It seemed a bit slow for poker podcasts this week, but I still managed to listen to a handful. There’s not much to choose from in the early part of the week since the PokerCast recently moved their release day from Tuesdays to Wednesdays.
Though they believe the new release date is “working out like a charm,” could it be that the PokerCast karma is coming around, or maybe the WSOP was just toying with Mike and Adam? Either way, the guys took the bait hook, line and sinker on a publicity stunt by the WSOP when they announced the November Nine had come to the end of its era. Mike boasted “I called it” and the guys continued on to spin their own reality to justify their interpretation of a WSOP tweet.
But on the day after the PokerCast was recorded, the WSOP clarified their earlier tweet and announced that the November Nine was being moved to the end of October so as not to interfere with the US presidential election. Though the guys did qualify their discussion by stating that the announcement has not yet been made official, Mike handicapped it at 99%. Lesson learned? When Johnson offers you a prop bet it’s probably best to snap accept.
A little later on the guys brought NoahSD on the show to talk about his report that Chris Ferguson is owed over $14m by Full Tilt and is seeking to collect those funds at the risk of harming the deal to sell Full Tilt’s assets to GBT. In my opinion they were overly critical of Ferguson and they presented a slanted view of the situation.
Matt Savage was the next guest and came on to talk the guys through, among other topics, staff appreciation addons. These are additional fees that B&M poker rooms coerce tournament players into paying by offering them a substantial increase in starting chips for a tip over and above the gratuity already included in the tournament fees. The guys were pretty worked up over this and rightfully so. This practice has been going on in live tournaments for years and it is about time someone has said “enough!”
The show wraps up with the guys picking their 20 most powerful people in poker. The pick that stuck out to me was Mark Lipparelli, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. This man is responsible for bringing online poker to Nevada and is plugged into happenings on the federal level as well. Great pick guys.
The Final Table Poker Radio Show has some fun discussion about the history of Super Bowl prop bets and they go through a list of ones that were available for this year’s game.
They also have a very interesting discussion about rakeback. It seems the popular player incentive program has made its way from the virtual felt into B&M casinos across Las Vegas.
Listen to The Final Table Poker Radio Show »
Hand histories were all the rage this week on Ante Up!. The show starts off with Scott reading an email sent in by one of the listeners. It seems the listener had taken exception with the unstructured way the guys discuss hands on the show. While a standard for discussing hands can be very helpful to listeners, I find it difficult to take a show seriously when it features strategy discussion in which its guest analyst advocates overlimping in a pot with 8h6h and then folding to a bet and a raise from two “wild players” to our right on a Qh9h4h board. For a good laugh, check out O’ Mally’s Move for all the details of this butchered hand analysis at the 34:20 mark of the podcast.
That’s all for this week. As usual, feel free to leave your own reviews, rip on mine, or suggest other poker podcasts for my listening pleasure.
