The slickness of the production itself earns an "A", although I wasn't impressed with the incorrect player standings chart after the first elim hand (the 2 eliminated players were reversed at the bottom of the chart). The byplay between Matt and Max was excellent. It does come off as a bigtime Hollywood production, as it should. I feel bad for the fellow who lost it in the last hand, he had a bet available that was probably fairly obvious to all of us TBJ junkies but perhaps the pressure of the situation got to him. If you've never sat in one of those TV seats, it's impossible to completely understand what it does to you. A "C" for improving the show since season 1. As in last year's shows, way too much sizzle and nowhere near enough steak. Hands actually shown were far too few for our tastes because the time was burned up on other things that didn't have a lot to do with the game. It gets a big fat "D-" for the commercials, though. Deb and I had taped it so that we could fiddle with the playback while watching, and after the first set of commercials those Club promos became quite annoying. Not because we can't play at the Club, it just reeked of "infomercial" too strongly for our tastes. We were grateful for the ability to fast-forward through them. I gave it an overall "B".
You are being VERY generous LeftNut! As I was with a C LOL. Usually these shows start out with the best to draw in viewers, we better hope they have another approach in mind! BTW I dont remember theses players at the Venetian? Were they from the 32 player field that had two final tables? They showed a huge stack of cash it looked like a million or so, but was it all ones?
That Venetian tournament was played out last year, it's not the one that was done a couple of months ago with Fred and BJMace. Yesterday's show was actually taped just a few hours before next week's episode, on the same day in L.A. this past January. Yesterday's players began taping the game at about 9:30 or 10:00 AM, if I remember right. I never saw the pile of cash. It could very well have been $100 bills on top of each stack with ordinary paper underneath, because having that much real cash would create a security risk and I don't remember seeing guards there. Who knows!
This must have been a Venetian invite. The other show, besides FGK's, had Skip on a table and Joep on another........ BTW, it looks like Hollywood will be on next weeks show with the Bet21 logo! Maybe FGK can fade that to a Club UBT with his photo shop LOL
these were invite players fwiw http://www.blackjacktournaments.com/bb/showpost.php?p=21022&postcount=4
Horrible I don't need a long speech. It was horrible and doesn't compare in my opinion to the WSOB. That's it.
Finally got around to watching the first episode. And I was really glad I watched it on Tivo, not 'live'. Didn't have to watch the annoying commercials or the 'coming up' after the commercial that show you far too much of what is going to happen. I gave it a 'C' but that is to average the 'A' of getting to see blackjack on TV and 'F' for the actual production of the show. What is with the 'dunh-dunh' music when every card is laid on the table? I don't remember the show being so horrible last season and I don't remember disliking Mati Moralejo so much last time. He hardly let Max get a word in. I noticed Max giving him the hairy eyeball a couple of times when he said something stupid. Overall, I'll be watching all the episodes, but with the fast forward button at hand.
A little story about the clubUBT commercials. On Saturday I was training my son to win club UBT points and tried to tune into UBT game on DVR but found I hadnt recorded season, just game 1. I let it play in same room as my son. I was in kitchen making some lunch and was hearing my son shout. I thought he was shouting at the computer like dad does during games. He used the word annoying a couple times. I came in and asked him if someone was playing too slow for his liking. He said no the players were fine it was the persistent stupid commercials he was annoyed at! LOL
