The Poker Moth

As mentioned earlier, there’s not been much poker played round these parts of late. I had intended to get back to the virtual felt today, but a truly spectacular hangover put paid to that plan. So, in lieu of anything else to write about, it’s time for another Pokertube review. It’s coming. Any second now. Wait for it…

Christ alive, my head hurts.

SO. Whereas the last PT Review was about a gimmicky lifestyle show, this is a proper, competitive offering, which comes in two parts. There’s the Aussie Millions main event, of course, but that’s no longer considered enough in the modern poker broadcasting era, so we also get two episodes devoted to a HSP-aping side game. I’m fairly sure that this will become standard practice in poker broadcasting soon enough; tournaments are messy things where you can end up with a final table full of unknowns, so it behooves the networks to set up a side game where they can fill the seats with big names to get some guaranteed sleb-poker action.

As it happens, they needn’t have bothered in this instance, because the final table of the main event is considerably more interesting than the side game. Not only do we get a decent smattering of name players at the FT, but the action is more entertaining; the cash game is rather quiet and cagey, and, without spoilering too much, the main focus is the obligatory amateur, a Japanese businessman who seems to unsettle the assembled star names, leading to a tense encounter. It’s not terrible viewing, but there’s none of that HSP magic here.

Still, that’s just two episodes of moderately tedious poker; the eight episodes covering the Main Event are much, much more interesting. I won’t go into details, but the producers have done a good job of filling those eight shows with watchable poker.

There’s also some decent commentary; Barry Tompkins (TV Guy) and Michael Konik (Cardplaying Guy) do the honours, and they do a better job than most of their contemporaries. That said, that’s not so hard: I could train a Cabbage Patch Doll to be a better poker commentator than most. But the worst criticisms I can make of Bazza and Mike are fairly pathetic; Tompkins can’t say “Aussie” properly, and Konik is obsessed with the word “prohibitive”. The former is grating, the latter plain weird, but neither’s causing too much trouble.

The main irritation comes from the ESPN-style presentation (in fact, this may well be an ESPN production; if it’s not, the producers have gone out of their way to ape the WSOP broadcast format). You know the form – you see two hands played, then it’s away to a celebrity montage, where Phil, Mike, Dan and co line up to tell us all about the longest session of poker they’ve played, or to share their thoughts on a lesser known player, or (the very worst part) take part in a regular feature where they get to guess the meaning of obscure Australian dialect phrases. Then, it’s back to the featured table for two more hands of boring old poker.

Don’t get me wrong – I like these guys. They’re entertaining people. But do I really need to know whether Gavin Smith can guess the meaning of the word cackleberry? Turns out the answer’s no. Sorry, that’s wrong. The answer’s FUCK NO.

But buried in between all of that guff is a superb poker tournament; if you’ve exhausted all the High Stakes Poker excellence that Pokertube has to offer, this is a pretty good substitute.

Aussie Millions 2007
Aussie Millions Cash Game