competent announcing on Fox Sports Net??

[MicroBob]

Believe it!!!


the latest poker from the plaza broadcast is pretty enjoyable i think.
not ridiculously over-the-top announcing like VVP or Jesse May.
instead, Chris Rose is the new play-by-play guy and is asking good questions of Lederer and really steering the broadcast in the right direction.

Chris Rose is the host ofthat silly show Best Damn Sports Period.
he is also a friend of mine from college (and post-college) although i hadn't kept up with him and didn't know he hnew a thing about poker.

you'll just have to believe me when i say that i was impressed with the announcing BEFORE i knew it was a friend of mine at the mic.

[cornell2005]

i actually wish they hadnt talked at all and just let us listen to the table chat. i thought the dialogue was pretty pointless, and i didnt like the past tense feeling.

[Michael Davis]

I actually wish they would do the same thing for all sports, just let us listen to what's happening on the field. Evidently this was tried once and was an abysmal failure. Most people need announcers. Be thankful for mute.

-Michael

[soah]

[ QUOTE ]
I actually wish they would do the same thing for all sports, just let us listen to what's happening on the field.

[/ QUOTE ]

I heard they tried that once for the NFL -- key word being "once".

[wayabvpar]

I would prefer to hear the table chat when there is some, but I enjoy Howard Lederer's analysis a great deal as well. Rose was a huge improvement over Jesse May, but IMHO a screeching parakeet would have been an improvement over Jesse May, so it is faint praise.

Rose was decent- if he stayed out of the way just a bit more and set up Konik and Lederer, he would be fine. He made a couple of BDSSP-type jokes that fell pretty flat, which would be my only real complaint.

[MicroBob]

the NFL game you are referring to was i believe a 1982 game between the Jets and Dolphins.

it was around Week 15 or so and both teams were out of the playoff chase and it was the only game NBC had for that time-slot for the national audience (in their pre-season scheduling it was anticipated to be a much more important game).

i remember watching the game....and if i am correct about it having taken place in 1982 then i was only 11 years old.
it indeed was a pretty strange broadcast.


they used graphics more frequently for various stats and facts about the game.

but you are correct that the broadcast was universally panned as it left most viewers a bit off-balance.


it seemed to me that we actually got more table-chat then other poker-broadcasts. but i think a show of non-stop poker-chat would be about as boring as that Jets-Dolphins game.

you don't NEED the announcers....but i do believe they enhance the broadcast.


i think Chris Rose was trying to keep it light to add a little something more than just the Lederer-Koenig hand-analysis. i thought the analysis they gave was pretty interesting....but i also can imagine how a lot of viewers really don't care about some of their more intellectual chats.

i was also happy that Chris just called a regular 'game' as it were.
'this is a pretty big pot' as opposed to
'what a MONSTER pot....he'll be having nightmares about this hand for the next 50 years.....this is the most AMAZING hand of poker i have ever seen in my entire life' etc etc


i also liked Rose's questions on women in poker and their general effect on the game. it was an interesting side-track conversation (that was obviously pre-planned).
both lederer and koenig offered some decent insight on that one i thought.
lederer's ideas that a woman sitting-in at a high-limit game has far less effect than at the low-limit tables was interesting....and i suspect is mostly accurate.

not the toughest questions in the world....but still relatively interesting....and far more intelligent then anything Jesse May or VVP could have brought to the broadcast.

[Sundevils21]

[ QUOTE ]
i actually wish they hadnt talked at all and just let us listen to the table chat. i thought the dialogue was pretty pointless, and i didnt like the past tense feeling.

[/ QUOTE ]

Table chat was okay but Rose sayed once that we(viewers) saw Dan N and Annie duke chatting about. I never saw that. In fact I saw annie and dan glaring at each other and being generally unfreindly looking.

[jdl22]

I thought the commentary was decent. It wasn't annoying as May or VVP but I don't think it was fantastic. The interaction between Chris and Howard Lederer (can't remember who the third guy was atm) was ok. It was pretty clear that Chris knows a hell of a lot less than the other 2 about poker but that's why they're the experts and he gives the play by play.

