The Beat
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Neil "Bad Beat" Channing surveys the affairs of the gambling classes
TV Critic
I used to absolutely love TV poker. I always watched it, right from the very first Late Night Poker, and all those early High Stakes Poker episodes with Matusow, Negreanu and Sammy Farha were just the best. I’m not sure when I got a bit bored.
I didn’t like the buy-ins going up to $20,000 and $30,000 for TV crapshoots, as it meant the people who played them for fun and who hadn’t cracked the formula stopped playing.
I certainly won’t pretend that I knew what was going to happen at Full Tilt, but it seemed crazy that they would pay players $4,000 to wear a patch and another $4,000 if they got on to the second show if they split a 6-max heat into two. I didn't enjoy the unseemly rush to get their money and I didn't like that the fun went out of it. As a viewer it lost the novelty factor and also the big fields meant that the tours that were on, showing the ends of MTTs, never had players that I knew enough about.
This morning I’m up early to go to Sky Studios. We are filming for three days straight. It’s going to be a £5/£5 TV cash game and I’m promised fun. They've invited a bunch of people who they feel will gamble and have a good time, plus a few sports stars. I know my fellow Black Belt Sam Razavi will be there and I'm told to expect Rob Yong and James Dempsey, as well as a few celebs, including Matt Le Tissier and Jimmy White.
I’m back to really looking forward to playing on TV and hopefully that’ll come across. You can watch me on Sky Sports at about 10pm, hopefully on Monday just after the footy, throughout February and into March.While you’re reading this and watching me on TV with a cup of hot chocolate trying to fend off the cold weather, I’ll be in Australia.
THE BEAT-FEB13-1-LARGEThat’s the only reason that I’ll be missing the first live tournament at the Hippodrome Casino in London. The Hippodrome recently sold a portion of its business to PokerStars, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see poker being promoted to a higher place on their agenda.
I was sad to see The Fox Club close as a poker venue. I hope that the staff that worked there all get themselves jobs soon and I guess that one way for poker in the West End to thrive would be if the Hippodrome picked up all those players and dealers.
The Winter Classic tournament will be a £250 buy-in with re-entry for two hours. It will be spread over the two days of February 8th and 9th, starting at 2pm each day.
The casino is guaranteeing £25,000, which shouldn’t cause them too much anxiety, and it's a 30-minute clock and a 25,000 starting stack.
If I wasn’t 24 hours away by plane, I’d definitely be there.
THE BEAT-FEB13-2-LARGEI’ll be back from Oz in time to play the Black Belt Poker Samurai from home. It’s our regular quarterly online $250 6-max NLH event and it’ll be on the 20th at 8pm. As a very small poker site, we thought we were possibly a bit optimistic, putting on an event with a big buy-in. It’s just for Black Belt players and you can't play it from other skins.
I assured the doubters in our office that the pros would all flood in to play when they found out that there would be 20-plus qualifiers, many of whom were in for $5. It seems I was wrong.
We are guaranteeing $10,000 on this one and last time round we only just got the 40 runners. So if you’re looking for a chance to win a decent amount in a small, select field, of which half may be qualifiers, and some may be EPT, WSOP and WPT winners, then this is the one for you.
I’ll see you there.
THE BEAT-FEB13-3-LARGEI don’t always agree with everything they decide to do with the GUKPT, but I do like the fact that they are starting it at the Vic for Leg 1 this year.
The buy-in for the main event of the Vic leg will be £1,000, whereas before it has been £1,500. I’m not sure that by dropping it will cause a big enough boost in numbers to mean a bigger prize pool – I think the effect of dropping from £1,000 to £500 is much bigger than from £1,500 to £1,000 – but I do realise that if they were to carry on holding eight or more legs to this tour, then they had to accept that £1,000 was not the number to go for in some parts of the country.
I also like the fact that they have put a £200,000 guarantee on the £1,000 buy-in events and I predict that they’ll easily beat this at the Vic. They got 300-plus in September for a £1,000 and 137 for the £2,500. These days, with re-entries, I think they’ll be fine.
THE BEAT-FEB13-4-LARGE