Monday, November 05, 2001
It’s 1am in the morning. Why would you want to watch complete strangers sitting around a table playing a card game you don’t fully understand? Because ‘Late Night Poker’ is the best game on TV, that’s why.
The premise is brilliantly simple. Stick serious poker players (some gifted amateurs, many hardened professionals) in a studio and record them playing cards. Add engaging expert commentary and the cool feature of being able to see what’s in everyone’s hand (there are cameras under the glass table), and you’re quids in.
Watching it, you’re being given an insight into a shadowy world that would normally be closed to you. The players are a diverse bunch, from Malaysian playboys to Irish builders, from glamorous Austrian women to a guy from Hull called the Devilfish, but they all share a few characteristics.
Firstly, the obligatory poker face. When you know they’ve got nothing in their hand, watch them try and bluff, or even more impressive, watch them feign uncertainty and fear when they’re on a strait. Remember their skills the next time you take your mangled bike to the shop and try a blank, ‘I don’t know what happened. I was just riding along. I’m sure it’s still under warranty.’
Secondly, the players take chances with the air of people who understand more about the world than the rest of us. In poker, you can play perfectly and still lose, and you won’t win anything without luck. In other words, these prodigiously calm risk-takers use their abilities as well as they can, in the full knowledge that it’s not completely down to them what happens. A lesson for us all.
Helping you understand all this is the excellent Jesse May, a commentator with the Technicolor vocabulary of an old Wild West movie. He describes the play as if it’s a bar-room brawl – when the river card is turned over on the table and someone’s just got slammed by a flush, he’s yelling, ‘say goodnight and call me a doctor!’, and after a fine piece of subterfuge sees a player bet big in the mistaken belief that they’ve got the best hand, Jesse reflects, ‘he had him sucked in like a dead dog.’
The play is remarkably dramatic when you consider that it’s just a few chips and some bits of card being passed around. The type of poker they’re playing means that there’s always some uncertainty, and glory or disaster can hinge on the revelation of the last card.
The immediacy is enhanced by the judicious use of the under-table cameras. We see what one or two players have got, but are left guessing about some of the others. This puts us in the same position as the players, trying to read their opponents, and deciding how far to back their own hand.
If this all sounds like I know loads about poker, I’m just bluffing, as I’ve never played in my life, and all my knowledge has come from a couple of episodes of the programme. But I’m hooked, and can’t wait for next week to hear Jesse wailing, ