Sunday, September 20, 2009 - Annie Duke
I am so excited for this weekend. I do about 7 or so WSOP Academies per year (some with UB’s own P0ker H0, Shawn Rice and Matt Graham and even Mr. Hellmuth will sometimes make an appearance). But whenever I can do one in my hometown it is pretty special. Special mainly because it means I don’t have to fly to Vegas and stay in a hotel and be away from my house. When you travel as much as I do believe me that is a special treat. Any extra time I get to sleep in my own bed is pretty special to me.
This weekend I will be at The Bicycle Club teaching my first ever cash game academy. The WSOP Academy has done a few cash game academies but never one where I am the instructor so I am really excited to branch out from the normal tournament play instruction I do. Joining me at this camp will be Ali Nejad and Shawn Rice so it should be really fun since both of those guys are really great. I spent this afternoon watching video clips from High Stakes Poker to analyze during the academy. Those are a really great learning tool since showing concepts in action is about the best way to really reinforce points.
It is also really valuable to show students that the top pros sometimes screw up :) I know I screw up all the time and I think players often make too many decisions based on fear of making a mistake. That kind of decision making process always leads to more mistakes rather than fewer since your decisions are driven by fear of screwing up rather than finding the actually correct line of play in a hand. Fear of failure rarely creates good decisions or successful outcomes so seeing that even the top players in the world make mistakes I think is a really good lesson to learn. I think it frees people up to realize that screwing up is okay as long as you see the screw up as an opportunity to learn. I know when I screw up I use it as a way to improve my game and I rarely get upset about it. This kind of attitude where you see opportunity in your mistakes also really helps stop tilt.
The video analysis is a new piece of the camp for me and I am really looking forward to analyzing the hands for the students. I am also going to be doing a full on pot odds section which I will no doubt really enjoy since unlocking the magic of math is always fun for me. Considering the tweet I got the other day, others may not feel the same though:
DivePoker@RealAnnieDuke looking forward to the impossible math this weekend…apparently the WSOP accademy is 100x harder when you’re around lol!
I, of course, consider that tweet a compliment 
Tags: high stakes poker, Matt Graham, P0ker H0, Phil Hellmuth, Poker Poker Poker, ShawnRice, ub, Vegas, WSOP Academy
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Sunday, March 1, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Not so long ago you couldn’t turn on the TV without quickly coming across a poker show. Some of these were good (the World Poker Tour, ESPN’s World Series coverage), some were bad (Poker Royale: Battle of the Sexes, which is to my mind the Worst Show in the History of Mankind). The thing is just about EVERYONE had a poker show. I think at one point even the Food Network had a poker pilot in production.
And then, almost as quickly, poker seemed to vanish from the tube. The market was probably oversaturated for a time and the game’s popularity leveled after years of explosive growth. But new shows continued to debut–The Best Damn Poker Show, of course, and the canonical High Stakes Poker–and if you do some channel surfing tonight you might think we’ve flashed back to the halcyon days of 2004.
That’s because there’s a metric ton of pokery goodness on TV tonight, including two big debuts–Annie Duke begins weeks of ruthless boardroom battling on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, and High Stakes Poker makes it’s long-awaited return for it’s fifth season. ESPN is showing the final table of the World Series of Poker-Europe, and both GSN and FSN will be showing World Poker Tour events. If you’re confused about which shows will be airing when (and where), here are the listings, with the new episodes bolded:
6 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
7 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
8 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
9pm
NBC – Celebrity Apprentice
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
10 pm
NBC – Celebrity Apprentice
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – World Poker Tour
11 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – World Poker Tour
FSN – World Poker Tour
12 midnight
GSN – High Stakes Poker
1 am
GSN – World Poker Tour
2 am
GSN – World Poker Tour
I’m almost giddy with excitement as High Stakes Poker is one of my favorite shows of all time, one that saw Gabe Kaplan retake his rightful place in American pop culture. I’m not much of a fanboy, I don’t get all giggly around the high and mighty, but in 2007 my buddy Craig was covering the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event and Kaplan was trying (and failing) to get a cocktail server’s attention. Craig asked Kaplan what he wanted and headed out of the Amazon Room to secure the desired bottle of Gatorade. Gabe tried to give Craig a tip but as a working journalist he declined. After he told the story I breathlessly asked “Did you grab the bottle when he finished??? Did you get it autographed??”
“You’re pathetic,” Craig said, disgusted.
And perhaps Craig is right. Perhaps. But I for one will not feel pathetic as I pop the corn and snuggle into my comfyiest chair to indulge in a night of non-stop poker programming.
Tags: annie duke celebrity apprentice, annie duke on the apprentice, Celebrity Apprentice, gabe kaplan, high stakes poker, poker royale worst show in history, the apprentice, World Poker Tour, world series of poker europe, world series of poker europe final table, WPT
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