1st player: "What crappy cards tonight!"... 2nd player: "Fold"... 3rd: "I'm out, I'm out, and I think once this is over, that's it... it's just not my day"... 4th: "Damn, I can't even cover the small blind with these crappy cards"... 5th: "Let's give it a try, more out of desperation than anything else, call"... 6th: "Did I put in the big blind? Then check, check, more out of curiosity to see the flop than anything else."
Anyone who occasionally enjoys a game of Texas Hold 'Em with friends knows that most hands see these phrases going around the table. And it couldn't be otherwise, everyone is never satisfied with the cards they have or those on the table because they're afraid they're too good for the others.
We struggle on like this, waiting for the hand that some evenings will never come, going all-in with Q-8 out of resignation, or slowly dying until we can't even cover the big blind on the last round.
Then, one of the eliminated ones, slumped on the couch with a cigarette in one hand and the other behind the ear for a couple of hours, with a sleepy look but already projected to the next working morning, starts channel surfing and passing by Italia1 finds "Poker Mania," and for the first time everyone notices, beyond the smoky haze that has formed at human height, the television. And the actual game takes a backseat while they are mesmerized by the feats of great poker players in the world's best Casinos.
The difference is glaring: they may be good, they may be experienced, but it can't be that every hand is an adventure movie with unbelievable twists when the ones you've played so far at best could be compared to an episode of McGiver in predictability. The program, for those interested, isn't bad either, Max Pagano is a good player who knows how to explain the most intricate plays with accessible terminology, and Ciccio Valenti is there because maybe they had to find him a place somewhere at Mediaset... but some might even find him likable, even though he's always made me sad ever since he had the task of generating spontaneous amusement with funny images from Italian stadiums on "Controcampo".
The fact is that more than focused on the development of the hand in progress, the show seems to me more built around the sensationalism and propaganda of Texas Hold 'Em; in my opinion, it would be more useful to better focus on the winning percentages once the flop is revealed, or to visualize the hands played or folded by a specific player. Because the point is that, even though there are real cash prizes at stake and they are substantial, the viewer at 2 am doesn't care if the first place wins 1 million dollars or half, just as I don't think they care about the interview with some contestant's wife or the retrospective with full "Maria De Filippi's tronists" style footage of another player's profile.
Because the consequence is that the next week, at the usual pizza & poker night at a friend's house, you find someone showing up with sunglasses because they've discovered that pupils change size when someone is nervous: very true, but maybe this person doesn't know that a flush is worth less than a full house. You find your friend going all-in with J-4 because "anything can happen... like that episode where Gus Hansen..." and another person who even reads books to become a champion and yet doesn't know how to do the math and always raises wrongly.
So, Max and Ciccio, show us some crappy hands too, it must happen to the gods of poker, right?
Oh, another thing, Valenti: your scream "aaaaaaaal-innnn" intended to infuse joy is often pronounced by the player who has become so short stacked that they realize they're forced to go all-in, so I don't know where all this joy is. Also because then, when you lose (and anyone who plays among friends knows it's true) the reasons are:
•1) Our bad luck
•2) Our friend's luck
•3) The fact that it was late and we wanted to go home; even if we then stay another couple of hours raiding our host's fridge or commenting on those remaining in the game. Because let's be honest: if we had been dealt their cards... we would have surely won.
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