It’s an American poker tale as old as time… where Maurice Hawkins goes, controversy follows. Never has that been more the case than in the recent WSOP Circuit stop in Baltimore where multiple things happened to launch the controversial Circuit ‘legend’ into the spotlight again.
Hawkins Wins Main Event
The WSOP Circuit made its way to Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore for the first time since 2019, servicing an area of the country that is not a regular circuit hotbed.
For the most part, the series went off without a hitch, crowning several new ring winners as almost every one of the events was won by a player securing their maiden ring.
There ended up being a notable exception to this trend in the $1,700 Main Event as Hawkins won the 468-entry tournament to tie Ari Engel with 18 rings on top of the WSOP circuit ring leaderboard. This comes just a month after his 17th ring win in Pompano Beach.
It was also a remarkable sixth circuit Main Event title for him, something that no other player can come close to matching.
Antagonistic Winner
As always, Hawkins was extremely boastful after the win with some indignant quotes where he rubbed it in the faces of “haters” and declared himself the most consistent player that will ever live. This braggadocious style of celebration is nothing new with Hawkins as he will often say similar things, oftentimes to intentionally antagonize.
Social media was ablaze immediately after his win, almost universally reacting negatively to the 18th ring and also critiquing the coverage of it.
Hawkins has long been a polarizing figure in the circuit and usually considered a pariah despite his consistent success.
The reasons for this are mostly two-fold: Many players say he is an abrasive presence at the table and intimidates others with aggressive table talk or borderline angle-shooting. The other big reason is the accusations that he has not paid back many of his backers and that he owes many people in the poker world money.
Any social media post about him winning will be filled with comments about the backing situation, either with jokes or with serious anger about it.
It is worth noting that the online negatively around Hawkins does not quite correlate to the in person tournaments as he is often talking with players and seemingly getting along well. There are very few instances where the online vitriol has been turned against him in person.
The Wrong Hand Wins
Hawkins is usually controversial enough just on his own, but that was hardly the whole story this time around as a related incident which ended up stealing the spotlight and dominating poker circles for the following days. And as you might expect, this incident involved Hawkins directly.
During three-handed play in the Main Event, Divyam Satyarthi was all in for his tournament life with the Q♣10♥ against Maurice Hawkins who had the A♥3♠.
The flop was K♣2♠10♣ to give Satyarthi a pair and the lead, though the turn was the 4♣, which caused Hawkins to say he had more outs and call for his outs to come in. The river came the5♣.
A straight was announced, Satyarthi was briefly confused thinking his pair had held but then went to payouts realizing Hawkins had hit a straight on the river and the tournament moved on to heads-up play.
It was not until later that the report of the hand and the raw video revealed that Satyarthi had in fact had the better hand in the poker hand rankings with the queen of clubs giving him a flush.
“Fly on the Wall” Debate
The discussion about this hand erupted on social media once more and more poker people saw it. The exact details of this hand were debated and questioned. Did Hawkins see the flush and chose to remain quiet? Did the dealer muck too quickly? Why was the TD not monitoring the final table? Should someone else have spoken up?
All of these questions ultimately ended up being secondary. The debate lost contain and a larger macro one ended up stemming from it.
Despite not being relevant in this particular case, the big question out of this entire situation morphed into “Should the poker media point out an error if nobody else sees it”?
There was a wide array of opinions on this topic, with some strongly on the side of yes, while others strongly on the side of no.
Regardless this is likely to be a debate that continues on and one that does not have a definitive answer.