Monday, January 28, 2008

Torrent Reviews: The Game and Million Dollar Cash Game, Season 2

I recommend you watch The Game (torrent), a poker show that recently started airing on Swedish TV. It's a shorthanded $100/200 NL cash game with $25 antes. It features some terrific players like Patrik Antonius, Tony G, Ilari Sahamies (Ziigmund), Juha Helppi, and Fredrik Halling (Hallinggol). The commentary is reportedly bad, so it's fortunate that I don't understand Swedish. The table talk and most of the interviews are in English. The show is well made and, like all foreign-made cash games, shows the players' profit/loss. There will be 10 episodes (not counting the first two episodes, which were qualifiers).

I can't recommend Million Dollar Cash Game, Season 2, however. It's a high stakes game (same structure as High Stakes Poker) with some of the best and most famous players in the world. Unfortunately, the show isn't good at basic things like showing the cards or the action. The table talk is inaudible as well. I found it hard to follow the action, was frustrated by the show, and stopped watching it.

See our Downloading section for further information on watching foreign poker TV shows.
Posted by Self Made at Monday, January 28, 2008

5 comments:

  1. I may periodically review foreign poker shows for the benefit of my readers, but I don't plan on doing the kind of detailed reviews I do for US shows, or giving ratings.
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  2. I've decided to give The Game a 5-star rating. It's not perfect, but it is outstanding: the best poker show I've seen in quite a while.
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  3. My top suggestions for The Game would be:
    1) Indicate position better. I can't tell the order of action postflop. If there is any sense to the order in which the hole cards are displayed onscreen, I haven't figured it out.
    2) Eliminate the commentators so that I can hear the table talk better.
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  4. It's interesting to note that the best poker show on TV, The Game, has no commentary (from the point of view of someone who doesn't understand Swedish). I wish some poker shows would try that. I want either excellent commentary (pretty rare) or none at all. Going without commentary would have the additional benefit of forcing shows to provide better onscreen graphics, which they should be doing anyway. The Game is better than most at this, one of its strengths: it shows all the hole cards, the action, etc.
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  5. I'm still unimpressed with Million Dollar Cash Game in season 3. I got through less than an episode before stopping watching it, which makes it among the very worst poker shows on TV to me. My basic problem with it is following the action: neither onscreen graphics nor play-by-play give me enough information to follow what's going on most of the time.
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