Ever since I first saw Tom Chambers’ online poker screenname I have been a fan. The online poker pro may not be a household name, but his humorous online moniker, “LearnedFromTV” tends to stick with you. I have always found it pretty amusing and I find it a little ironic that “LearnedFromTV” helps people learn over the internet, providing online videos for Poker Savvy.
Poker Savvy is just one of many examples of online poker education programs that the dedicated online grinders turn to for help. However, these subscription-based programs are often time consuming and cost prohibitive for the small stakes grinders. Innumerable poker books serve as an alternative means for players to obtain their poker education. A lot of people complain that poker books are too dry, too mathematical and just too boring. So, instead of books and programs, many players heed Chambers’ suggestion: learn from TV.
In general, there is nothing wrong with learning poker from television programs like the World Series of Poker (WSOP) on ESPN, World Poker Tour (WPT), High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark. Any time you are watching people play hands of poker, there is something valuable to learn, even if it is an amateur versus a known pro. In a game where successful players are those who can figure out the thought processes of their opponents, poker on TV is an opportunity to try to get into players’ heads and ask yourself why they played a hand the way they did.
Unfortunately, several people who pick up poker tips primarily from what they see on their TV fail to consider some important factors, and may walk away thinking it is a good idea to play K2 because Gus Hansen did, without realizing he made a particular play under a very particular set of circumstances.
Remember that televised poker is intended to be entertaining. Oftentimes, poker tournaments created for TV have fast structures and are designed to create a lot of all-in action before the flop. A good example is the NBC Heads-Up Championship. A number of pros have gone on record that the structure is one of the worst ones around and that the event very quickly becomes a crapshoot. WPT events prior to Season VI have a similar problem, with the blinds so big by the time players reach the final table that there is not a lot of post-flop play.
While most poker tournaments, televised or not, reach a point where players will have to move all-in preflop for their tournament life, there are large portions of the tournaments where players are seeing flops, playing with deeper stacks and not frequently reraising all-in before the flop. High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark are two shows that depict a more realistic example of what poker games are like. On Poker After Dark, every hand is shown, even the “boring” ones where a player raises and everyone else folds. High Stakes Poker, a deep-stacked cash game, has very few all-in preflop showdowns because they are relatively uncommon in an actual cash game setting.
You also have to remember how much is edited out of these tournaments in order to fit in their allotted time slot. Mike Matusow has said in several interviews that he thinks amateurs overvalue the importance of bluffing and he thinks TV is to blame. Matusow claims he only pulls off one or two big bluffs in a typical tournament day and he only does so after setting the bluff up over hours of play. Perhaps he folded for several rounds in order to establish a tight image or perhaps he bet a hand a certain way so he could repeat the same betting pattern later and reap the benefits.
Those hours of folding don’t make it on TV though, so the big bluffs that do make the cut are shown without context. Online pro Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers has somewhat of an undeserved reputation in the poker world because he moved all-in over the top of a raise from WPT host Mike Sexton with the meager holding of 4-9 during an episode from the 2008 WSOP. It was one of the only hands in the two hours of coverage of the event that featured the young pro and the commentary from Norman Chad left the impression that Sowers was a maniac, moving all-in with any two cards at any time.
What viewers didn’t see was that Sexton was raising a ton of hands and was likely playing a very wide range of cards. Sowers said after the event that Sexton had been raising his blind for two days, so he picked a spot to fight back and got a little unlucky that Sexton happened to be holding pocket queens. As a result, Sowers, who impressively final tabled the very first WSOP event he ever played, became “that kid who reraised with 4-9” because of the power of television.
Hopefully these examples will get you to think about televised poker a little differently. They may call it reality television, but don’t think for a second that it isn’t highly produced, highly edited and leaves out a vast majority of what poker tournaments are all about. I still stop and watch every time I catch poker on TV and I do think there is a lot that people can pick up from watching. Just don’t think that the television can offer you all you need to learn about how to become a good poker player.