Tao of Poker

Poker on TV

I finally caught the first episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown and let me say that it was a Joker Letdown. Just like a cheesey Hollywood flick, I left unsatisfied and puzzled to why I invested an hour of my time watching that crap. At least I didn't have to fork over $10 to see Affleck's latest Hollyweird stink bomb. So why did I watch it after my brother and Jerry both said it was kinda lame? Oh yeah, I forgot... it's because I love poker so much. My brother was tooling on David Schwimmer from Friends for staying in on too many hands and betting when he should have been folding. I felt bad from him when he lost on pocket Aces... he flopped a set and went all in on a guy with a flush draw. Yeah he lost to the guy from Sex in the City, Willie Garson, who played wild and ten times looser than the day-after stool sample of the guy who won last summer's Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. Affleck looked pissed when he got knocked out (while his ex Gwyneth Paltrow got knocked up...) because he probably thought he was going to win the entire contest. Gotta love actors and their egos. And I laughed everytime Willie Garson kept making fun of Mr. J. Lo in his interviews. His sarcasm is subtle but you can tell that he wanted to take Affleck down. Perhaps maybe he knew he was not as good as Affleck and the only way to beat him was to be aggressive and play like a drunken sailor playing Hold'em in Vegas for the first time? I'll mostly likely skip the next episode with the folks from the West Wing. I don't watch that show.

Bravo is a strange channel for poker to be aired. It's geared towards independent films and what not. Haley and her friends watched Celebrity Poker (I think because they heard someone from Sex in the City was playing and they love that show) and now they all want to learn how to play. Haley is an actress and we've had some interesting discussions about the similarities with bluffing and acting. I'll definitely get into more details in the future and try to get her to write a few things up. She'd given me an a book or two on acting and I've been thumbing threw a few pages. I've even considered sitting in on a few of Haley's acting classes and picking the brains of her instructors to gain some insight into sculpting a stoic poker face. My curiosity has grown. I'm definitely interested in the psychology behind bluffing and reading bluffs in No Limit... an aspect of poker that I the need to improve in, especially my speech patterns, chip placement, expressions, and hand gestures.

I also watched some of the WPT on the Travel Channel. More celebrities. I think it was the Celebrity Free Roll Invitational. Layne Flack beat Lakers owner Jerry Buss. That was the first time I saw the WPT. I know, I might be the only one in America who doesn't get the Travel Channel! Foxwoods airs episodes on several of thier many TVs in the poker room, but without sound. Until recently, I could not get the Travel Channel from my cable provider... Cablevision. They are a bunch of first rate wankers. The suits who run Cablevision are mindless lackeys to the Dolans, also own the NY Rangers and my beloved NY Knicks. Both teams emulate their owners and management, by putting out overpriced, second rate products year after year. I also did not get to watch Yankees games for a full season because Cablevision refused to carry the YES Network after a long fued with Yankees owner George Stienbrenner. It's insane. Rich men arguing about money with other rich men. Alas, I went off on a rant here, let me get back on the path and say that I'm happy that I'll finally get to see the WPT on the Travel Channel. Which is good, because I'm sick of repeats of old tournaments. Even people I know that don't play or like poker are telling me they've seen the same episodes of the 2003 World Series of Poker on ESPN.