Sloe Times

So I've read quite a few takes on this and commented some my self on this that I finally decided to just write my own review of the July 6th broadcast of the $2,000 NLHE and $1,500 Stud events on ESPN. If you missed the original airing, ESPN will be re-airing them, for example the replay today is on ESPN2 at 4pm and 5pm CST respectively. Each segment is one hour covering 12 other tournaments leading up to the main event. I think it would be cool to play in the WSOP, but because I don't really have any dream or aspiration of doing so I honestly didn't know much about the event(s). I still don't claim to know much about them other than at least have a better understanding that the WSOP is really multiple tournaments and that explains how there are so many WSOP bracelets floating around.

Keeping in mind that the play was probably heavily edited to fit within the one hour block of air time I have to take back some of my previous comments regarding individual play. There were some real head scratcher moments in both events that just didn't make sense but I'm now leaning more towards a lack of context than I am at just plain bizarre behavior. The second general comment I have is that while it's certainly not Vince and Mike commenting, you would think that someone would prep these guys. My biggest beef with the commentary was the way they would mis-call the outs, presumably to make the situation seem more dire than it was. I mean come on people. I think this is an area that I'm still fairly weak in and even I was doing out and odds calculations on the fly better. I think the reason this is so disappointing is that because it's tape delayed you would think they would have taken the time to at least make sure their commentary was accurate, if they were trying to cover this live I might forgive them. Then again, probably not.

The first event was the $2,000 NLHE with the top prize of $400,000 and a bracelet. I only visually recognized Charlie Shoten and Shawn Rice, probably from WPT events aired on the Travel channel. From my perspective, the event as aired wasn't that interesting. There were some real questionable plays by James Vogl but I've given it some deep thought and decided that real play analysis just isn't going to work since the whole show is basically a highlight reel. So the reason someone like myself would watch, to see how the pros play and maybe learn something, is going to be dodgy at best. As a Texan, I have to say I was rooting for Rice to win it, especially after they did the segment contrasting the views of Vogl and Rice towards the game and their approach. I had to wonder what Vogl was even doing there with the attitude that was portrayed. Rice obviously presented a real reverence and love of the game. After that segment I was really hoping for a different outcome. The only other event of note during the show came towards the end when Rice and Vogl were heads up. At the end of that hand, you could have knocked Shawn Rice over with a feather. He wore the pain of that beat on his whole body, I honestly felt for the guy.

Event two was the $1,500 7-Card Stud tournament which seemed to consist of Men the Master, Chad Brown, and Ted Forrest despite the other players at the table. This episode was more entertaining than the NLHE event probably thanks to Men. In terms of play, I think Men's lack of respect for Chad Brown was his undoing. Men needling Chad seemed to make up more than half the show and ended when Men got busted out by Chad. The WTF? play of the game was Ted Forrest with his pair of twos. Again, I can only presume that through the marvels of video editing there was some context missing there that would allow the play to make sense but for me it looked like a pure "balls of steel" play.

In general, after watching this the thought I had was that this is ok entertainment but highly over rated. The other thought I had was that if the average Joe at home watching this decides that the game doesn't look so tough if these are the pros. It is no wonder that the major online sites and B&M casinos have seen a large influx of fish after watching events on ESPN and Travel. So while I don't appreciate the shows from a technical perspective, I suppose as long as they keep moving cash into the poker universe I'm glad they're there.