Tilt

What can you say about this show? Nothing good, except that the levels of terrible this show achieves are so complete it is impossible to look away. Its a train wreck of bad lighting, stilted dialog and ridiculous plot. The narration from our main character comes off as completely lame. When we are not being treated to the inner monologue of, some other character is spouting off "quality" lines such as "You play cards; you're not a card-player." The non-stop barrage of poker jargon, perhaps with some demented eye towards establishing "street cred" with the poker world is so bad it borders on self-parody.

This show is mind-bogglingly bad. But, it is one of those monumental failures that you just can't stop watching. You will sit there, in a dazed stupor, wondering if there were any way the show could possibly be worse, but everything you come up with will invariably make the show better.

The producers of "Tilt" have helpfully placed a warning at the beginning of each airing, presumably to prevent young people from taking up poker. I can think of no better way to ensure that a child will never want to play poker than by having them watch this show.

After 2 episodes, I have to say I'm already a fan of this show.

A couple of haters here, who probably don't know anything about poker and were too slow to understand what was going on, are talking badly about the show.

Don't listen to them. This show has a very nice cast, is well written, and it has all the elements you'd want from an action series. Michael Madsen kicks ass as The Matador - but right away, the intrigue of seeing him fall to Eddie, Miami and Clark is too much, and you just wanna see how it will all develop.

Add to this a lot of danger surrounding a cop who is after the Matador himself, trying to avenge his late brother, who was killed by the Matador, and you got a big hit! I never watched Playmakers. I heard it was good, but it turned out to be a good thing I didn't watch since ESPN's affiliation with the NFL forced that show to get cancelled.

That won't happen to Tilt - this show will be a success!

After watching the first four episodes of Tilt it's pretty easy to gather that the show is far fetched and promotes the idea of cheating. If you're looking for REAL poker, go watch re-runs of the WSOP on ESPN Classic or World Poker Tour on Travel Channel, but if you just want a fun show with a poker theme embedded into it, then give Tilt a try. Michael Madsen's character is laugh out loud funny with some of his one liners, and granted the acting from the others is below par, you can't really set the bar high for ESPN shows, especially after Playmakers. So again, if you want a few cheap laughs and just enjoy poker in general, give this show a shot. If you're looking to brush up on your skills and try to play in next years WSOP, then save the criticism and go read Super System! :)

I've just seen the final episode of Tilt and have to say enjoyed the series. It was by no means perfect, some of it was a shade predictable, some of the acting and dialogue was a little below par. But overall if you're the kind of person that likes watching poker and enjoyed the movie Rounders you're probably going to enjoy this offering from ESPN.

My only complaint was the horrible scheduling of ESPN. If it wasn't for DVR I never would have seen every episode, which sucks as the storyline is sequential from one episode to the next. Even with DVR you'd have run into problems since three weeks running ESPN were over 30 minutes late showing an episode because of some ball game. Then they decided to move the finale to an entirely different day. It was almost like they were trying to kill the ratings. If ESPN want to make another season or indeed another series like this they need to schedule it properly or sell it to another network.

If you can actually see all the episodes in order, and you're a poker fan, I think you'll enjoy. If you are a 'poker is not a sport' kind of person who doesn't think mental games of skill are interesting, stay clear. Oh and it has some adult themes, if you dislike such things don't watch.

I haven't been real impressed with many of ESPN's ventures into original movies or programming. I saw a couple of episodes of "Playmakers" but it didn't keep me coming back. "3" wasn't bad...neither was "The Junction Boys" but I absolutely hated "Hustle" and the "Season on the Brink". That said, I watched "Tilt" with guarded optimism.

What I came away with after the first episode is the interest to at least see the second. The character development seems very good and, already, you want to see the "Matador" (Michael Madsen's character) fall and fall hard.

Lots of casino action, suspense, even a bit of flesh appear to be the ingredients here...and my wife probably said it best when she said, "You definitely won't see this on Lifetime"...