Poker Mom

As is common with poker television shows, the venues change.  The South Point Casino will no longer be the home of Poker After Dark as NBC will be moving its production to downtown Las Vegas.  The Golden Nugget, one of the oldest hotel and casinos in Las Vegas, will be home to Poker After Dark beginning with season five. 

Season four of Poker After Dark started off with the Cash Game which featured a minimum $100,000 buy-in.  The series continued its non-traditional start to season four with a Poker After Dark Heads-Up Championship between the previous winners of NBC’s National Heads-Up Championsip tournaments.  Then season four of Poker After Dark went on a break due to NBC’s airing of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

I just checked my DVR schedule and it looks like it will be back this week but a repeat.  Poker After Dark has had a regular rotation of hostesses over the past four seasons – I’m interested to know if Leeanne Tweeden will be back to serve as the hostess of Poker After Dark Season Five.

Phil Hellmuth is one of the most prolific Hold’em tournament players currently alive.  He has a record 11 World Series of Poker bracelets to his name.  He has also appeared on popular televised poker shows including the World Poker Tour, High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.  This past week he was a participant in the Poker After Dark cash game and had several Hellmuth moments where he’d complain about a slow roll, a donkey call and complaints about suck outs.In the past, watching Phil Hellmuth blow up really drove me crazy – to the point where I refused to watch games in which he played.  In time though, I’ve managed to tolerate and even get a little bit of amusement out of it.  Sure he has a bit of an ego but if you really watch, most of the times he apologizes or makes amends after blowing up.  Stories have also been told about how genuine and nice of a person he is off of the felt.

So today in browsing the poker blogs I ran across this excerpted entry from Pokahboy at the Road to the final table blog:

“I don’t think I’m alone in expressing a new level of dislike for Phil Hellmuth. His voice must take up 40-50% of the airtime, it’s particularly annoying. It’s as though he feels it’s his divine right to win in every game he plays. His record in cash games isn’t great, so suck up and quit with the whining.”

The post reminded me of my initial thoughts about Hellmuth.  Perhaps in time he’ll grow on those who are utterly annoyed with him or perhaps I’ve mellowed out in my old age (har har!).

High Stakes Poker is my favorite televised poker show and I was a bit saddened by the news earlier this summer that there was no definitive answer as to whether the show would return.  Imagine my delight when I saw that Poker News Daily is reporting that season five of High Stakes Poker will be returning to the Game Show Network (GSN)!

According to the Poker News Daily article, “No official date for the beginning of Season V has been given, nor has there been any indication of whether additional episodes will be filmed or whether Season V will consist of additional unaired portions of Season IV.”

Rumors about the lack of an immediate renewal for the High Stakes Poker series centered on the new leader of GSN’s desire to step away from so many poker shows.  I was a bit bummed and predictions were made that televised poker was on the decline.  I loved the fact that High Stakes Poker was a cash game as opposed to the traditional tournament format of televised poker.  I love the cash game and as such rather enjoyed this week’s Poker After Dark “The Cash Game”.

This week marked the return of Poker After Dark to the NBC lineup.  Although the majority of this season of Poker After Dark will feature the typical six-player tournament lineup, the inaugural week is being played in a cash game format.  With a $100 per person ante and blinds set at $200/$400, six players bought in for a minimum of $100,000.

Fans of NBC’s Heads-up Poker Championship were looking forward to the clash between Tom Dwan (who has a striking resemblance to Eddie Munster) and Phil Hellmuth and as of yet, the words between the two have been pretty benign.  In a loving move, the two even shared sushi.  Yes, that’s right; Hellmuth and Dwan shared a plate of sushi. 

In the Friday morning episode, Hellmuth felted David “Viffer” Peat when he flopped a set of fours to Viffer’s pair of Queens with an Ace-kicker.  At this point, Hellmuth had already been felted once so it was definitely a boost to his ego.  Not that Hellmuth needs a boost, but his spirit quickly turned jovial after the $230k+ pot.

Viffer bought back in for $160k (or thereabouts) and a few hands later woke up with pocket aces.  He put in a modest raise and the table folded around to Allen Cunningham who had pocket Kings.  Talk about a cold deck!  A few raises later, Viffer was all-in and Cunningham quickly called.  Viffer offered to run it twice so two full boards later, Viffer took down the more than $300k pot as Cunningham could not catch a King.

The play isn’t over but it is nice to watch a cash game again.  Sure, I love the tourney format but in the absence of my ultimate favorite – High Stakes Poker – I love to see the cash game.  This is a typical high-stakes cash game with straddles, double straddles, insurance and even the seven-deuce bounty.  Rumors are abound that season five of High Stakes Poker is in the works but nothing concrete has been announced.

The nine players who persevered and made it to the final table of the 2008 WSOP Main Event are on break until November.  As mentioned previously here on PokerMom, the Main Event final table will be held in November giving the players time to hone their skills or read up on their opponents.

Congratulations to the following nine players on making it to the final table listed with their chip counts and final table seat assignment.
Seat 1: Dennis Phillips - 26,295,000
Seat 2: Craig Marquis - 10,210,000
Seat 3: Ylon Schwartz - 12,525,000
Seat 4: Scott Montgomery - 19,690,000
Seat 5: Darus Suharto - 12,520,000
Seat 6: Chino Rheem - 10,230,000
Seat 7: Ivan Demidov - 24,400,000
Seat 8: Kelly Kim - 2,620,000
Seat 9: Peter Eastgate - 18,375,000

Not only have none of these nine players won the WSOP Main Event before, none of them even have a WSOP bracelet.  Not that it is an easy feat to win a bracelet but the final table players hold a total of zero bracelets between the nine of them.  What a reward for the player that wins; his first bracelet is the granddaddy of WSOP bracelets.  Oh yeah, and a cool $9 million.

The PokerMom 2008 WSOP Updates are finished but PokerMom isn’t going anywhere.  Stay tuned for more fun poker stories, poker gossip and recaps from your favorite shows like Poker After Dark!

Haley Hintze of PokerNews.com is reporting that the quite popular “Poker After Dark” will return for its fourth season starting on July 14.  Appearing on NBC, Poker After Dark follows a six person sit and go tournament format where the winner takes all.  The standard buy-in is $20,000 with the winner taking home the entire $120,000 prize pool. 

Poker After Dark fans are in for an exciting season four inaugural week.  Tom Dwan, Phil Hellmuth, Mike Baxter, Allen Cunningham, Guy Laliberte and David Peat will be playing in the cash-game format (as opposed to the tourney format).  Fans of NBC’s Heads-up Poker Championship will recall that Dwan and Hellmuth were involved in a feature table brouhaha in which Dwan hit a set of tens to knock Hellmuth and his pocket Aces out of the tournament.  In fine Hellmuth fashion, he went OFF.

According to Hintze’s report, “The debut week’s new cash-game format has the players starting with blinds of $200/400, with, according to the show’s press statements, plenty of straddles and prop bets. The minimum buy-in is $100,000, the maximum $250,000, and the minimum for rebuys is $50,000.”