Celebrity Poker Showdown

Anyone who watches this show thinking they're going to gain some great insight into playing poker is fooling themselves but from an entertainment standpoint the show is definitely worth the time. It's kind of unfair to slam the celebrities for not being expert poker players (even though several of them, including Mimi Rogers, James Woods and Ben Affleck have moneyed in big name events). Some of them play like boneheads (Bobby Flay, I'm looking at you!) but overall the level of play is at least as good as you'd expect from journeyman-level players. While you won't become an expert player from watching, if you pay attention to what Phil Gordon has to say you will pick up some good tips.

I LOVED this show and when I was starting to play Poker, there was no better method by which to learn the basics of the game. The reason for this is that most of the celebrities play horrifically on Celebrity Poker Showdown and it provides plenty of opportunities for Phil Gordon to explain where they went wrong and why. Viewers also get a great chance to see how a smart poker player can easily dominate play when they have good cards and when they don't. While I enjoy High Stakes Poker and WSOP shows very much too, you simply don't get the chance for beginner lessons like you did with Celebrity Poker Showdown (and, really, it's worth the price of admission to see Scott Stapp of 90's band, Creed, "play." It's AMAZING). I really wish that they would release it on DVD!

I play semi-pro poker and I like this show. The celebrities, for the most part, are not good but that's to be expected. They bluff about 90% of the time because I'm sure it says something about that in the little manual Phil Gordon gives them before the show. Any regular poker player would win this tournament with relative ease.

I'd like to see some different formats, though, to make it a little more interesting. Maybe have Phil play in the game, but he only gets 5,000 TC. I'd also like them to try to have cast members from different shows on, like in Season 1 when they had the West Wing cast. Also they might want to find the celebrities that are actually good at poker to play against each other. My gut says the players that are good don't want to play against a bunch of poker morons for fear of losing on a river suckout and never hearing the end of it.

My vote for worst player is Dennis Rodman, edging out Adam Rodriguez (of CSI Miami) who went out on the very first hand with nothing but I can chalk that up to just not ever playing the game, and Coolio, who played in the first season and played like he needed to catch a plane. Rodman actually won his game, embarrassingly enough, and didn't ever seem like he had a clue nor gave a damn.

Don't watch it to learn anything (other than the absolute basics of the game), but it is mostly fun to watch.

I watched all episodes of this show, and didn't much like it. Although there was a certain joy in watching celebrities outside their normal mindsets, the poker was just not very good. In no limit holdem, there is a fine line between brilliant and stupid, and nearly all of the amateurs crossed over it.

But I'm a poker fan, so I might be biased. It's kinda like watching celebrity softball or celebrity stock car racing. You level of enjoyment is inversely proportional to how seriously you take the sport in the first place. (And yes, the fact that I refer to poker as a "sport" let's you know where I sit on the subject.

Another thing that disappointed me was Kevin Pollack. He cracks me up, and I was excited that he was hosting the show. But he simply wasn't funny on this show. His gag lines seemed to be written for him, and his impressions seemed like they were from out in left field. I understand that he is being replaced by Dave Foley for the new season.

If you're not a poker purist, and just want to see Ben Affleck and David Schwimmer hang out, it's worth a look. But don't expect to see any of these folks behind a stack of chips in Vegas anytime soon.

For all the poker purists, I would say "get over it!" The average person doesn't want to watch Stoneface, the Unabomber and Robot-Man play poker. It may be realistic, but it just isn't all that exciting. The purpose of this show is entertainment! More important - I like it. I am fond of watching the various celebrities behaving in a more natural, less-scripted venue. It's sort of like a sitcom reality show. And I think I've even learned a little about poker - though I don't play.

I started watching this for Dave Foley and stayed for the poker fun. I've recently seen reruns of Season 1 with Kevin Pollak (who is he?) and I can see that the later seasons are clearly more polished and more fun. Kevin didn't seem like a bad guy, just rather dull. His interaction with Phil Gordon was not very dynamic. And Phil, himself, seemed VERY wooden. With the new episodes, we get better commentary as the bidding happens on-screen, rather than simply pointing out what a given player did wrong after the fact. This improved continuity shows good editing skills. (You didn't really think this is played in real-time, did you?)

The only thing I might like to see different is, perhaps once during a tournament, they could give some brief recognition to Robert Thompson and the dealers. I was surprised to learn that some of the dealers are well-accomplished players and professionals in their own right, yet they are generally treated as robots.