http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_%28TV_series%29

Second episode aired tonight. Pretty tedious show overall, but it's worth skimming through to watch Dustin Hoffman at work and a few hilarious poker scenes :>

In the 2nd ep there's three hands shown, all cash hands in a casino between hero and middle aged asian guy:

1) We see action on river of 6d 8s 7s 3d Ks board, Hero tank leads 2k into nfi how much, villain starts chatting and mocking hero for playing out of his normal stakes, hero calls time, villain waits for 10 seconds left and shoves (As 10s), hero snaps 10-9o and shows first for some reason, gets slowrolled :>

2) Catching the action again on the river, on 10h Kc Qc 9c 4s. Hero is facing an all-in bet (overbet?) and hero-calls Q8hh, loses to set of 10s hahaha.

3) So on the flop this time, Ac Qd 8d - and the floor supervisor is announcing to the entire room that for this hand only, by the agreement of both remaining players in the hand, more money is being brought into play hahahaha. So hero has gone out to his car to get 25k in cash, they stick it all in. Villain has top two, Hero cannot *believe* his luck with KK. Gold.

yea he is legit like the worst poker player ever shown on TV. obviously it's intentional but goddamn. is it possible to be +EV at horse betting despite being such a terrible tilting monkey degen at poker? well, is it ever possible?

in the 3rd hand i thought he'd at least have like JTdd so he'd actually be *gambling* instead of figuring he's drawing to 2 outs cause hard to fold a pair of kings in 2500bb pot (assuming they're still playing 10/20).

also are there really any casinos that allow for open stakes?

I hope to catch this episode somewhere. My free months of all movie channels with my sign up expired last week and I almost kept it just to watch this show, but didn't think it was worth it.

Was hoping for more poker and lifestyle type stuff, but the first episode is just a dead on degen story. I have buddies that are serious into handicapping and they dragged me in a bit and while it didn't stick with me the race track is really like that with degens wearing Reebok pumps and a 1994 World Series hat and wrap around Oakleys (pretty much any Vegas sports book style).

Even though I hoped for more poker, I expected the outrageous draws or hollywood boards and life roll busto type of story lines

omg so bad, tv poker shows that arnt just high stakes cash games can all seriously die forever +infinity

i think it has to be part of the point of the show how bad the hero is at poker while being such a good horse handicapper. poker is just a massive 'lifeleak' for him, i mean everytime we saw him at the casino he looks extremely tired/drunk/tilted. we gotta give michael mann some credit. that being said i'm only giving the show a few more episodes max cause it just sucks.

Terry George (Hotel Rwanda) directed the second episode, not Mann (Mann is exec producer and directed the first ep). Episode 2 was way better than Ep 1, and it's David Milch (Deadwood) writing the stuff, so I'm sticking with it, even if I don't think it's great just yet. It might get there!

I did think the poker scenes (there's more coming based on the teaser reel they showed after the pilot aired) were pretty well done. They paint a great picture of a typical calling station fish in way over his head against the solid reg - I love the call with Q8 on the KQJ94 board. While the 'hero' did miracle a win in the biggest pot, you can just sense a tragic spiral coming soon.

Yes, one of the characters even verbalizes the point that Jerry is a hell of a handicapper, but a fish at the poker table (can't remember the exact wording). While the poker scenes don't pass the smell test for 2p2'ers, I think they're among the best you will see in popular entertainment. If some degen won $675,000, people find it odd that he would donk off $7K making light calls against a crazy Asian who he thought was pushing him around? You can probably see stuff like that at the Hustler 5/10 game every weekend.

Actually, I found the poker scenes fairly compelling, from the Jamie Gold-style needling ("I made my flush on the river, Jerry. I wouldn't lie to you, I respect your game too much"), to the slow roll with the nut flush, to the floor call after the racist comments. I mean, the Asian guy wasn't eating his Oreos in a different way, FFS.

need to catch episode two, but yeah, sounds about right . (win big in your area of expertise , be a fish elsewhere).

Sounds like the fish that every pro gambler has made their money off of in history. The guy playing with OPM (wife, mom, government, settlement) or easy money (lotto, crime)

But how hard is it to get a consultant for this type of stuff. Nobody's that spewy, are they? I've played with bad degenerate players but that's pretty ridiculous IMO. They should have gotten Norm McDonald as a technical consultant or something.

I'm pretty sure they DID have a poker consultant for a show that big and I don't think he did a terrible job

it may make sense how bad he plays, the bad guy explicityly tells that 10/20 is not his usual game. i dont believe he can beat 1/2 either.

The poker scenes were great for reasons some have already stated itt and they fit right in with the storyline/real life. Show is ok for now but I feel like it's going to move slow Hell on Wheels-style and get a LOT better toward the end of the season. I'm in for the full ride and can't wait for more eps.

*popcorn*

In re: poker consultants...

This thread reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend's roommate, who played for the UC Davis baseball team. He hated Bull Durham, The Natural, Major League, etc. (For non-Americans and/or non-baseball fans, these are generally considered the best baseball movies of the 1980s).

I was surprised by this, given that he was not just a baseball fan but a player good enough to play college ball. His reasons were simple: the baseball looks bad. He could never get past the fact that Nuke, oh he of the "million-dollar arm" in Bull Durham, threw the ball only slightly harder than a good Little Leaguer.

Until that conversation, I always forgave such misgivings in sports movies. Ever since, I can't help but notice when the quality of play doesn't measure up to the level the movie depicts. In the past few decades, I suspect that a) many viewers underwent such an epiphany and b) the industry became wise to this. The depictions of sports have improved greatly in past years. As such, the Amanda Wurlitzer character from the Bad News Bears reboot looks more like a pitcher than any of the White Sox pitchers in Eight Men Out. The high school kids in Friday Night Lights look more skilled than the Gale Sayers character in Brian's Song.

When it comes to our game, there are more poker-savvy viewers in any given audience than ever before, and I'm not limiting this scope to the superfans, diehards or grinders who frequent a poker forum. Telecasts of the WSOP and WPT have raised the overall poker IQ to the point that even casual fans snicker at the triteness of poker scenes (I'll never forget a co-worker, who barely follows poker, warning me not to see Casino Royale for this reason.)

I haven't seen this show, so I can't opine about it. But overall, I get pretty tilted when TV and movies revert to the old cliches – e.g. coolers, bad speeches/etiquette – in showing the game, even if the poker is incidental to the story. Unlike sports skills, which require a certain amount of physical ability from the actor, showing poker should be relatively easy.

By the way, I'd enjoy hearing from a horse racing expert about this show. Somewhere, there is a forum in which a disgruntled poster is ranting, "these idiots had a Quarab winning on the main course at Saratoga... no way it can last nine furlongs lolololol!"

Anyone willing to bet that some poker "superstar" (Hellmuth/Matusow/Negreanu) will make a guest appearance in the future episodes? (if there will be any, lol)