Episode 1 is on YouTube right now -



Pretty disappointed by it so far. Flipfest.

Seemed really rushed and no poker maybe they should stretch the heats over 2 eps. The last 6 hands happened back to back all in preflop

watched this, thought it was terrible

it has potential if they show more actual poker and not just everyone all in all the time

I'm about halfway through the episode and I must say, the whole atmosphere seems so artificial and shallow. Not really any authenticity, at all..

Also, I hate when u dont have a clue what the different peoples stacksizes are and u pretty much feel a bit annoyed throughout the show..

Hoping that Ike Haxton and/or Kanu Seven are featured in one of the heats.

ETA: Never mind, it's too gimmicky.

As everyone else has said, this pretty much blows.
Had high hopes, and the format seems good, like the tank, like the shot clock, like the tokens for running a successful bluff. But one minute they are saying how tight Tony Dunst has been playing and the next they are saying he's short and shoving ~500k pre. Feel like it would of been better over two episodes per round. I thought PS were putting stacksizes on the graphics as standard now, they do it on EPT shows.

the big game was genius.. and great.. this sucks

was this about poker?

Agree with most of the above.

The poker appears to be pure crapshoot - they should have learned from other shows that you need to play a decent slow structure and edit it down to get interesting coverage.

The shark's cage itself is a joke - basically a naughty step for when you get caught bluffing. If they had thought more about it, they could have come up with something to justify the dramatic name.

I won't be bothering with future episodes.

Disappointing, because I think the EPT coverage is very strong, so they do have some broadcasting talent.

Couldn't even get past 15mins. Why is it so boring?

And why oh why do we keep seeing shows with 'famous' people. I want to see REAL people. Seeing a bricklayer win $100k is far more exciting than watching a B list celeb winning $1 million.

Was pretty horrible I turned off about 20 mins in, so there's that.

That was painful to watch. The value bet and bluff button is the worst concept I have ever seen on televised poker

Can't believe I skimmed through this. There's one hand where Jason Alexander has QQ on an all under card board. He hits the bluff button and bets something like 1/4 pot. Laak calls with KK and he goes into the cage. The table goes what was that? And he just shrugs laughs and goes into the cage. Did the producers tell him to do that?

I'm 2 minutes in and I already know I'm about to hear 100 shark jokes.

Haven't watched...but with regards to the whole value bet/bluff button thing, what happens if someone range merges?

How is it possible that Veldhuis isn't broke and working at Burger King?

Winning 100k on 2/5plo zoom in a month probably prevents that from happening

The other players can clearly see when someone pushes the bluff button. Awful stuff.

I agree with most of the sentiment, but disagree that the idea is terrible. I wish they could talk about the strategy a little more. In the Jen Harman hand when she had 66 vs. the qualifier's JJ, I think the board was AK473. She raised PF, bet the flop, checked the turn, facing a bet on the river. Because of the difficulty of the river decision, I think she should be betting strong on the turn and checking the river because you avoid facing the bluff/value bet decision on the river, which is obviously much more serious.

Sucks that the first qualifier goes into the cage multiple times too. That really hurts the appeal too I think.

Boooring. TV made by execs that don't understand poker !

Yeah pretty disappointed so far with all the hype they tried to induce on all the EPT live broadcasting.

I hoped for something like this around a pokertable with real sharks in the water below

Meh. They have been hyping this so much for the past year. It's pretty disappointing that it's basically just a 5bb shovefest.

Hopefully it gets better.

As someone who was heavily involved in the development and production of Shark Cage, I’d like to provide an insider's perspective. But please don't consider the following to be the official "PokerStars line."

I'm not surprised the first episode has been met with a certain degree of disdain from hardcore poker fans. Shark Cage is designed for a more casual/mainstream audience; it's clearly not a pure poker show.

The first thing to say is that we're not moving away from making pure poker shows! We think it's very important to provide entertaining and engaging content for the poker community. In 2014, PokerStars has invested a great deal of money into live streaming every single leg of the European Poker Tour. In addition, we’ve produced 38 hours of TV coverage from the EPT and PCA. In the first half of 2015, viewers can look forward to highlights from the EPT 10 Grand Final, EPT 11 Barcelona, EPT 11 London and the 2015 PCA.

Now, in addition to appealing to existing players, it's also our objective to attract NEW players to the game. Shark Cage is obviously built for a non poker-savvy audience: people who don’t necessarily play online, and certainly don't post on 2p2. We know, from research and experience, that a winner-takes-all STT (which starts and concludes in the same episode) is the easiest type of game for a beginner to follow. We also know that these viewers appreciate seeing sports stars and celebrities at the table, and are also likely to appreciate a format that’s closer to a game show than a poker tournament. Anyone remember The Million Dollar Challenge? It’s not as revered as High Stakes Poker (understatement of the year), but it was a huge success.

We think it’s important to experiment and try new things. Our ambition with Shark Cage was to create something different; something less serious than the EPT/PCA. The end result is more of an entertainment show than a poker show, with a strong focus on the personalities and table banter. Personally, I think it’s a great advertisement for the game, because it shows people having fun playing poker, while competing for life-changing prize money. Everyone who took part in the first series thoroughly enjoyed the experience, expressing their appreciation for the shot clock and cage concept (conceived by Ike Haxton).

In an ideal world, I'd like to see Shark Cage broadcast in a different slot to the EPT, either earlier in the evening, or on another day of the week. It would be great to run the series alongside the EPT episodes, so that our core audience doesn’t feel deprived of their weekly poker fix. I really hope we can change this going forward.

Couple of specific things... In the first two heats, the players had buttons under the table (one for ‘Bluff' and one for 'Value Bet'). For the remaining six heats, the buttons were replaced by Bluff/Value cards. These worked much better. Also, we chose to simplify the graphics for this series, removing table positions and stack sizes to avoid bombarding viewers with too much information. Moving forward, this is something we can review.

In summary, I appreciate Shark Cage isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I’m pleased that many poker fans have enjoyed the first episode, describing it as “fun” and refreshing.” We value all feedback, positive and negative. I just hope that the show’s biggest detractors understand its purpose and possibly give it another chance.

James.

Really? Good for him, the last time I checked in he was doing horrifically online.