Posted by Dr Fro 11:17 PM
Without a doubt, my favorite poker show is High Stakes Poker on GSN. If you haven't seen it, set your Tivo and catch up. There have been about 6 or 7 episodes to date. The production quality is horrible. The announcers are worse. Even the microphones suck - you rarely can figure out what is going on when they argue with each other. But the poker is magnificent. As a guy that strongly prefers to play in cash games over tournaments, I strongly prefer to watch cash games on TV than to watch tournaments on TV.

Like most popular shows on television, the idea of poker on TV started in the UK (Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Weakest Link, Pop/American Idol, Big Brother, The Office...the list goes on). Always on the cutting edge, Channel Four had Late Night Poker. It was a cash game on TV featuring several pros, including the Hendon Mob.

When poker came to TV in the US, it was done, like most US shows, in the most over-the-top try-to-appeal-to-every-idiot-on-the-planet approach that we expect. So you get the WSOP where every minute they pan to 2 guys all-in agonizing over each street. That isn't poker. It is entertaining to people that don't play much poker. But poker it ain't.

So along comes High Stakes Poker. It has no flare. It is poorly produced. But damnit, it is real. And I find myself 100x more interested in this stupid show than any of its flashier competitors.

And that's all I got to say about that.

Last Sunday was the icing on a pretty crappy cake. I lost just as I had lost all weekend. All day Saturday I played (IMHO) good poker but just got beat. Sunday I mainly played good poker, but I can think of a few mistakes I made that still chaff my hide.

The first one is simple. In Omaha, I made Aces full of fives and when my opponent bet on the river, I knew he made Aces full of Kings. I should have laid down. I should have laid down. I should have laid down. But, I called his bet and declared, "I know you have AK and I am beat." Well, Retardo, if you knew you were beat, why did you call? Answer is, I was pissed off and didn't care about the relatively minor cost of the call. When you stop caring about the minor cost of the call, you should pack it up, because long-term success in poker is all about caring about the relatively minor cost of every decision you make.

The other mistakes are not as easy to describe in the short time I have between now and when I intend to go to bed, but they both come down to an incorrect read on a player. Junell would say that those aren't mistakes (while example #1 above he would say most definitely is a mistake) but are just the ugly side of an exercise in judgment. In other words, if I had a solid basis for my assumption, but I turned out to be wrong, I shouldn't beat myself up. Well, I think that what I am questioning here is how solid that basis really was. I am still working it through and if I have any enlightenment, I will surely post it.

Most of the night was my flopping top 2-pair and getting drawn out on the river in PL Omaha 8. You know, I have very little sympathy for people's bad beat stories. One (of many) reasons for that is that I don't have many bad beats. The reason for that is that I bet my balls off in NL HE and few people want to draw against me - they know it will be expensive.

PL Omaha 8 messes me up. First of all, being PL rather than NL, I can't bet as much. Second, with 4 cards rather than 2, my opponent often has enough outs to justify calling any pot-sized bet. Put this together and my biggest strength in NLHE (betting you the h--- out of my pot) is rendered powerless in PLO8.

And that's all I got to say about that

2 Comment(s):

Posted by  Junelli, at 11:10 PM, March 12, 2006  

I totally agree with you about High Stakes Poker. I've seen every episode, and think it's the best poker show on TV today. It's light years better than the WPT, which in my opinion, borders on unwatchable.

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Posted by  Johnnymac, at 12:00 PM, March 13, 2006  

I played cards on Saturday night at the Nazi's house with the WPT "Ladies Night 3" on in the background. Every single one of the guys I was playing with had already seen that episode multiple times and all of them made it pretty clear that they were regular watchers of the show. I think that tells you something about how juicy a game it was.

And THAT is why I love the WPT, even if I usually can't bear to watch it myself.

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