Poor Uncle Norm. All he’s done for years is grace the community with his witty sports-comms style bantz, then he makes one poorly phrased “compliment” and lots of us turn on him with the teeth.

There is the group of people who think this was obviously a joke/compliment, and the group who think he was being a bitch.

I’m in the 2nd group, I grew up around drag-queens and I am very confident I can spot reads, snark-smiles and bitch-compliments from 500 paces.
The difference between Norm and a working drag-queen is that he’s now trying to pretend he was being nice and a drag-queen would never back-down from her bitchery.

Embrace your bitch, Norm, it’s far more attractive than the modern fashion of backing-down from who you are because a few people on the internet don’t like it.

Norm Chad is a bitch, it’s no surprise to me, the media world is a very bitchy world.
I defend his right to be a bitch, and WSOP has paid him for quarter of a century, so of course he’s gonna Queen for their team!
Is he allowed to bitch-out and remain un-scathed by some pointed reads? No, fuck you. Drag-in or Drag-out, Sir, the library is open.

We should all be very bored of any level of public figure who says what s/he wants on a social platform and then backtracks it when they get pointed out, but that’s not what I want to bang on about today.

I want to talk about the life of live poker event organisers, to possibly explain why a lot would never find the format of Norm’s “compliment” complimentary.
I’ll drop in screenshots of Norm’s tweet that seemed to fire people up (and a previous one that kinda undermines his later claim that “wow guys I was being nice”).

Putting on a Live Poker event is a massive job, and the bigger the event, the bigger the job for more people.
When you walk into a poker event the size of the WPT at the Wynn, you are looking at months of planning from a lot of passionate people.

People have stayed late, missed weekends with families and had awkward arguments with bosses to get that event to what you see when you sit down for your first hand of the Main.

Even at a venue like the Wynn, (clearly understands the value of poker players and built an internal financial model and strategy around including them) unless we are referencing the highest value cash players, the venue-owner interest in poker players is not relative to the poker rake revenue stream.

The venue-owners do not care about the toughest poker customers to deal with as a live-event customer service team, the value-hunting regs; the same group of people most likely to lambast a live event online when the organisers do make mistakes or cheat guarantees or similar.

This means that the poker-passionate people in the venue service team are the ones who focus on the details.
The venue owners are happy for it go ahead and get the F+B and pit-gaming profits, but they want everything poker to be as resource-effective as possible.

Live events aren’t just the fun stuff like working on tournament structures and a full series schedule, or hanging out with the players on the last day when things are calming down.
It’s planning the logistics of tables and dealers and staff dinner breaks.
Arguing with marketing about what banner goes where.
Making sure customer and staff spaces are slip/trip/fall and fire-safe and not breaking gaming occupancy regs.
Dealing with liability insurance.
Writing all T+Cs for any promo ideas and then endlessly arguing with a legal guy who doesn’t understand poker.
Being the least important in the majority of senior-team meetings, despite being directly responsible for more customers in a shorter time frame than any other HoD.
Having everything that’s important to your event de-prioritised by other departments until you are just banging it out yourself at midnight because you absolutely will have it for your players.
Not sleeping the week before the event because there is too much to do.
Not sleeping during the event because there is too much to do.
Not sleeping after the event because there is too much reporting and analysis to do to prove the value of the next one.
Knowing that however hard you work, however comprehensively you planned, there will probably be something you forgot in front of one of the toughest retail segments anyone can ever deal with – The mid-stakes poker reg.
And on top of that, it’s not particularly well-paid. I would hope some of the Wynn/WPT team are well-above industry average, but it’s still not gonna be anywhere near the hourly Norman Chad likely expects for turning up and delivering very gentle comedy before sleeping in a 5* hotel room he didn’t pay for.

Don’t get me wrong, working live-poker events when you love the game is a privilege, and I suspect most people who do it would agree.
The hard work is worth it, when people have a great time at your event. They don’t have to say anything, you look around, you feel the vibe, and you know you did it.

I didn’t go to the Wynn for WPT, because it’s way outside my recreational budget (of course it is, I work in poker), but the player reports are exceptionally strong about the quality of the event, so I think the vibe rating is in and it’s a WIN FOR WYNN.

However, when a well-known celebrity in the niche makes a sarky comment about your event, it’s gonna hurt.
Yes, there might be a bit of an oversensitivity to this comment, after all, it was just a bit patronising and snarky, he didn’t aggressively say they were shite.

However, Norm actively tagged the CEO of WPT and the Tournament Director. He pointed at Matt Savage’s team’s hard (and expert) work and effectively said “bless you for trying”, when let’s be honest, a live event created by Norman Chad would be a disaster, because as far as he knows you turn up and sit in a comms chair or a poker seat.

Whilst stream commentators are a valuable part of poker, they are not vital to the glory of the game itself.
The bits that are vital to live poker are owned and delivered, usually with great pride, by a large, varied and most-often unknown team.
Some of the most important parts of live poker are invisible unless you get them wrong.

When Norman makes “compliments” like he did, it’s not just to the CEO of WPT and the Event Director, it’s to their whole damn team. If I was junior floor and came off the back of five 16hr days and saw my boss Matt Savage laughing at that comment, I’d feel pretty fucking salty, so Matt was right to not take it lightly in my opinion.

Norman’s tweet was a dig. If he meant it as a compliment, then he should accept he worded it poorly and as a result it came over as a dig and not be running everywhere with “wow, the hate guys”.
It’s the same thing we are seeing from politicians and celebrities all over the west “oh well I’d better say I was joking because otherwise ‘the online mob’ will cancel me, the bastards”.
We’re just being complimentary, Norm, it’s poorly worded, that’s all.

A person cannot grind a media career out of mild sarcasm and then expect a tweet like that to be taken as a genuine comment. He’s not a 12year old girl who doesn’t realise how people read things on the internet, he’s a smart, media-savvy adult, and I think it’s a bigger insult to him to imply he didn’t know what he was doing than to say he was being bitchy.

For those asking for allowances for Chad, I say nil points. My allowances go to the massive team at the Wynn who’ve made an event happen that appears to have blown away the players and then are expected to take drag-queen snark on the chin from one the most famous faces of our niche world.

I support the oversensitive in this case, because grafting to fuck for weeks and then getting bitchjizz from a guy who only knows how to turn up for a stream on Day1 is some raw BS.
The only people who get to be negative, snarky or bitchy about a live poker event are players who have given their own time and money to play and feel let down by organisers.

Well done WPT for impressing so many players and sticking to your word on the guarantee. Class Act, my eyeballs are on your careers page.

And WSOP, gurrrrl, come get your commentator!
Bitch! She done took her heels off and be climbing on tables in her panties.