Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamSchwartz
Any part of the show that you do enjoy cf? Genuinely curious.
Are there things I like about the show? Obviously the answer is yes otherwise I wouldn't be listening. But I'm listening on a less and less regular basis.
The NVG aspects of the show generally brings up the bigger, broader topics going on in the poker world. I like hearing those summaries. The starting points to the conversations you have on them are generally interesting. But because no one takes the devils advocate view of things its mostly the two/three of you agreeing on "its good/bad for poker" and move on. But at least the topic is brought up.
When you have good, quality interviews that are more than the guests responding 'uh, you know its like this/that' answers to questions the show is generally a good thing. We can all learn from those. The interviews that seem to be more regular now with someone who's been out of the poker world and talks of how their lives are now different, promoting a new non-poker project just seems like a waste of time for a poker show. Or the interviewee is a poker player promoting some non-poker thing he's involved in.
When you bring on guests that have some controversy to them and you don't ask the tough questions, that's a loss for the community that you ostensibly serve with your show. The argument that these are people coming on the show as guests and you don't want to make them uncomfortable falls flat. When you don't at least try to get the answers you're nothing but a positive PR outlet for them.
I've even come around to liking the Ross Report to a degree. The discussions and analysis over real hands played has been interesting. The story of how they play out has become more coherent and easier to follow than when the segment started.
But then the bad comes in more and more often now.
The shows open with Adam and Ross giving a brief, on average, update on what they did during the last ~week or so. Maybe a rant on committing a crime, getting caught, then the lies and deceits in front of their kid to get out of paying for said crime. Then Terrence goes on extended diatribes about training to beat people up for entertainment purposes. Talking about the goings on in the MMA world and his relationship, or often lack thereof, to those events. This isn't an MMAcast.
The sponsor plugs are becoming more intrusive to the flow of the show as a whole. The extended training sponsor segments all sound the same boiling down to 'I got into doing this because I wasn't winning consistently but saw that I could teach people instead. You too can win with some good advice. This is the situation and to play it out properly depends on these variables and others so it depends on exactly what card you and your opponents have at the moment.'
Then there's the letters that come in during that segment that just happen to ask Terrence about other things he's currently promoting (if that self promotion didn't happen elsewhere in the show) or for training advice. Advice that he then gives blindly without knowing anything about the person's health. Again, this is not the Trainingcast.
And these off-topic things that I list seem to be taking up more and more of a percentage of time of each show. When the shows are ~90 minutes it seems to be such a huge chunk of the show. When the shows go 2+ hours eliminating the off-topic discussions would bring the show to a reasonable length. I'm not saying Terrence shouldn't ever talk about his MMA and other stuff, but it should not dominate most shows.
If these topics are in such demand, a new podcast should be considered for them or just rename/clarify what this one is now. When the PokerCast is a bit less than 75% (and far less than that many weeks) on the topic of Poker, content has to be reviewed.
And for the name callers here in the forum, having a dissenting opinion does not make a person a troll. Why should people spend time and effort to post their dissenting thoughts on topics brought up in the shows if the group is just going to name call and abuse them? And without discussion, is there a reason to post to the forums other than to count which place you are in responding?