What is live at the bike?

[TheShootah]

How are people watching these other people play? I musta missed something somewhere!

[TStoneMBD]

http://www.thebike.com/live_at_the_bike/index.php

wednesdays-saturdays at 6pm-10pm pst they have streaming video of live action poker at the bike.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
How are people watching these other people play? I musta missed something somewhere!

[/ QUOTE ]

The Bike is streaming a live video broadcast (actually there is a five minute delay to preserve integrity of the game). "Live at Bike" takes place Wednesday through Saturday night from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Go to www.thebike.com (http://www.thebike.com) and click on the "Live at the Bike" link. You do need broadband and Window's media player.

We have in house commentators such as Bart Hanson, Shirley Rosario, and Denny Williams. We also have guest commentators such as WSOP champs Greg Raymer and Scotty Nguyen. We usually have a big limit game on Thursday, a $500 NL on Friday, and a $200 restricted buy-in NL on Saturday. Wednesday has a variety of games, I'm in favor of putting in a small, wild $100 game but I don't work that day.

BTW, anyone can play but the way I work the list on Saturday is to make everyone playing in the section aware that I will start the "Live at Bike" game from a dedicated list (rather than moving an existing $200 NL game). I'm going to try to start the game at about 3:00 pm most Saturdays so the stacks will get moderately deep by the time it goes on air at 5:55 pm (remember the five minute delay).

Regards,

Rick

[TStoneMBD]

rick,is the norm for live at the bike going to be these dinky 200 NL games? i am really ecstatic about the whole streaming video thing, but not when watching such uninteresting games with amateurs. i understand that the intentions of the live at the bike project are to entice people to come to your casino and play, and streaming low limit tables might be a better method for that then to stream high limit tables. however, i can say with some confidence that the viewers from this website would be far more interested in spectating some games of much higher limits. do you have a schedule or when the higher limit games will be shown, or is it merely a spur of the moment type schedule?

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
rick,is the norm for live at the bike going to be these dinky 200 NL games? i am really ecstatic about the whole streaming video thing, but not when watching such uninteresting games with amateurs. i understand that the intentions of the live at the bike project are to entice people to come to your casino and play, and streaming low limit tables might be a better method for that then to stream high limit tables. however, i can say with some confidence that the viewers from this website would be far more interested in speculating some games of much higher limits. do you have a schedule or when the higher limit games will be shown, or is it merely a spur of the moment type schedule?

[/ QUOTE ]

The schedule is subject to change and sometimes does become spur of the moment but here goes:

The $200 restricted NL game will usually go on Saturday night.

The $500 unrestricted NL game will go most Wednesdays and Fridays and some Thursdays.

The big Yosh Nakano hosted game (often 400/800 holdem) will go most Thursdays.

The idea is to webcast a good cross section of games. Big problem right now is getting stack and bet sizes right in NL.

Anyway, thanks for your comments and I hope we get more discussion here.

Regards,

Rick

[TheShootah]

Damn that is sweet!

[tek]

Can you work on the video quality? thanks

[threadkiller]

I watched for the first time on Saturday night and I thought it was great fun. I like the idea of the baby NL game, but with the stacks only being 40x deep, it seemed to kind of hinder strategy. Maybe a 2-4 blind and a $250 buy-in (but still max topoff to $300) would make the play more interesting.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
I watched for the first time on Saturday night and I thought it was great fun. I like the idea of the baby NL game, but with the stacks only being 40x deep, it seemed to kind of hinder strategy. Maybe a 2-4 blind and a $250 buy-in (but still max topoff to $300) would make the play more interesting.

[/ QUOTE ]

These restricted buy-in games are intended for the NL novice or recreational player, so to an extent the strategy is hindered a bit by design. That said, many players have worked their way up from restricted buy-in games to the larger, unrestricted buy-in games.

Another thing Los Angeles poker clubs have to deal with is that the collection is front loaded, in other words per state and local law it must be taken in its entirety once we get a flop. That's the main reason we can't have a $100 fixed buy-in game with $1 and $2 blinds (the blinds for the popular $100 game are $2 and $3 in LA). With smaller blinds, too often you will have perhaps two limpers and then have to endure watching more than half the pot disappear in drop once the flop comes.

The $200 fixed buy NL game (with $3 and $5 blinds) generally will have stacks that are quite small when the game starts, but after a few hours with rebuys the average stack gets up around $500 or so (keep in mind if your stack goes to $100 or below, you can bring it up to $300). $200 fixed buy games that go all night will sometimes have average stacks over $1000. This can sometimes generate action, but at other times turns the game into a trapping contest. Because of this I don't like to see a game that has been going a long time moved to the "Live at Bike" table.

I come in at 2:00 pm on Saturdays and I'm going to continue to try to get the "Live at Bike" game down as a fresh game around 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm, with players called off a dedicated board (this past Saturday we had three other $200 NL games). That should give some time for the stacks to get up to the $400 to $700 range, generating decent action once the game goes live at 5:55pm PST (you see it at 6:00pm because of the five minute delay).

As NL becomes more popular, I believe we can expect to see more unrestricted buy-in games and more restricted buy-in games with higher buy-ins relative to the blinds.

Regards,

Rick

[lighterjobs]

[ QUOTE ]
Damn that is sweet!

[/ QUOTE ]

you missed a really good 400-800 game last week. best one i've seen on there.

[lighterjobs]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Damn that is sweet!

[/ QUOTE ]

you missed a really good 400-800 game last week. best one i've seen on there.

[/ QUOTE ]

edit: the 400-800 lhe game will be on most thursdays.

[That guy]

Rick, just curious if you are tracking how many viewers you are getting?

[Mikey]

Hey Rick if they allow you to do it, you should make phone calls and put some players on the air, to discuss hands and situations, and what they would do differently so on and so forth. That would make for a real interesting show.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
Rick, just curious if you are tracking how many viewers you are getting?

[/ QUOTE ]

I assume the boss is - all I've heard is that they are going up faster than we expected.

I'd say it is in large part because of the type of people who participate on this forum, a reason many of us want to focus on keeping the broadcast smart (e.g., make every effort to track NL stack and bet sizes accurately in real time). That of course takes a lot of effort and perhaps extra manpower.

~ Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
Hey Rick if they allow you to do it, you should make phone calls and put some players on the air, to discuss hands and situations, and what they would do differently so on and so forth. That would make for a real interesting show.

[/ QUOTE ]

We don't allow cell phones or iPods/earphones and such to prevent communication between a player and a confederate. There is also a five minute delay so a player can't find out what an opponent has on a real time hand. [minor brainstorm]what happens if someone goes into the tank for five minutes? Perhaps we need an automatic one minute clock rule after three minutes.[/minor brainstorm]

That said, a determined player can find out what happened on a hand from several minutes back because they aren't chained to the table - people can obviously take a break. Since this is the case, there probably isn't anything wrong with your suggestion except resistance from the players.

For example, would you want to be seat nine from Saturday night and explain your laydown of QQ against the big checkraise of the loose agro player when the board was 2-3-6 (after finding out he had A-3)?

~ Rick

[TheShootah]

Rub it in..... /images/graemlins/wink.gif