BREAKING: Brunson Beer Pong Is Rigged!

The bracket for Brunson Beer Pong came out Wednesday evening, and a few hours later, text messages began flying between players believing they might be witnessing some serious malfeasance in the pairings.

@JimShipley wrote:

How rigged was the beer pong seeding you fuck! You\’re in the effin ladies bracket. Fuller and I play last yrs champion if we win?

From there the evidence was mounting. 2+2 posters did a statistical analysis and noticed discrepancies that stretched far beyond the realm of variance:

Facing all these allegations and (screams for a life-ban from poker), @Pokerati admitted \”Indeed, there absolutely was no random draw involved! But I\’m not sorry … I\’d do it again!\” In the meantime Beer Pong officials and Pokerati Corporate have invited the Kahnawake Gaming Commission to investigate.

Perhaps pressuring me into this ethical compromise, John Katkin had to back out as my partner, and that left me with untested PokerNews young-gun Drew Flynn as his replacement. though I think my team actually improves with the addition of a player under 30, I just couldn\’t trust the results in this situation to a truly fair and honest game.

As details of the scandal have come to light, doctored pairings revealed:

• I purposely put my team up against two presumably hot-and-young Hogs & Heifers bartenders, figuring it\’s no-lose even if we do lose.
• If we do win, there\’s a chance Team Pokerati\’s next match will be against Ty Stewart and Brian Balsbaugh … I\’ve wanted to chat with Stewart pre-WSOP for a while now, but just hadn\’t gotten to it. Plus, I think they will likely be weak drinkers.
• If they lose, it would be Tiffany Michelle / Lisa Parsons … again, two attractive women bouncing wet balls. And if Team Pokerati is out after Round 1 … then it\’s a four-girl free-for-all! Good for TV!
• There\’s only one other two-lady team, Melanie Weisner / Vanessa Ping. I purposely matched them up in the first round against my poker-newsbuddy @FtrainPoker because he has a thing for petite Asian girls … and Ping seemed my best bet there.
• Was gonna put him against the Hogs team of Luci & Pedro … because I wanted to throw at least one chick his way, and even if she weren\’t his type, just seemed like there\’s a good chance Pedro might be gay and that could work for Ftrain, too.
• Put this year\’s favorites of Todd Brunson and Brett Jungblutt against a Hogs Team in the first round, because these folks play a lot of beer pong and make for a really tough match right from the start.
• Intentionally put Team Erick/Erica against Chad Brown and Vanessa Rousso in round 1 … because they\’re all make for such dern cute poker couplings. Will be good for video and help capture the chick-flick audience.
• There was a typo in the spelling of @AlCantHang\’s name, and thus I put Matt Stout and his partner \”Allen Rasah\” against host Hoyt Corkins … well not sure why, just because.
• In a match-up between Allie Prescott / Shaun Deeb vs. Rick Fuller / Jim Shipley … all these guys are good trash-talking buds, so again figured good for TV … and because they talk so much trash let\’s see how they do in a bracket loaded with tough beer-pong semi-pros from Team Hogs, including last year\’s champion.

\”There\’s actually more to the scandal than that,\” Pokerati editor DanM admitted. \”A lot of thought went into how to create the best scenarios regardless of who has the better beer pong skills.\”

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, Doyle Brunson happened to back out of his own Beer Pong Invitational 3 the day before the bracket was to be released. Supposedly he just had some travel and/or health matters to attend to, but word on the street is that he might have caught wind of the conspiracy and did not want his name to be associated with such shenanigans. Todd\’s name being sullied by all this was fine, though.

Click here to see the 32-team single elimination bracket for the BBPI 3 …