Thursday, December 16, 2010

NBC's "Poker After Dark" is Cheating You With Bullshit Just As Much As GSN's "High Stakes Poker!

The Poker Cheats Cheating You!
NBC's answer to high-stakes poker television, mainly to the Game Show Network's flagship poker show "High Stakes Poker," was "Poker After Dark," which premiered back in 2007. Just Like "High Stakes Poker," "Poker After Dark" is full of shit and cheating you out of your televsion time. The basic premise for "Poker After Dark" is that on each weekly episode the players buy in for $20,000 each and then contend for a winner-takes-all $120,000 first prize. This is all a crock, even though there is a lot less money supposedly changing hands between the players than on "High Stakes Poker."

Evidence: Doyle Brunson has played Ace-Queen against three players on the show. But Brunson, who really is the king of poker cheats, says he refuses to play that same AQ starting hand in real money games not televised. And apparently he does not generally play that hand.

There are also just way too many hands where more money is thrown into the pot pre-flop on bad hands, with several top pros involved at the same time. This kind of action is just not kosher and is practically never seen at the WSOP, nor in its side cash games.

Moreover, there is an all-in move every two episodes and they get called a much higher percentage of the time than in real brick and mortar cash games, solid evidence that this is all full of shit. It seems that there is the pressure for all-in-and-call because of the time constraint of the show. After all, since an episode is approximately forty-five minutes of poker time, there are only around forty-five hands dealt in two episodes comprising ninety minutes. In REAL poker games when money is REALLY exchanged between pro players, these players show lots more discipline and don't just call any all-in bet. Many players can sit hours at a time without calling a single all-in bet.

Doyle Brunson has said that he refuses to play AQ because it "bumps into too many problems." Meanwhile, he plays 10-2 because they were the winning cards on a WSOP final table he won.

PLEASE...gimme a break!