Been a while since I started a new thread in here, but watching some poker coverage today it got me wondering about how what we hear on TV when watching poker effects our games when we play online.
fwiw, this has nothing to do w/ 865 people, who target a niche market of poker beginners etc.
Thinking more about shows that are broadcast all over the World.
These shows r obv important, without them, many of us wouldn't even play poker.
What kind of responsibility do the people commentating on these games have to their audience? If any?
Some of the analysis is really really bad, even at my own level of being a mediocre small volume winner, at low stakes, I can recognise multiple flaws in almost every sentence on some shows.
The game I was watching today was the PP big game, where Jesse May and Mile Sexton were on the mic, but there have been others.
There was so much results orientated commentry and basically bad advice being given by both, particuarly Mike, which surely cannot be good for new players.
It got to the point, where the analysis was so bad, that I considered that these guys might be intentionally giving out total level 1 feedback on the action, because no way can people be in the indursty for 30+ years, absolute legends, and still get it so wrong.
Are they being paid by poker sites to cover the game in this way? (serious question, who pays their wages?)
Maybe if they get into deep technical analysis, which tbf 'the big game' probably deserves, it might alienate the audience and put them off signing up to an online site?
Are they intentionally holding back w/ their analysis?
My fave poker show is the 'other' big game, with the loose cannons.
Stapes is vvvv good on this, but since watching him go in depth on 865 it's obv that even he is holding back and could go so much deeper into hands on the big game if he had to (was alllowed to?)
Then you listen to Phil Hellmuth commentate, and if you didn't know who he was or what he'd achieved, you would literally laugh ur nackers off @ some of the stuff he says.
Then he goes and wins 2,387 more bracelets.
Is it an act?
Is he employed to speak like this, to somehow con (right word?) people into playing poker, and becoming net depositors, just to keep the online poker industy going?
If so, is that even a bad thing neccesserily?
Could prob write 10,000 words on this, will leave it there tho.
Any1 any thoughts?
Fair to say Mike Sexton tilted me today! lol.
Comments
Although you've covered most things in your OP tbh so don't really have much else to say.
People will always use the excuse that 'the game has changed so much' to talk abuot the older players, but there's still no way that people like Phil Hellmuth who still play in today's game could genuinely believe some of the stuff that gets said.
They probably wanna keep it at a REALLY basic level where new comers can understand and I was gonna say it's accessable to all, although it isn't really cos a lot of decent players can't bare to watch it. Having said that, recreational players and bad ones VASTLY outnumber good ones, so they are appealing to the larger market.
My brother plays a very small amount of poker, just for fun, but if I said to him something as simple as 'what do you think his range is?', he would have no literally idea what I'm talking about and that's a pretty basic term tbf.