Sexton's WPT Commentary

[sublyme]

Obviously, the world poker tour is not meant to be pure poker - it shows exciting hands with pocket pairs and all-in action, and mostly skips out on the true, solid action one would see at a final table. I was watching the WPT Invitational earlier and heard Sexton making comment to Alex Brene's AT, stating "you'd think he'd consider it a lucky hand and want to play it." Obviously Sexton is not a stupid person in the poker world - he knows odds, he knows statistics, and he knows there is no such thing as a lucky hand. Do you think Sexton makes comments like this for the excitement factor? I'm not complaining as the people who watch this learn to overvalue trash like this and take on fishy attitudes based on Mike's commentary, but why would Mike go out of his way to make these uneducated comments which he would easily know are wrong? Do you think he gets forced to by the higher-ups who sign his paycheck?

VVP makes comments like this all the time, but of course, he's VVP [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

Keep in mind, Mike is appealing to the masses. Most people who play poker believe in "lucky hands", have no knowledge of the odds, and want to see non-stop allin situations.

There hand names are outrageous. I hope that some day when someone has 69 they'll say its name.

"And is he? Yes he is! He's going all in with 5 high!"

I personally find Sexton's and VVP's commentary to be the most entertaining on TV. Lon and Norman just aren't that funny at all and Lon doesn't seem to know much about poker at all. Although much of their commentary is "results oriented" I believe it's done for the sake of excitement and because of the fact that 90% of people watching the show have that mindset and wouldn't understand advanced poker strategy. Mike Sexton also knows the game very well and although VVP is no pro, he's much better than Lon IMO and his corny lines are funny in a strange way. Besides you just can't match the enthusiam of Sexton saying "He's doing it Vince, he's moving all-in!" or something of the sort.

Love 'em, Like 'em, Hate 'em. Tee-Vee don't care. As long as there's an audience giving numbers that sell air time, nothing else matters.

When the numbers go South, so do Mike, Vince, Norm, Lon, Chad, whoever. Or maybe the whole friggin' show. Fact of life in the wonderful, wacky world of advertising.

[MicroBob]

they're overly repetitive partly because they don't have any kind of broadcasting background.

Sexton's commentary is, at times, conspicuously patronizing.


One doesn't have to be quite so patronizing to cater to a mass audience.
Talk in a more intelligent manner about the game and the audience will catch up to you if you do it correctly.


Most of the country doesn't know much about advanced football strategy either. But that doesn't mean the announcers have to always explain what the term "3rd and 7" means or that "now it's 4th down and 32 yards to go so they will likely tke option to punt...even though they don't have to here Vince...it's better strategy to kick the ball as far as they can down-field because they are probably going to lose possession of the ball anyway."

Instead, the announcer will just say, "4th down...and here comes the punting unit. Joe Shmoe back to receive."


I really believe that Mike could be a decent announcer if he received some instruction and tips and constructive criticism from a professional play-by-play broadcaster on how to have some enthusiasm without being condescending.

It doesn't have to be a lengthy type discussion that Sklansky, Harrington or Lederer would find especially intriguing.
Just a little less condesension and a little more variety in phrases (which really shouldn't be that hard for a play-by-play broadcaster).

This type of change that I am envisioning wouldn't just appeal to 2+2'ers like us who actually understand the game a bit....but it would also make the broadcasts more appealing to the whole audience (even those who don't know enough to even understand that the quality of dialogue has improved).

[SoftcoreRevolt]

Did you see how Alex Brenes played? I'm pretty sure he might consider it a lucky hand. (Assuming I'm thinking of the right Brenes, there's like 20 of them.)

And yes, we didn't see all the hands, blah blah blah, its a joke.

[B Dids]

I find Mike's commentary really horrible/borderline offensive (to my sense of logic at least) because of this. I have a really hard time deaing with willful ignorance.

[Benoit]

[ QUOTE ]
I find Mike's commentary really horrible/borderline offensive (to my sense of logic at least) because of this. I have a really hard time deaing with willful ignorance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seriously, I don't know who chooses his lines, but him and the other guy have said really offensive lines before, thinking they were funny. I can recall at least 2 final table shows where they bad mouth Doyle Brunson for example... he wasn't even on the final table for that show!