One funny hand I can't remember the details on one player (Humberto Brenes maybe?) had basically nothing and was facing a decent bet on the river. Rose said something like "Does he have the guts to call that bet?" Lederer makes some sort of audible gasp or chuckle and said something like "well I wouldn't call it guts, I think he's too smart to call that bet." It was funny. Pretty clear Rose isn't an expert but unlike VVP he doesn't think he is.

[3rdEye]

I only enjoy the announcing when it teaches me something. In that respect, I'm glad Lederer is one of the commentators.

[ohgeetee]

I agree, what was up with the paste tense stuff? Was this taped, then later the hosts watched the tape and added the commentary?

I also think the guys voices sound too similar, but overall it was better than VVP on the WPT by far.

For awhile, they had me thinking they had some uber technology that allowed them to know what the downcards were, but then the dialogue didn't seem to mix with the play we were watching so it came off as taped. I didn't pick up the whole show though so there may have been some sort of explanation of this in the beginning.

Is the show taped then commentary added, and did they have tech that was picking up card values without the lipstick cam?

One host I have enjoyed is Phil Gordon on Celebrity Poker Showdown. Dave Foley on the other end is really horrible though. I thought he was great in NewsRadio, and decent in Kids in the Hall, but on this show, his joking animosity towards a lot of the celebrities really comes off as not so far from the truth, and it also seems like a few of the celebrities they have put up have been really odd in general. Sean Astin comes to mind, who seemed to really irk Matthew Perry, who I normally find annoying but came off as pretty funny in the show.

[Kevmath]

About the downcards, they have announced that the live final table next month they had some sort of technology to automatically recognize the downcards right away. I don't know if they were only working on it for the Plaza shows, but they on show 1, they didn't have 9 sets of cards pop up. Maybe it only works when there is 6 or less players at the table.

Kevin...

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Is the show taped then commentary added,

[/ QUOTE ]

yes....this is also how they do it on the WPT and the ESPN-WSOP coverage.
they talk as though they are viewing each hand live....but it's pretty obvious that they aren't.

on the WPT....there are frequent comments by Mike and VVP "well....he's got the best hand here...but he doesn't KNOW he has the best hand" etc etc.
do you really think Mike and VVP are just sitting a few feet away from the table talking about what each player's hole-cards are??
that would be pretty darn risky for one of the players involved to overhear them.

most of the conversations are edited in later.

i would hazard to guess that most of the conversational stuff that they actually have at the site is the stuff where we actually see them on camera.

[Beavis68]

Yeah, I had wondered how they pulled that off, specially in Aruba when the were arms length from the table. They really edit the comments in well - I can never tell the difference between the dubbed comments.

[ohgeetee]

WPT is doing a much better job at timing this. sometimes the foxnews guys were talking about a hand in present tense that already had the winner drawing in chips, which was mildly annoying.

I just caught a run of late night poker or something on my replaytv, and found it nearly unwatchable, even worse than celebrity poker.

I'm sure foxsports will improve as time goes on, but some of these shows are ridiculous.

[MicroBob]

i was only half-watching the fox-broadcast from the plaza as i was also muulti-tabling online.

the previous broadcasts from the Sands with Jesse May (and whatever other one they did) were indeed kind of awkward.
Jesse would say 'Oh look...he's got the Pokcet-8's!!' and then about 3 or 4 seconds later we would actually see that he indeed did have the pocket-8's.


while i do have issues with the announcing on WPT...there is no question that the creator Steve Lipscomb hit on a winning formula.
the slow-mo stuff, and the replays, and the music,and the lights, and the editing, are all TOP-NOTCH and all adds to the attraction of the show rather than taking away from it.

at least, i think it adds to it's quality for most viewers who would otherwise not be terribly interested in watching poker on TV.

right along with that is the rather impressive editing they do with the commentary (as goofy as it is sometimes) because it truly is rather seamless along with the action. it is not easy putting together something that is THAT in-sync. they clearly are putting in some long editing-hours and are extremely details-oriented to try to not let anything slip by.

there were a couple of instances in season 1 where VVP referred to a player's hole-cards before the viewer knew what they were....but WPT probably had fewer editing-flaws of that variety in a whole season then Fox-sports had in a single episode.



i also agree with the previous poster who said they were actually learning something from lederer's commentary.
that was my sentiment as well.