Sometimes in life we are given a gift so outside the realm of anything that we could even believe existed that upon its receipt, our hearts are overwhelmed with joy and amazement. Those who did not previously believe in a heavenly father now do and those who already did have their faith reaffirmed.
A tear is shed.
The poker community was handed such a gift over the weekend in the form of a “sizzler reel” for a new poker reality show in development called “Full House” starring ten-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Johnny Chan. Produced by Jay Ishimaru and Javier Prato, the show will feature five young poker players who will live in Chan’s house and compete in daily poker tournaments.
In the video, Chan says he will stake each player $200,000 and every night, two will play in a nine-handed poker game. In those games, “you, the viewer, will be invited to go up against them.” If a player loses all their money, they are booted from the show and replaced with someone else.
The concept of the competition is fine except for one thing: what is the goal of the show? Is it a contest? Is it just an effort to not lose the entire stake? Is there an end goal? And when we say “one thing,” we mean more than one thing. How about this whole idea of the viewer taking on the house guests? The logistics of that are never mentioned in the video. And when someone does go busto, from where is their replacement found?
The real treat, though, is the video itself. It is, to put it in poker terms, the nut low. Every scene, every action is completely staged. None of the dialogue is genuine; it is all obviously scripted. And that script. That script. To sum it up for you, here is the table talk from one of the players, Jay, classified in the show as “The Genius.”
[showing an Ace to his opponent]: Does this scare you? Nah, I think you really have a broken draw. I call.
[moving chips and cash into the pot]: Ace-King? Ace high?
[seeing he has the winning hand]: That’s right! I pay my rent in Euro, baby?
I pay my rent in Euro? I have no words.
The other four players are also fit into cliché boxes: Simon “The Playboy,” Estevan “Chico Loco,” who looks like a young Sammy Farha, the foxy Malia “Queen of Hearts,” and Matt “The Bully,” whose first appearance in the video shows he himself getting bullied when his housemates throw him into the pool. To make it perfectly clear that Johnny Chan’s house has a pool, Chan pushes two other people into the water later on.
Doyle Brunson is also touted as being part of “Full House,” but it was not apparent at any point what exactly his role would be. And by the looks of it, Brunson didn’t know either. In response to a tweet from Matt Glantz, Brunson himself tweeted, “I have no clue about this show. Chan asked me, we are friends so I said ok. I didn’t even know what the taping was for.”
The whole thing is so hacky that I fully expected Chan to close with, “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
In an interview with our friends at PocketFives.com, producer Jay Ishimaru, who based on his profile at PokerPages.com, appears to be the poker player “Jay” on the show, said that he has received a $500,000 offer from a television network interested in airing “Full House,” but he rejected it.
“Before there was even a chance to pitch the show or before the reel was even created, we had offers from major TV networks,” he said.
In addition to the poker competition, the show will also dive into the players’ lives to try to show viewers what a poker lifestyle is like.
“Online poker has taken a decline over the last couple of years and cash games are coming back to life,” Ishimaru told PocketFives. “The idea behind the show is something unique that has never been done before and one that combines two styles of TV.”