This week, the UB.com sponsored poker news show “Poker2Nite” welcomed two young guns, Full Tilt pro Jeff Madsen and Absolute Poker babe Lacey Jones. The series airs at 11:00pm ET on Wednesdays on Versus.
Last night’s episode opened with a recap of UB.com pro Brandon Cantu winning the Wynn Classic for $363,000. On who the top up-and-coming player in the game is, “Poker2Nite” host Joe Sebok commented, “It’s pretty hard to fault [Cantu] as a pick. He has two WSOP bracelets, a WPT win, and just picked up another win here.” However, Sebok added that he’d single out Vivek “Psyduck” Rajkumar, Jason Mercier, and Dan O’Brien as other notable young superstars.
Rumors of a David “Devilfish” Ulliott movie have been swirling in recent weeks, leading Sebok to observe, “There haven’t been a lot of good poker movies, but some might be coming.” Sebok elaborated that flicks covering the lives of Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, and Amarillo Slim may be in the works. In the case of the latter, Academy Award winning actor Nicholas Cage was rumored to play the lead role.
In one week, 125,000 votes have been cast for the WSOP Tournament of Champions. The general public has until June to select 20 players to head to Las Vegas and compete in a $1 million made-for-television freeroll. A debate among Pokerati’s Dan Michalski, UB.com’s Liv Boeree, and Full Tilt Poker’s Gavin Smith aired from Las Vegas. Smith, who is not a WSOP bracelet winner, gave his two cents on the all-star game format: “I think you have to win something to get in it. They should have more automatic qualifiers and leave like 10 seats for votes among people.” Two sponsor exemptions currently exist.
Former FBI agent Joe Navarro joined “Poker2Nite” via Skype to break down several common tells in live poker. Among those highlighted were players raising their hands to their face, a sign of distress. Footage from the 2008 WPT L.A. Poker Classic aired with a hand featuring Phil Ivey. In it, Ivey’s opponent exhaled dramatically and then pulled his cheek, signs of stress, before ultimately deciding to move all-in pre-flop with A-K. He then got up and walked away from the table, which Navarro again claimed signified stress. Ivey, holding A-9, promptly whistled, a sign of weakness.
The “Girls of Poker” segment returned for the first time since the kickoff “Poker2Nite” episode on Versus and Jones joined Dana Workman in a pre-taped segment. Jones’ advice to women: “They shouldn’t be afraid of the guys. Guys are sometimes more intimidated by a woman sitting at the table who they can’t read and don’t know what they’re doing because they haven’t played with them that often.” Jones is a sponsored pro of the CEREUS Network site Absolute Poker.
Madsen achieved success at an early age, winning two bracelets during the 2006 WSOP, and was briefly the youngest winner ever of the coveted hardware. On his early success, Madsen told “Poker2Nite” viewers, “I was very confident. I even told my friends I could be the youngest bracelet winner and I really had the mindset I could do it.” Madsen revealed that his rap influences included Eminem, Jay Z, and several underground artists. He then proceeded to freestyle rap about “Poker2Nite,” ending his interlude with, “Madsen assassinate, lacerate, I’m gonna show you how I can just rap, then wait.”
“P2N Online” featured Workman breaking down the latest buzz from social mediums like Twitter and the online poker forums. Taking up much of the segment was “Poker2Nite” host Scott Huff’s reaction to Sebok dancing the Lambada last week with North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Hostess Joanna Krupa. Also touched on was Bodog pro David Williams’ Tweet about the WPT’s Hollywood Poker Open: “Tonight I’m going to a tournament in Hollywood, which is in Indiana. I fly to Cincinnati airport, but it’s actually in Kentucky. Weird.”
Catch new episodes of “Poker2Nite” every Wednesday at 11:00pm ET on Versus.
