These commentators suck!

[over_c]

I thought the color commentator on the WSOP this year was annoying. But the two guys doing the voice-over for the Sands tourney on Fox Sports make me want to put a bullet in my head. Who are they?

[TimTimSalabim]

Yeah, that guy who's doing the "play by play" shouting at the top of his lungs is the most annoying in the history of televised poker. He is singlehandedly making it unwatchable.

[felson]

He's all wide-eyed, speaking slowly... it's as if he's teaching kindergarteners. I never thought I would say it, but... bring in VVP!

[peacemaker]

I was real disapointed with most of the broadcast. Othher than the feature table we only got to see Ben Afleck /images/graemlins/confused.gif It would have been nice to see some actoin on the last 3 tables.

The commentators were terrible, did they know anything about poker?

The only positive thing was they didn't waste time with player profiles and other BS.

[over_c]

Based on the way one of the commentators sounds, I have a feeling his only previous experience is with professional wrestling. Those two must be the only employees of Fox Sports that have ever played poker in their life.

[George Rice]

Obviously Howard Lederer does. He did give some good info if you listened for it.

[El Dukie]

I Tivo'd the whole thing, and just started watching the first hour. Damn, but the play-by-play guy is annoying. This is probably their way of pandering to people who've never played, but I don't need him yelling and trying to interject excitement into every hand.... Compared to the WPT or ESPN's 2003 WSOP coverage, this has to rate as the Worst Damn Poker Show, Period. (Though I'm not expecting much from Celebrity Poker on Bravo, either....)

[southerndog]

They were absolutely horrible.

[Tyler Durden]

He's doing the play by play in this thing. He's the author of the horrendously overrated poker book Shut Up and Deal.

[El Dukie]

He's doing the play by play in this thing. He's the author of the horrendously overrated poker book Shut Up and Deal.


Wish he'd take his title to heart....

[Duke]

Agreed, the commentary was pretty weak.

However, I liked the fact that they showed virtually all of the hands. Not just hands that knocked out a player.

I also thought that the heart monitor thing was pretty funny, and almost so corny that it was cool.

~D

[sweetjazz]

I agree that Jesse May's commentary was ridiculous, but I enjoyed it in a perverse way. I mean it added entertainment to see what interjection he was going to use to describe a J 8 2 flop. Or for commentary that sounds something like: "And Player X is going to put in a BIG RAISE with a PAIR OF SNOWMEN...BUT OH NO!!! Right next to him is PLAYER Y with a POCKET PAIR OF LADIES, and they're looking to take X's ENTIRE STACK!!! How in the WORLD is he going to GET AWAY FROM THIS ONE??!!?? It looks like he just might be LEAVING TOWN, and he won't be singing 'LUCK BE A LADY' on his WAY OUT!!"

He seems to rank up with Bill Walton with his ability for ridiculuous, inane commentary that is just funny to listen to because you never know what he will say next, or whether it will even make any sense.

If you're going to get bad commentary (and it's hard to do good commentary, especially the play-by-play guy who has to fill all the empty space), I'd rather it be over-the-top bad than boring-and-stupid bad.

Just my $0.02.

[lunchmeat]

Jesse May sounded like a child molester trying to lure a kid into his van, but I was impressed with Lederer's commentary... The heart rate gimmick was pretty stupid too.
The whole show looked like it was slapped together on the cheap. Low production value garbage like this and Celebrity Poker have me concerned that poor poker coverage and oversaturation will lead to a backlash against poker. If this happens and poker becomes uncool, we'll have a lot fewer fish funneling into the online cardrooms.

[eMarkM]

Just finished watching the whole thing on TiVo. I thought it was on the whole pretty good for what it was. May was WAY over the top, almost comical. He was gawd awful. He pronounced Wolfe a different way each time (wolfie/wolf). He butchered Matasow a few times too. Surprised he got Negreanu right. Konik was hit and miss with analysis and the wise cracks. But I thought Lederer's analysis was pretty dead on, I liked him a lot as the "Poker Professor".

Fox has to introduce "instant replays" where they just show the player's hands over again in a graphic, hey, why not show the playes flipping their cards over in slow motion, lol. "LOOK at how he flips his cards up SO confidently! Let's see that action in slow motion!" The heart monitor thing wasn't that compelling. And they advertised in their press release rabbit-hunting, but I didn't see any of that.

Yeah, the production value was poor, but they didn't have much time to make it polished like WPT since this event just finished this week. I wasn't counting on them to have all the stats that WPT or ESPN has because they didn't have a lot of time to put all that together in post production (heck, they did most of what ESPN had during WSOP, stats-wise). Was this done on the cheap, oh hell yeah. But there was nothing wrong with that from my POV. Poker on TV is a very cheap show to produce by television standards and if they can deliver ratings, you can be sure we'll see more of it in the future because the networks will make money. Could they do better, yes. But at least it's something. They showed hole cards and we heard the players. What else do you really need? It'd be nice to always be abreast of bet sizes, pot sizes, blinds, etc, but I can figure it out for the most part. And I don't need stages exploding in spotlights to enjoy the action. I found the action very compelling despite some of the problems with the broadcast.

From an action standpoint, there's a lot to digest here for tournament players, like a half season of WPT in one night. Cloutier's gaffe on the flush, the 97 hand, that idiot kid with the 74o crap, Hellmuth's usual antics. I liked that they left the mikes on the players open and we heard everything they said, even when it was drowned out by May's incessant screaming. The most table banter I've heard from one of these televised events. Also, the fact that this was the closest to real time of any poker broadcast I've seen made the table talk all the more interesting and made the action flow more contiguiously and naturally. Something that ESPN and WPT sometimes have problems with.

Overall, I recommend it, but just try and laugh at May's out of control play by play.

[anatta]

[ QUOTE ]
Jesse May sounded like a child molester trying to lure a kid into his van

[/ QUOTE ]

That is too funny! At first I thought it was creepy the way he was talking, but then I thought he had to be joking. In his book, he is sort of a beat, pot smoking, semi-crazy card player. He dresses in these 70's funky clothes for image purposes and plays these marathon, stoned, rotation games for high stakes.

I think he was a bit baked, and just havin' some fun. I mean, "...the nitty gritty...she's so pretty...in Atlantic city!!" My reaction was: horrible...I love it...I hope it gets much worse.