to them. But literally hundreds of people on the internet forums, who are in the same position of ignorance as me, have called into question the character of both players. It's absolutely sickening.

I don't care who is right and who is wrong. Like many arguments, it's probably a question of perception, and both players may well be telling the truth as to their take on the situation. It's absolutely none of my business anyway - it's a private matter between Phil and Ram that they should have been allowed to settle behind closed doors - and it's none of your business either.