CardPlayer TV debuted its new weekly half-hour program, “Under the Gun,” on Monday, featuring host Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg. Sponsored by the CEREUS Network’s UB.com, the first episode was filmed on location at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, as Friedberg talked to two of online poker’s best tournament players, Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi and Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin.
Before the interview panel began, Friedberg spent some time introducing the show to the viewing audience. He shared background on himself (he won a bracelet at the 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in a $1,000 No Limit Hold’em event, which was, at the time, the largest preliminary event in WSOP history), detailed how the show came about, and explained the panel concept. As he described it in the first episode, “Under the Gun,” is “my show, my way, my rules, my guests, no politics, no B.S., and best of all, completely unscripted and uncensored.”
Friedberg went on to describe his first UB.com Under the Gun Challenge, which he will discuss briefly during each show. His initial short-term challenge is to win a seat in the 2010 WSOP Main Event through UB, while his long-term challenge is to win $50,000 playing “small-stakes” No Limit Hold’em ($1/$2 or $2/$4) within six months. This segment of the show was the opportunity for him to plug UB, including offering viewers his sign-up code for those interested in creating new UB.com accounts.
Eleven minutes into the episode, he spoke with Mizzi and Baldwin at the Bellagio. Noting that Mizzi was in the top two in the CardPlayer and Bluff Magazine Player of Year standings and Baldwin won CardPlayer’s race winner last year, Friedberg asked the two why there are two different Player of the Year awards. Mizzi figured that one publication created its standings and the other then came up with a different formula for determining the winner. He explained that Bluff counts all tournaments, no matter the size, and awards points for all cashes, whereas CardPlayer only counts tournaments with at least 60 players and awards points only to the top finishers.
Continuing on the same line of questioning, Friedberg asked the players if they feel the need to play more tournaments when they see their names near the top of the leaderboard, so that they can make that run for the title. Baldwin commented, “I definitely, in the second half of last year, pretty much focused all my time and energy into wining the CardPlayer Player of the Year.”
He added that the different Player of the Year calculations actually came into play for him. Bellagio and Caesars had tournament series going on at the same time, the Bellagio with $3,000 and $5,000 events, which he prefers, and Caesars with $1,000 events and under. The Bellagio events, however, were not getting enough players to qualify for the CardPlayer standings, so he opted to play in the Caesars tournaments.
Mizzi said that he evaluates where he stands in the two chases and will adjust which tournaments he enters based on which title he thinks he can get. Right now, though, he is in the running for both.
Friedberg then asked both Mizzi and Baldwin about the poker tournament lifestyle, prefacing his question by saying that many people consider it to be a horrible way to make a living. Mizzi said that he loves the travel and extravagance of it all, but it can be draining. In his opinion, it is definitely best for a single person without children. Said Baldwin, “I just enjoy the day in, day out. Last year, I was playing every tournament under the sun for the second half of the year. There wasn’t a day where it was tough for me to drag my ass out of bed… I just enjoy it. If you can separate yourself from the game… and just enjoy the experience, that helps a ton.”
The three men then discussed how more competitive players tend to gravitate towards tournament play because in a tournament, you either win or you lose, whereas cash games can be anticlimactic. In answering the question as to whether cash game players or tournament players are better, Mizzi was brief: “I think cash game players are better at cash games and tournament players are better at tournaments, to make it very simple.”
New episodes of “Under the Gun” will be posted on CardPlayer TV every Monday. Fans can keep up with the show during the week via Twitter @JonFriedberg and @UnderTheGunTV.