They did the same thing with Gus Hansen on the World Poker Tour though, only showing his wild play and not showing the skillful maneuvers he made to actually make it to the final table, or the moves he pulled to survive the final table. Poker on television is nothing like real life, Joe Cada must have made a lot of smart moves to survive that field that were simply edited out before the broadcast or else he’s the luckiest man in the world.

Then again online play does start to teach you that the losing pocket pair typically hits trips on the flop, even though it’s only supposed to happen roughly 11% of the time. It seems to happen quite a few times more than it should. I have something like 8,000 hands logged in the past 50 days, and the number of suck out’s I’ve seen is unbelievable. Queens beating kings, ten four suited beating aces (really weird all in pre-flop but I’ve seen it), etc.

Perhaps they have the pros editing these tapes to create more suckers, who don’t know anything about odds so those with extra cash to flush will make odd moves with weak pocket pairs.

As promised, here’s the television.

By the way if you click the link above to order the television the FTC has mandated that I alert you I’ll make a commission. Or you can copy down the model number, go to Amazon and search for it. You’ll pay the same amount of money, I just won’t get my $12 referral.

This is not a good poker movie. Hell, its not a good movie at all. I walked out to smoke cigarettes several times. Then again if you’re like me and you have to see every poker movie or every Michael Madsen movie (I even have the first film he was ever in where he stuggles as an alcoholic or something, I bought it for $1) then you’ll have to pick this up.

Hey, guess what, if you order this movie after clicking on the link above, I’ll get a 4% commission! With a price of $4, that’s like well um…. 0.16 whole cents. Unless 6 of you order, then I’ll get 6%, a whopping 0.24 cents! Aren’t you glad I disclosed that to you?

Rounders stars Matt Damon as poker player Michael McDermott. At the start of the movie Mike goes to play poker in a Russian poker club in New York ran by Teddy KGB (John Malkovich.) Mike throws down 30K and winds up losing it all in a single hand to Teddy. Mike then retires from poker at the urging of his nagging girlfriend and turns to law school and driving a truck at night. Mike’s girlfriend is very suspicious of him going to play poker all the time. Mike winds up running into his professor while his professor is playing cards with the local judges. Mike says he can read everyone’s hand blind for a summer clerkship. Mike reads the hands and impresses the judges. Mike’s girlfriend gets mad at him and rants about how he’s a “hustler” and poker has never gotten him anywhere. He borrows her car and picks up his old poker buddy Worm, played by Edward Norton, from prison. Mike and Worm go off to play cards. And thus the poker movie really begins.

This is actually a poker movie, not just a movie that has poker in it but is really a love story. Johnny Chan does appear in Rounders for a brief cameo. The thing I love about this movie is they actually refer to playing poker as a skill, not as a game of luck. They have players picking up tells on each other and playing good poker. Granted they go a little overboard with a tell but hey they have to make the movie appear to non poker players as well. The fact that the writer actually took the time to make a believable poker movie impressed me. Matt Damon actually entered the WSOP because of this movie. He didn’t do very well, but hey who cares, he played. I can’t say enough good about this film as a poker film. It’s kinda like Poolhall Junkies for pool players, a believable pool playing movie, its not just some character who plays pool, the guys actually play pool.

The point I’m trying to drive home here is if you like poker you will appreciate this film. I know there are a lot of films out there where they pretend the film is about poker but its not. This is not one of those. This is a real poker movie. A great add for anyone’s collection.

Hey, if you order the movie from the link above I’ll get a commission from it! If you leave my site now and go directly to Amazon.com without clicking on the link I will not get my 4-6% commission (4% is if 5 or less people order in a month, 6% is if 6 or more order) and you’ll still pay the same price for the movie.

The tourney started with Ace picking up a lucky pot from Scott Ian when he picked up trip 4’s on the river. I started flipping back and forth on the remote after I saw that happen. Sully Erna was announced as the longest lasting celebrity at the ’06 WSOP, no mention of his ’07 run. The info button on the TV told me it was from ’07 so I’m assuming early ’07. VH1 Classic was added to my TV package 2 days ago so it was new for me.

Basically think of the old Celebrity Poker Showdown show from (I believe) Bravo that was on back in ’05 combined with the Ultimate Bet poker show that used to be on Fox Sports Net. For some reason the VH1 Classic logo had to cover the third flop card and the turn card leaving only the suits visible which made the hands kinda hard to follow if you weren’t paying complete attention to the show, which a lot of the time I wasn’t.

Vinnie Paul went out first, followed up by one of the amateurs, then (I believe) Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, who not only lost the hand but his keychain to Sully. Next was another amateur. Sully knocked out both Ace and the Vegas casino guy with pocket rockets leaving the game heads up between Sully and Scott. Sully had something like 65,000 chips to Scott’s 15k. Sully’s basically a pro, Scott has barely played poker.

Scott calls away all his chips and catches a flush on the river to double up. Next hand Scott doubles up again because Sully can’t read newbies. Even Phil and the other announcer guy called Scott a newbie. Long story short Sully tries to make a move on Scott who keeps picking up ace something and the new champ is Scott Ian of Anthrax.

Every player that winds up eliminated gets to play for a trip to Alaska on a cruise in a head’s up tourney in the back. They show the knock out hand for each head’s up game. The Vegas guy winds up going against Sully for the title. Sully wins. In a side note Vinnie Paul of Pantera knocked out the first two opponents in the head’s up challenge. Each player had a check donated to charity.

The big winner of the night winds up being Sully since he wins the Alaska trip. I feel bad for Sully, I really do, as we all know that I cannot stand playing against new players. There is no rhyme or reason to how they play and Sully tried to play against Scott as though Scott had some idea of what he was doing, which against newbies is always wrong. So the outcome of the tourney wound up being something like the way it usually went on Celebrity Poker Showdown with the “pro” Hollywood player almost winning but then losing in the end.

I know that Scott Ian knows that he got lucky against Sully during this tourney. He knew that Sully was the huge favorite to win the whole thing. Then again maybe winning this tourney will get Scott Ian playing a lot more poker and he may grow into a great player. On a side note I saw Scott Ian at a Stone Sour concert in Hollywood back in ’02. He was in the upstairs bar section of the House of Blues.

Howard does pretty much what Phil Hellmuth does in his DVD package. He goes over the basics of hold em from how to deal to teaching someone how to put in their blinds all the way to pre flop card selection. He falls pretty much into the same category as Hellmuth telling new players to avoid playing with a lot of different cards, just waiting for the better hands to play. I don’t believe he has a top 10 hand list like Hellmuth, at least not on this DVD anyway.

From what I remember of the DVD, I watched it about a month ago, it covers mostly basic poker playing fundamentals so someone new to the game can pick it up and not lose too many pots trying to play something like 64 suited out of early position. There wasn’t anything really here for advanced or intermediate players, its mostly for beginners. If you want to teach someone how to play poker then this is a quality DVD. If you already know the basics then I’d say skip it.

I have a confession to make. If you click on the dvd link above and order, I’ll get a commission. If you stop navigating this site now and go to Amazon without clicking on the link above, I won’t. You’ll pay the same price for the DVD, but I won’t get commission.