After seeing episode 2 there are some moments that seem natural and not scripted, so it's not completely awful to get through. But, there are enough instances where it seems the players are being directed to specific lines of forced dialogue to create drama or excitement that don't flow naturally and take away from the enjoyment of viewing this.

In addition, if I have to hear Charlie or Yo Viral shout "LET'S GOOOO!" ever again it'll be too soon. This isn't a Fortnite stream with a bunch of lowest common denominator toddlers watching, repeating LET'S GOOO!' 27 times ad naseum is cringe, not entertaining.

And Charlie, put on a ****ing shirt for chrissakes. Really wanted to see their team get eliminated just to get those two gone at this point.

charlie is an attention whore..he'll say or do anything for it...

it's a real shame this is only on youtube as the production quality is insane and makes it approachable to a non poker audience

never heard of any of the women other than ho before, but really like this girl's style with the flared french cuffs

4max nlhe turbo sngs are boring and so are these people

You know what, the one thing that is nice. Its an edited show, watching every single hand is for the hardcore and can be boring as hell. That makes it very easy for new folks to watch.

Really solid. Not a lot of tongue biting when it came to the others commenting on their teammate who was playing, which of course is a good thing. I also felt that it had a nice balance between catering to those who only watch poker on TV and those who are capable of higher level thinking/strategy.

No. Winner takes it all just like in the og pads.

Funny how the prize is first place money for a small triton event

I am sure Koon, Negreanu, etc are salivating at an extra $456k lul

trust me those got chopped up. PokerGo claims they don't do deals for their tournaments but they fast cut away when guys openly talk about doing a deal heads up. Unless its Daniel at the end there is very little chance that $456k doesn't get spilt up. That's the one thing I hate about those WINNER TAKES ALL, you've be around long enough you know that gets chopped.

But I'm sure Annie won $2mm here


https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=8564

You seem really caught up with this scripted thing. I'm not sure if South Korea has limits on rigging game shows in the same way the U.S. does, but I think it is safe to assume that GG and the poker pros involved in this show would not be okay with rigging the hands. And if they're not rigging the hands, it's really impractical to rig the commentary/reactions to the hands. Hell, even if the hands were rigged, it would be just so much easier to ask the cast to react naturally to the hands as they play out. What you are seeing is the fact that much of the cast is kind of awkward--I mean, Dan Cates literally has autism--and they're likely to be especially awkward when they know they are on camera and need to try to be entertaining.

IMO, the show is fine - pretty entertaining for poker players and I appreciate that they're bringing something new to poker shows. I agree this isn't likely to hit outside of poker's core audience, both because it's on Youtube and because it doesn't pass the "would I show this to my wife" test. The music cues are kind of cheesy and could benefit from being a little more subtle.

Biggest pet peeve of mine from Ep1 relates to editing. They'll show a clip from the poker game and then the reaction in each room. But by the time you get to the second or third room, the reaction feels weird because they're reacting like it just happened, but for us, it happened like 60-180 seconds ago. It just feels off when someone goes, "Ohhhhhh!" to the turn card we saw get revealed several minutes ago. If they want to show each room's reaction, I think they should cut between rooms, showing, for example, the immediate reactions of one or two rooms so it feels more organic.

Lol Jason Koon: "Hey Charlie, nice undershirt you got on there"

Charlie is the Donald Trump of poker…

Charlie gets a lot of haters, but tbh, he deserves every one of them

24 minutes before there's any actual poker, people actually watch that opening bit>?

So the format is amateurs play each other?

This is gonna suck for the same reason watching sunday league football sucks compared to watching the premier league

I don't believe I said anything about the actual hands that are played being scripted and I don't think they're creating hands for drama.

I'm talking about the dialogue, back and forth conversations between participants and their reactions. I feel like a number of them are actually scripted, where the producers or director are instructing the participants to say certain lines or run around acting all hyped up to try and "make it more interesting"

I get that Jungleman is an awkward fellow. I'm talking more about Olga and the guy she was playing against where she's asking him if he bluffed and he responds, felt extremely forced/scripted.

