Brandi Hawbaker vs Chip Reese

I read Pauly's post about the Brandi Hawbaker suicide and what a disgrace it is that Chip Reese didn't get as much coverage, and I agree. So I decided to do some research.

I did a quick 3 month blog trend search and this is what I got:



IceRocket.com shows that Brandi got a total of 27 post in the last three months while
Chip got 368 with 4 blog posts per day on average. And that's after his death. Brandi only got a big spike in traffic this past weekend. That's understandable. And history will definitely show that Chip made a lasting impact on poker, whereas Brandi's story will be a sad sidetrack mini freakshow.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. Obviously people love gossip and drama and that's why Brandi has generated so much interest. It's a sad story, but it brings to light the negative aspects of this industry. We don't get to hear about the Reese's and Seidel's because that's boring. Instead we hear about the Belande's, Skalnsky's and Hawbaker's. It's the same reason that Perez Hilton is so huge. People love drama.

It's also the reason blogger dorks get all up in arms about the BBT3 dramz of late. If everyone played perfect poker and didn't type anything offensive in chat, who would want to read the benign posts and hand histories. It's voyeurism at it's finest. Why do people read Wawfuls? For the literary aspects of his posts? Or for his non-stop ranting abilities?

Controversies are much more interesting than agreements.

Plain vanilla sucks. Hot and spicy sells.