LONDON–Not sure if I mentioned this to those of you who aren’t following the “professional” action over at PokerBlog, but I jumped across the proverbial pond to check out the PartyPoker.com World Open (taking place in the bar of a minor-league soccer stadium). My kinda gig, obviously.

Anyhow, even though this is my first time in London, I haven’t yet seen many sights. But I was able to experience some British culture from my hotel room, where I found myself strangely pathetically totally captivated by The Poker Channel on TV.

Now here’s the sad part … what I was watching was simply an online tournament. The “Online Series of Poker” — a small buy-in satellite to a WPT event in Paris.

Can you guess who I was rooting for? Sadly, “hammer” turned out to be a dead stack — a player who wasn’t even there. Kinda funny to see the broadcasters both championing and questioning his “amazing” and “quick” folds before they realized he wasn’t playing.

So now here’s the thing … this really was fascinating, and educational. What made it so was the commentary and analysis by Trevor Harris and European pro Carlo Citrone. Sure, you might find yourself laughing when these British-accented dudes talk about “cooldude” being put to the test by “funkymonkey” and “Big Tilts” … but as they critiqued the play and you could see all the cards, for me, personally, I saw them insulting with good reason a lot of plays (and calls) that caused me to pause, thinking, “huh, I do that sometimes. I guess I can see now why I shouldn’t.”