Outside of using a series of terrible puns or stumbling through an argument meant to explain how this is all very normal, there is no way to say this other than just saying it:
Some very wealthy poker players are planning to slap each other in the face with flour tortillas, and they are doing it, of course, for the kind of money that would make most people blush brighter than a tortilla-slap in the face.
Late Friday on the island nation of Cyprus, well-known poker high rollers Tony G, Rob Yong, Faraz Jaka, and Phil Nagy announced the first-of-its-kind poker Slap-ellite. The contest will pit the four--dare we say--grown adult men in a contest of brute force, iron will, cool composure, and unleavened flatbread.
The Luxon Pay MPP Tortilla Slap-ellite sets the four players against each other in a modified version of the summer TikTok craze in which contestants fill their mouths with water and slap each other with tortillas until one contestant can no longer hold their water. The challenge began as a sort of 1970s Newlywed Game meets 2022 social media insanity game between romantic couples. Before the end of the summer, Hollywood stars were slapping each other with food.
The four steel-faced poker players in question have traveled with the rest of the high-rolling circuit to Cyprus where a series of professional poker tournaments is already underway. As will happen from time to time at a tournament, the--we repeat here--grown adult men decided they needed more action and conceived the Slap-ellite.
For the uninitiated, poker players often compete in less expensive poker tournaments known as satellites to win their way into higher-dollar events. Saturday, the winner of the Slap-ellite will earn an entry into a $10,000 6-Max High Roller Turbo tourney. Put another way, the man who can hold water in his mouth the longest while getting repeatedly slapped with part of a burrito will have the opportunity to win hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, all completely normal.
While it is tempting to shake our fists at clouds and kick the kids off our tired old man lawns, it's worth noting that this Slap-ellite presents as just the most modern outrageous contest among famous gamblers, a tradition that goes back many decades of quick-wittedness among gangsters, angle-shooting among friends, and ultimately embarrassing phsyical contests.
Negotiations over the rules and the potential addition of contestants are expected to continue until the event begins Saturday, because no one wants to compete in an event of such prestige without rules.
That just wouldn't be dignified.
