Why I Never Finished My Brandi Hawbaker Interview

I saw IGGY's post last week about a new 2+2 thread on Brandi Hawbaker, and I've seen Waffles updating a Cliff's Notes version about the thread. Let me tell you about my own interactions with Brandi, whose phone number in my cell phone always causes me to stop and pause.



Like many, I was intrigued by all of the rigamoro on 2+2 over a year ago with this new girl on the scene. Her name was Brandi Hawbaker or Brandi Rose, she'd been the chipleader at a big Bellagio event only to crash and burn. When the strange 2+2 posts started, many authored by herself, it was hard to figure out if she was even a real person or some cyber-creation.

I was given her phone number and conducted an interview with her over the phone in May of last year. She'd escaped Vegas, she said, and wasn't sure exactly what would happen next. She proclaimed poker greatness, rattling off her stellar results that were to be found nowhere by me, telling me about dark people who had entered her life, about how she'd seen the light.

As I started to listen to the interview and transcribe it, I took my keys off the keyboard and simply listened to it once. I never typed it up and still have the tape here on my desk. Why? I simply didn't feel right about it. I assumed I knew where the truth was in her answers, where the grey area was, where the stretch lines in the truth were, but what was the point? Was there any redeeming value in any of this, to be honest?



Fast forward a couple of months. I'd read the posts about her tutelage under David Sklansky, had seen her at the Rio walking with him, introduced myself to her, gave her a hello every now and then when I would see her. I told her I'd had some problems with the interview and needed to sit down with her again, and she was nothing but nice and gracious to me. She played several events in the WSOP, including the heads-up tourney (see above, one of the first players out of the event--her chips on right).

I didn't know enough about her play and her training with Sklansky to have an opinion about whether the several times that she sat in the Amazon Room were worthwhile. Jennifer Harman had cashed once in the 2007 WSOP, and Brandi had her first cash in a $2k NLHE event. Was all of this lol-blonkaments anyways? Did all of the pot odds and changing gears and position and all of that, was all this one big luckbox anyways? Maybe she was some wunderkid in the mold of Anna or Annette.

The missing piece in all of this for me was that I'd never heard about all the hard work she'd put in, about all the online and live tourneys she'd played in preparation for these big buy-in events.



I never reached back out to Brandi, although I tried to help her as she had her health problem during one event (she'd headed off to the hospital and came back to nurse her stack, IV bandage still in her arm). Maybe I should have. Maybe I should now. Is there any redeeming value in picking apart lives who are more screwed up than your own? Obviously, a huge part of our country think there is (see Britney et al).

Maybe I'll transcribe that tape one day, listen to it again, or even just put it here for anyone to listen to. Maybe.