Posts Tagged ‘hsp3’

August 14, 2007

New Game 4 HSP totally unkewl

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Is anyone else watching reruns of High Stakes Poker right now? They’ve got some newfangled “Do you want this card?” text thingy where you can text-message in some card you may or may not want to see for an undisclosed charge to your cell phone bill.

So what’s the over/under on how long it stays, and whether or not it will reappear when Season Four begins airing later this month? Like seriously, is GSN’s greed in making a few extra cents off the text-horny worth ruining the best poker show on TV? Apparently so, because they’ve given whateverdafug game they are inviting you to play prime real estate on the screen — it covers up the chips and fingers handling them, and the side-game cards they’ve added are bigger than the real hole cards being shown.

Terrible.

UPDATE: It’s called “High Stakes Poker - Play like a Pro.”

Still annoying.

Posted by DanM at 1:09 am

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March 29, 2007

Kaplan vs. Benza

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kaplan.jpgbenza.jpgDid anyone else catch High Stakes Poker 3 on Monday? It’s a great episode this week … with Mike Matusow, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, et al. We see David Williams needled for his bling, and he retorts by skillfully wielding “the Sang” (9-2 … kinda like the Hammer, only a wee-bit stronger). And then Yukon Brad Booth shows up and buys in with a cool $1 million in cash, suddenly posing a new threat to Brian Townsend’s fortress of bills. Awesome, great poker.

But the real battle in this episode (which repeats tonight) seems to be taking place off the table — between the two announcers, Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza. If this is new shtick … well then good job, because it’s pretty entertaining. But even better, you get the sense they truly don’t like each other and are in the midst of a career catfight … especially when Kaplan calls out Benza for having his agent complain about Gabe to GSN.

Benza, is actually a pretty interesting sparring partner for Kaplan. For one, he’s a former blogger for the not-so-poker blog Oddjack. Before that, his broadcasting claims to fame included a studio brawl with Stuttering John (from Howard Stern) that eventually came to blows in the hallway.

Click below to see what Pokeratizens had to say about these two just last month:

More…

Posted by DanM at 5:04 am

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March 14, 2007

High Stakes Hammer

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It’s getting pretty clear that finally, in 2007, the pros are starting to explore the power of the Hammer. You can tell they are still a little tentative with it — and how can you blame them when bricks of money are at stake — but hey, they’ll catch on and figure out the hand’s nuances soon enough.

(Perhaps not coincidentally, I have given up the Hammer for Lent.)

Check it out … on this week’s episode of High Stakes Poker, we get to see both Antonio Esfandiari and Mike Matusow dabbling in the dark arts of 27o. Frankly, neither of the hands are very dramatic … yet both are quite revealing:

ALT HED: Hammer after Dark

Posted by DanM at 5:47 am

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