So in 2010 (the year of this thread) I rented an apartment near Nice for a week. (Nice, and the surrounding area is awesome btw, but that's not really relevant to this thread.)
One day I was at the Nice airport to pick up a friend who was coming to visit me for a few days and as I was waiting for him, this guy who looked rather familiar came rushing out of arrivals.
It was Antonio Esfandiari and, as I later realized, he was probably there for the Partouche poker tour final which was starting about then.
He rushed out of the gate and up to two guys who were waiting for him and started asking them how he could call the US collect. He was very insistent on calling the US asap and since mobile phones were a thing even back then, I remember wondering why he wouldn't just use one of those but international calls were really expensive back then and even more so from mobile, so I guess he wouldn't have enough for the buy-in if he'd used that.
I remember thinking that he probably wanted to call Laak because seeing Antonio without Phil was kinda weird and so that was the only option I could think of for someone he was so desperate to get in touch with after a long flight.
I did consider going up to him and have a chat, but with him being so busy with international calls I thought I'd better not. This probably would've been a better story if I had, but there you go - it is what it is.
Anyway - 7+ years later and Esfandiari and Laak are two of very few known and respected poker celebs of that era who haven't been later been outed as cheating scumbags (as has the Partouche poker tour and pretty much everything and everyone else we liked/loved back then) so I vote we call it a draw between them.