And then Yo Viral and Charlie acting like fools while in their room watching the game play out (although this could be more just them trying to act like livestreamers rather than specific direction from production, but either way was extremely cringey to watch)

Team spade is just excruciating to watch. Put a ****ing shirt on. That yoh viral guy is trying way too hard.

Yes, definitely the team I'm rooting against the most out of this lineup.

So you think they stop the action after the hand and tell them to have a back-and-forth where Olga asks what he had and his (scripted) response is, sorry, I can't tell you because I have to look out for my team? A) That's not really a fun/interesting bit of scripted dialogue, and B) That just seems super unlikely. It's a logistical nightmare. But you do you.

No one ever said scripted reality was fun or interesting, but shows still try and do it, and for some reason certain people seem to enjoy the fake reality.

Watch when Arieh wins his matchup around the 41:40 mark of the 2nd video and the camera cuts out and then he's like "who wants to interview me? I'm the champ"

Doesn't feel like that dialogue was natural/organic in the slightest, seems like it was a script given to him by the showrunners to try and "spice it up".

that's just one of many instances throughout both episodes that come across not realistic.

Agree with almost all your points.

It's a good show, or at least I'm looking forward to the next episode after watching the first two. It's entertaining to me. Sensationalized? yes! kind of goofy? Sure is. Can it be cringy? Yup. Just have to take it for what it is and not expect any serious poker strategy or anything. Some people come off as likable, others are cringeworthy (Yo Viral and shirtless guy), but you need different characters, it's all part of the show!

Don't think the dialogue is scripted. Probably just a case of players being urged to be as personable as possible. It might not me natural to some of them, so it might come off as awkward or forced. Others might just try way to hard (yo viral)

My pet peeve: Everybody saying "gg" to everyone upon bust outs. I understand it's an online thing. I play plenty of live poker and almost never here "gg" , that includes playing with plenty online players, including the awkward types. Granted I play only cash. Is this a tourney thing? In live tourneys, when someone busts do they all say "gg" to each other? Or do they just say the actual damn words "good game"

I managed to get through 5 minutes. A scripted poker show. Makes everyone in it look like clowns. Especially the weirdo with his shirt open.

Holy mega super turbo those are some spicy level jumps. Did they copy the structure from the old Fox Poker Superstars show. The brilliant thing about the show is they don't have to pay for a commentator as the players do it for free.

Yoh Viral is an absolute clown on that show.

what you're describing is literally the norm for reality tv shows

something will happen, the producers thought they didn't capture it well or that the reaction wasn't what they were looking for so they'll ask them to do it again and reshoot it

a lot of survivor you see is the 2nd attempt

all reality tv shows have writers as well - people who literally sit down in a room and decide what the storylines should be and they tell the people "ok this is your motivation and goal for today"

not saying they do this for that show - but it's commonly done and this show is clearly following the formula of shows like the bachelor and not a poker show so who knows


one thing though is you'll notice there's already been a few wardrobe changes and food spreads are constantly changing so this didn't take place over a short period of time. especially you see jungle napping so it's been at least a full day of filming just to get through 2.5 sit n goes - this would heavily imply they are slowing things down - could be pausing it to get reaction shots from players or the lighting was bad so they needed to replay the hand or as knish posits, they wanted some more dialogue so they asked people to say some things


i personally don't think that it's scripted in the sense that they are told what to do or say - but i could definitely see them getting nudged to "act out" a little more for the cameras - especially the one on one interviews where it's very likely they are asked slightly different versions of the same question until they get the kind of spicy answer they want

"what did you think of jungleman?"

"he played well"

"were there any places he could have improved?"

"he probably could have bet the river for more value"

"you don't think he played that hand like a donkey?"

"I wouldn't say he played it like an absolute donkey, but he should have gotten value on the river"

the last line is the one they then insert - heavily implying the guy thinks jungleman butchered the hand when his real opinion was jungle played well but if asked to nitpic then there was one spot where he thinks he should have gotten more value


but, wardrobe changes, food changes, & jungle napping are smoking guns that they are taking a very slow and methodical approach to filming this

this is why they usually almost never film people eating in realtiy tv because it makes it too difficult to edit together because the food shows a clear timeline of events, you can't have a conversation where someone is mid sandwich and then a minute later cut to a reaction of the person who is about to take their first bite