all_aces;103987 wroteAnyone else watch this? You have to PVR it... it's on at a weird time. My thoughts:

4) The "hook" for this show is that it's all about the players. The commentators say very little, if anything at all, and I never saw them, and I have no idea who they might be. The commentators don't comment on the action at all, beyond saying that so-and-so needs a queen, etc. and making the occasional one-liner smart-ass remark. I think they should stop with the one-liners... they're pretty lame. And, the lameness (lameitude?) is only magnified by the fact that they let the players talk for three minutes uninterrupted, and then this voice comes over everything and says: "You tell him, Phil" or some such nonsense.

5) On the heels of that, this show is obviously trying to be unique because the players do all of the talking, and there is consequently no analysis. The danger with this concept is that the players might not have much to say, and then all you have is dead air. Not here, though... the players are CHATTY. ALL of them. They don't shut up. They have clearly been paid handsomely to keep the chatter going, and this fact is so overwhelmingly obvious that the chatter seems REALLY contrived. I would expect that each player has had at least the 20K buy-in paid for, if not more. This is, after all, NBC, and these players are talking as if they're getting paid by the word.

7) The show looks weird... too contrasty, too much detail. The lighting concept seems to have been along the lines of: "We want you to make it all shady and dark with your lights. Here's three million dollars. Make it happen. Think dark."

I caught a little bit (10 mins. worth) of it this morning while working out. (Showing on the West coast 7am our time).

It was kind of bizarre when watching because Annie Duke and Shawn Sheikhan were talking about Phil Hellmuth's marriage while he was in a hand and they were talking about it for like 3 minutes. It really doesn’t make for interesting TV.

It reminded me a lot of poker super stars but with out all the “All-ins”.

I have set up the PVR to record it too and will see how it is over the next little while.