Whenever you have the top names of poker in a room together, you'll more often than not, enjoy watching it.
However, this is not poker in any traditional sense. The blinds are so high throughout this program that it has turned Texas Holdem mostly into a preflop game. In the dramatic sense, all-in preflops on television are cute to watch but in reality have turned the game into more of a game of black jack than a game of poker with very little emphasis into the psychological battles the players have with each other.
This contains little, if any, real poker knowledge. It's more of a made-for-television series to rake in some additional money from crazed poker fans than anything, but to their credit, it's still somewhat entertaining and I cannot deny the fact that I still want to know who wins at the end of each episode. Just don't think you'll learn much by watching someone go all-in under the gun with an A-T with five players to follow.
The structure of the tournament also alters the way each player handles each game. While each player wants to win, sometimes their goal becomes instead to just make fourth place and as such, much of the tension is lost once a player reaches his goal and relaxes, knowing that they no longer *must* compete to win. While not a bad thing necessarily, if you're watching to learn, ask yourself how often you'll be in a position where fourth place out of sixth would be good enough.
However, this is not poker in any traditional sense. The blinds are so high throughout this program that it has turned Texas Holdem mostly into a preflop game. In the dramatic sense, all-in preflops on television are cute to watch but in reality have turned the game into more of a game of black jack than a game of poker with very little emphasis into the psychological battles the players have with each other.
This contains little, if any, real poker knowledge. It's more of a made-for-television series to rake in some additional money from crazed poker fans than anything, but to their credit, it's still somewhat entertaining and I cannot deny the fact that I still want to know who wins at the end of each episode. Just don't think you'll learn much by watching someone go all-in under the gun with an A-T with five players to follow.
The structure of the tournament also alters the way each player handles each game. While each player wants to win, sometimes their goal becomes instead to just make fourth place and as such, much of the tension is lost once a player reaches his goal and relaxes, knowing that they no longer *must* compete to win. While not a bad thing necessarily, if you're watching to learn, ask yourself how often you'll be in a position where fourth place out of sixth would be good enough.
