They ruined it . Norm is lolbad at his comedy and even worse at his poker analysis . Have to admit it was pretty funny watching vanessa selbst donk off her stack tho . lol tourney style . idiot . The move to not have ftp players was a horrible idea as well . The ONLY things this show has going for it anymore is Viffer and cara imo . I was very disappointed . Whoever made the changes needs to take 2 weeks off then quit .

- good action
- everything else is horrible

And WTF is wrong with his eyebrows ? Seriously made me lol .

comparing norm to Mr Walkin is sacreledge. Norm wishes he has Walkin's style

cliffs:
Norm is not bad
huge pots
lots of action
Doyle folding QQ was terribad
good start to the new season

People complaining about people complaining itt.

By the way, people are complaining about 'change', not for the sake of the fear of change itself, but the straightforward fact that everything about this show has taken a change for the worse.

Except that now you complainers are complaining about Norm's physical appearance. lol wtf.

Have I? When?

That was like watching a ****ing horror movie

Grade F 100% - Terrible commentary

agreed. kara scott is so annoying and useless. she has a stupid accent, and personality. very formal and professional. completely idiotic waste of time having her on the show. maybe if she dressed more slutty it would not be as bad.

norm really sucks at commentating. okay great, 1 or 2 mediocre jokes every 40 minutes. but the other 38 minutes its like "and he raises. now, lets see what doyle is gonna do... and, he folds, I didn't expect that..." him narrating every single action is very annoying.

This show will be completely unwatchable once the action dies down. Two 400k pots per episode is unsustainable imo. Kinda wish laak and antonio were paired up b/c @ least there is some table conversation.

My thoughts:

- Announcers: Norm not as good as Gabe, but if he keeps it minimal and ignorable, I don't really care that much (definitely better than the Million Dollar Cash game guys who tilt me to no end). Don't really care much for Kara

- Editing/Production: Big pots, but a bit too slow paced. I dunno if I'm remembering things wrong, but it felt like the earlier seasons had so many more hands per episode. Maybe it's the little ad/interview segments. I don't mind the semi-circle table as much as others seem to; I don't think it's better or worse visually.

- Players: I don't mind this line up as much as other people seem to, although I'd switch over to watch an Ivey/Dwan lineup at any point. Viffer and Greenstein seem fun, and it'll be interesting to see how people approach Ruffin. Vanessa seems like a female Phil Hellmuth so far (I'm pretty sure somebody else has made this comment as well). I don't know why Doyle would fold QQ there. I understand there are better spots to get his money, but that was a pretty decent one, and I doubt 200k would be a huge swing to him. Maybe he read Ruffin as very strong preflop and just went for a read-based play. Keen to see more of Greenstein.


Overall, it felt a lot like this episode was shot around Season 1. Something about the colours/lighting mixed with the unfamiliar commentary and the clear whale vs pro dynamic really sticking out brought me back to Season 1.

I miss Gabe. That thing was one notch above the Heartland poker tour.

Still a "good" poker show but it lost everything that made it unique imo.

you lack basic poker knowledge. Have you considered not posting?

Seemed like a typical game at the local casino. A mix of rich donks, tourney players, nits and local pros. You see bad play all the time in a live game. Nothing new here. It just doesn't make for good television cause you can go to the local casino to see this same shiet. When I watch it on tv I wanna see pros trying to outplay each other cause I won't see that at the local casino with hole card cams. Definite fail by GSN.

Kind of agree with this. The fact that it's a bad player makes it a less obvious fold. I didn't think so at first, but when I saw how he approached some of the future hands, I don't mind Vanessa's push so much.

I don't think it's great, but I don't think it's horrible either. I've seen donks play TPTK or smaller overpairs like this in this spot, especially if they "read ____ as a bluff"

Gabe off the show ... ridiculous decision. Even my wife doesn't want to watch it now. Anyone know the story behind Gabe getting dropped or was it his decision to move on? The new guy is, well, just plain horrible.

Also, perhaps she thought a set was 50% chance, but still a shove was good cause:

- When she folds and is wrong she losses about 70k and all that 200k+ extra money that could have won.
- When she folds right she losses about 70k and the shot for a suckout.
- When she shoves right she wins 200k+ almost always.
- When she shoves wrong she losses 200k almost always but have a shot at a suckout.

The problem with shoving here imo is the fact that villain made a hell of a show to make it clear for everyone he had a monster, only thing he didnt do was say something silly like "please dont shove" or "I either have a set or air, 50/50".

He might as well have though. westhoff's posts in this thread are absolutely correct, some people for whatever reason seem to be ignoring the MASSIVE TELLS he was giving off and analyzing the play in a vacuum. Why?

It seems there were two classic reactions here.

Amateur: giddy that he trapped a pro in a hand, raised out of turn with a huge overbet, the type that a bad player makes in order to either take a hand down now against a better player or simply fail at bet sizing.

Pro: going back to that WPT episode it seems that Vanessa HATES losing to clearly inferior players (although who doesn't) and has tilt issues as evidenced by her behavior towards the woman she lost to in that event and here, where she ignored all tells in a futile effort to move the amateur off his hand, rather than follow her instincts and find the better spot which would eventually come. There's no way to chalk that up to editing, although to her credit she handled it pretty well.

This was good.

'non sexy lady' - that's your opinion, but I don't think she'll be doing anything the 'hard' way!

bill klein the man gonna ship his $$ to charity win or lose

Definitely disappointing so far. I used to obsess about this show and couldn't wait to see each episode. Now? I'm definitely not going to care about it. The Big Game is a better show at this point.

Vanessa. She's not very like-able so far. Seems really tilty, kind of mean, and patronizing. The way she played those hands was pretty bad. It's funny how time and time again the old guard shows that they know a lot more about how to treat fish and make them comfortable and having fun while losing money.


The only bright spot is Viffer. That shove with A10 was hilarious. It seemed to tilt Vanessa even more.

I loved this episode. It's different than before, but who cares. Gabe was good, but I actually thought Norm was fine. A little stiff, but he'll loosen up. The "Doyle beat cancer back when it meant something" quote had me rolling.

As far as the poker goes, it was freaking huge action, lots of overbets and non-standard lines. Pretty good TV, if you ask me.

Curious to see how the pros handle having these businessmen at the table... so far, not well. The lineup strikes me as what it would have been like in Bobby's room about 5 years ago.

This is obvious to any pro. But this guy is not a pro. He's almost certainly not aware of hand ranges or balance. No reason to pass up a perfectly profitable spot just because it's exploitable. I thought it was a perfect, non-standard play considering the circumstance, and probably just the kind of move that has made Barry a bijillion dollars crushing businessmen for decades.