really shouldn't bother you as much as it does

i fold there too and i'm one of the best pokah player in the world

Looks like a pretty reasonable fold to me. WTF can he beat on the river? How often do female players b/3b this turn and then shove the river with worse than 84?

strat talk in NVG always turns to total aids so let's just say kudos to her for owning a poker reg. Always enjoyable. (I would've called obv) lol nits itt.

how the title hasn't been changed to Finnished yet is just an example of this forum mods not being on the ball. shame

I agree with outsnoprob. Very easy fold. Only reason he tanked was 'cause he wasnt sure if miss finland was a real life button clicking donk. He decided she wasnt. He was wrong.

I think those time chips would really get on my nerves if I was the one getting stared down.

Miss Finland is stunning, but all things considered it is a coin flip between her and Kara Scott imho...

Couldn't take my eyes off all those pimples on her forehead.

I watch it too when it comes on youtube - and I think a lot of the criticism of it applies equally to any poker highlights show. But the hand discussed here, a multi-street semi-bluff with the clip emptied on the river, happened in spite of the structure of the show, not because of it. They play it as a 20BB deep SNG because they think ordinary people at home prefer watching pre-flop all-in flips run our over hands like this one. I think they are wrong about that.

No, we don't.

And the structure ALLOWED this hand to happen, because players are 100bb deep at the start of each heat.

mr miserable

both amazing, but im gonna have to go with miss finland(close though)

yeah, thank god it's not a deeper structure and we don't get to see 10x as many hands like this happening......

They might start off 100bb or whatnot but they're only that deep for an orbit or two then after that it's a superturbo shove fest the rest of the way which is kinda lame.

Hey James, thanks for taking part in these threads.

I mentioned this to Stapes separately, and I realize it is largely out of both your and his control, but allow me to cast a recommendation for formatting this show more like The Big Game and Poker After Dark in that we get several episodes worth of a given contestant's appearance in the game, rather than one highly edited one. (And I say that knowing full well that it would have meant stomaching more of the guy in a giraffe onesie.)

You said it best: the deeper starting stacks allowed for postflop maneuvering, which in turn allowed for a river bluff — and a great moment. Spreading the show over several days shows more of these situations. The true hook of Shark Cage comes in the bonus of watching a player either bluff or value-town an opponent (for which he/she is rewarded extra if successful).

But as is, condensing one SNG into a single episode only gets one or two of these instances. The last third of each telecast shows only short-stacked, AIPF action. This becomes a lose-lose proposition for your overall viewership. The casual fans who like the SharkCage gimmick lose out, because the Bluff/Value feature is taken away. And your more avid poker fans lose out, because we don't enjoy watching preflop shovefests.

Oddly, you could do an interesting merge of Shark Cage and the Big Game. Make it a cash game, only with a sizable bonus for successfully bluffing or value-betting the river. The qualifier has more of an incentive for river play because of the way the bonuses change the equity of a river decision.

I stand corrected - I don't know why I thought the first level was 25K/50K. And pleased to hear we have similar views on what's exciting to watch. What is the actual length of each level or does it work on one level per orbit? It does seem to get shallow pretty fast. Are there any plans to make it slower for series 2? If it went slower you might get more of the bust-out hands being coolers etc. rather than the pre-flop all-ins, and there would be more chance for hands like this to occur.

And by the way, I wish you a pleasant stay on your coming visit to central Europe.

Elsewhere James has written that they used this shootout format because a casual TV viewer can jump in and see the whole round play out in one go, rather than making a commitment to watching the same time every week (with classic tournament coverage if you miss an episode you miss seeing how one of the previous featured players who you liked busted out, and you don't know if he is still in or not). Also, they are just doing 9 episodes (or ten if there are two for the final table?) so with the poker after dark format they would only show two tables-worth of people. I think with the Shark Cage the unspoken message they are trying to get across is "Look what a wide and wonderful variety of people enjoy poker." - which is maybe missing from regular tournaments - so this format that lets them show you 48 different players works best for that.

I actually quite like the shootout format - I wouldn't object to a legit tournament running like this (you would play down to the final 36 like a regular tournament at the start of the festival then play out - with or without stacks equalized - the televised heats/final while the other events in the festival are still running - maybe a high roller could work like that).

Maybe if they reduced it to five handed it would save a bit of time, but I think slowing the blind increases would help because fewer of the bust-out hands would be AIPF if they were medium-stacked for longer and the bust outs would be spread more through the whole program as with final table coverage.

I think tournaments are easier for someone new to be into watching. I don't know why I should much care in a "fan" way if someone married to a princess increases their stack from 100K to 193K over the course of a cash game.

and the extra time chips. very solid hopefully this catches on worldwide

What's the big deal? I would not have an issue letting Ms Finland fluff me.

Ah, great point. I've had this conversation with others -- casual fans in general get into the tournament concept much more than the avid fans (the ratings for PAD probably bore that out). It also explains why casual fans tend to rate players on the TV-friendly measures of number of bracelets won, number of WPT final tables, etc.

I'll admit I've always preferred playing tournaments vs playing cash games, because the idea of winning an event, or placing higher than someone else, appeals much more to my competitive side than the notion of poker being one long, lifetime session.

Shootouts, with heats leading to a final, are even more accessible to the general public than a normal tournament because they work in the same way as "cup" competitions in European sports or playoffs in American sports, which they are already familiar with.

I haven't seen much PAD, but I saw the whole one where Doyle, luckychewey, Dwan, Weisner and Obrestad play an SNG. I liked it that they don't seem to cut many hands (I suppose they mostly edit out the tanking), but I was willing to make the commitment to watch all that in one go on youtube at work, whereas a normal person who has not yet ever deposited on a site (the target market for most of this) running into poker on television might not want to plan a month of Thursdays around PAD.

tl;dr agreement
Me too, and that other people feel like this was definitely visible during my foray onto the Pokerstars playmoney tables. It bothered me that every time I open the PS cashier, it showed my playmoney balance at 800 or so chips, a constant reminder that I was a lifetime loser at playmoney stakes. I first tried to get it up playing tournaments - I think I started with a 3-table SNG. Obviously I was heavily +playEV but I actually found it wasn't a pushover because people were really trying their best to win - the tournament still has meaning even without money. So after that I sat at a few NLHE cash tables and jammed all in for 100B every time I had a premium hand and got over 1000 chips pretty quickly. Without the financial interest the cash game loses all meaning and all resemblance to real poker. For a fan at home watching a poker show, they also don't have a personal financial interest it is just entertainment and I think tournaments make more play-sense.

I noticed that too. English is definitely not her first language and not sure how much of it she can speak. Maybe also something to do with the way the show was edited.

seeing as this thread has veered off into what we think of Sharkcage, ill say that I think its got better and better and great seeing Pro's out of their comfort zone/drinking, eg Mike Mcdonald put in the tank vs Quali, Jason Merc vs rugby guy - jason gets value towned - was a great episode

Pretty hard to watch a fake show. Is this how desperate we are for poker on tv that we'll watch fake situations and fake reality?

how do you fake a poker game?