Why is HSP3 a major disappointment?

[Tomy_Lee]

I am watching HSP every week and it is obvious that it is a lot different than season 1 & 2. First couple of seasons were specific in some sort of way. The first one was cool because Negreanu on start of the show bought in for cool million $$, lost almost $600k and then won all his money back. That was great to watch.
Second season was also cool because there were some good hands to watch, Matusow was paid to stay and then went broke, Esfandiari was so unlucky and that beautiful $575k pot..
Certainly it was great to watch it.

While reading some posts of Negreanu about how tough table setup was for this season with Antonius, Yukon, Ivey and the rest of them I was expecting to watch great poker, but so far there was not many of it.
Too many switching players, some of them just played couple of hands, but when I saw a preview about next episode where there will be $4,5M$ on the table, I am certainly gonna watch it.

Anyway, HSP 1 & 2 was better in my opinion because it was consistent players and better play then in HSP 3.

[kflop]

I enjoyed watching Gold, Doyle and Mike on the first few episodes of 3. I liked it when Gabe played and Daniel did the announcing, the epidsodes with Townsend, Wasica, Sammy and Eli were great and we're all looking forward to the next few weeks. I didn't like the Harmetz, Shak, Trincher table, too many amateurs. But I still looked forward to the show every week. If you liked 1&2 better, that's a fair criticism. I think there's good and bad stuff every season, mostly good.

[-moe-]

I find the show near perfect.

Just invite a few Scandinavian LAG online players (anyone bankrolled for it from, say, Christopher "LuckyULSA" Ulsrud, Johnny "bad_ip" Lodden, Ramzi Jelassi, Mohammad "Fast_Freddie" Kowssarie, Fredrik Halling, ...) and some interesting table personalities (Prahlad Friedman, Ram Vaswani, Roy "The Boy" Brindley, John Duthie, ...) and we're all set. It's getting a little stale with Negreanu, Matusow, Esfandiari, and Laak to be the life of the table.

Kudos to the production team for the current table, though, it looks amazing -- I can hardly wait for Monday's show.

Oh, and yeah, wouldn't mind it being extended to 2 hours, as others have mentioned.

[Jurrr]

They should do a DVD with all the hands and no commentary (hole cards added in post production though).

[Daddy Warbucks]

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Just invite a few Scandinavian LAG online players (anyone bankrolled for it from, say, Christopher "LuckyULSA" Ulsrud, Johnny "bad_ip" Lodden, Ramzi Jelassi, Mohammad "Fast_Freddie" Kowssarie, Fredrik Halling, ...) and some interesting table personalities (Prahlad Friedman, Ram Vaswani, Roy "The Boy" Brindley, John Duthie, ...) and we're all set. It's getting a little stale with Negreanu, Matusow, Esfandiari, and Laak to be the life of the table.

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While this would be a great show to watch, it's a marketing nightmare. How do you sell a bunch of people who most people have never seen or heard of before? This is why HSP always has a couple of recognisable faces at the tables.

[Bonified]

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and some interesting table personalities (Prahlad Friedman, Ram Vaswani,

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What ? Ram's a great player, but he barely says a word at the table. And there's nothing wrong with that, nor do I, but I don't know why you call him an "interesting table personality"

[-moe-]

[ QUOTE ]
While this would be a great show to watch, it's a marketing nightmare. How do you sell a bunch of people who most people have never seen or heard of before?

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All of those I listed are obviously not available to play, I would guess the majority doesn't have a sufficient bankroll and couldn't get enough backing. I just listed a few suggestions as to where the producers could look next time they wanted to get some new blood. The no-names and/or amateurs they have used so far has mostly been a rather boring bunch, IMHO.

And also I obviously didn't mean they should introduce a bunch of them at the same time. The HSP producers seems to do this part well already, introducing one or two new names every 2 or 3 episodes, at the most.

Anyway, for me it basically boils down to really wanting to see Johnny Lodden play high-stakes NLHE cash games on TV, especially after seeing him on the recent broadcast of the William Hill Grand Prix Season II.

There have been some rumours that this is a real possibility, BTW: Lodden knows fellow Norwegian Thor Hansen very well, and Hansen is best buddie with Eric Drache, who I've heard is one of the main men behind HSP. I've seen Hansen say that he's able to get anyone into the game due to this connection.

(For those unfamiliar with Hansen, he is a bracelet holder, more recently placed 2nd in Omaha/8 WSOP 2006, and a regular at Larry Flynt's "home-game" along with e.g. Ivey and Reese.)

So it might just be a matter of Lodden scraping together a big enough bankroll.

Perhaps an interesting tidbit at the end: Thor Hansen is playing the EPT Monte Carlo final today, after having his buy-in paid for by Lodden and two of his friends (Tore "Lager" Lagerborg and Gunnar "Gunman" Østerbrød), who are staking a whole bunch of Scandinavian "has-beens" for the EPT final, to see if that pays off.

[-moe-]

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and some interesting table personalities (Prahlad Friedman, Ram Vaswani,

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What ? Ram's a great player, but he barely says a word at the table.

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You're right, bad choice. Strike him from that list. He seems to be playing an action-packed LAG style, though, so add him to the other list. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[Daddy Warbucks]

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All of those I listed are obviously not available to play, I would guess the majority doesn't have a sufficient bankroll and couldn't get enough backing.

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This is incorrect. Several well known high stakes internet players who are rolled to played tried to get on the show and couldn't.

[Hobo McCracken]

Maybe if the unknowns they brought in were laggy instead of nits? Although that might tighten up the name player's game, so that could have a bad affect.



And This doesn't have anything to do with season 3 in particular but I feel like saying it...

the commentary is soooo much louder than the table talk that I have to have my TV really loud to hear it any of it.

Then AJ will shout "Laak raises to 1800 with AQ" drowning out the table talk, when I can clearly read the graphics and see his action. If you're going to have him call out every play, at least mix it down a bit.