The poker world is a funny place sometimes. Everybody enters with the dream of making it big and that doesn’t just apply to the players. The player representation game is full of people dreaming about nice cars, big houses and a life of luxury.

Over the last week the poker media have been subjected to two such individuals who have tried to generate some publicity for their fledgling agencies. The first was Oliver Tse trying to get the media involved in a prop bet with him regarding the results of one of his former clients, Gabriella Hill. As far as anybody can tell Tse sent a “personalized” email to every single person on media row offering the following wager:

I will accept a $10 prop bet from each writer who will be physically at the Rio on Sunday, with the following payouts:

1. I will pay you $10 if Gabriela still has chips at dinner break on June 7
2. I will pay you $100 if Gabriela were to make the money (i.e. finishing in the top 9% of field to cash at the WSOP Ladies Event)
3. I will pay you $1000 if Gabriela were to make the final table on Tuesday June 9 (9 players, or less if double elimination were to occur at bubble)

So what Tse has asked people in the media to give Tse the chance to bet against his former client as a means of revenge. For what exactly Tse isn’t saying, only hinting at in a way that only Oliver Tse can do:

I am offering this prop bet to make the following point: my agency will only work long term with squeaky clean ambassadors of poker and I expect my clients to conduct themselves to the highest standard when they are away from the poker table or off camera.

I will remove clients, no matter how famous they are and how much media exposure they are able to generate, from my agency’s active roster for conduct issues, including but not limited to committing acts of interference with my other client’s business transactions, i.e. backstabbing.

Now those are Tse’s words, quoted directly from the email, and not mine. For Tse to get up on his high horse about people with squeaky clean images and then do something that essentially slanders a player is paramount to Russ Hamilton calling somebody a cheater for sneaking a peak at their neighbors cards. Tse currently represents only Jerry Yang and Luis Velador and you have to wonder that since he’s apparently willing to disparrage clients that he deems unworthy what sort of future business potential exists for his company?

The other agent to emerge just this week was Dan Frank of Top Set Player Management. He’s brand new to the poker agent game and made the rounds through media row here at the WSOP introducing himself on Saturday while promising that there would be a big event involving his company the following day shortly after the Ladies Event began.

A quick look at the Top Set website lists only a few current clients and the one that most poker fans would recognize is Paul Snead, the player Tiffany Michelle called the clock on during the 2008 WSOP Main Event. Based on the way he was pitching the event you got the feeling this wasn’t something that he’d first cleared with WSOP officials. Jeffrey Pollack isn’t a guy that angers quickly – at least not in a public manner – but he’s very protective of the WSOP brand and its history. Anybody looking to upstage the Series or the Commish is probably asking for trouble.

Right on schedule Sunday afternoon Frank, with Snead in tow, led a group of models all wearing Top Set tank tops, short skirts and high heels around the Amazon Room, taking great efforts to be seen by everybody in the room, until they arrived at Table 93 where they stopped and dropped of Elma Gilman at her seat.

Who’s Elma Gilman you ask? No clue. And the Googles didn’t know either.

What did this have to do with anything? Not sure. As a PR or marketing stunt it was a swingandamiss. Moments after Pollack had every woman in the room give the Shuffle Up and Deal kick-off to symbolize that the Ladies Event began to every woman in the room in came Team Top Set pronouncing that the moment actually belonged to them. Apparently they’re bigger than the WSOP and more important than the bracelet that 1,060 women in the room were playing for.

As anybody holding top set is bound to think, that was quite the flop.

Not all poker player reps are this disconnected with how the industry works. There are good people doing good things and respecting the game and the players and they’re reaping the benefits from it. More importantly they’re respected by the game and the people within it. After their stunts this week the same can’t be said for Tse or Frank.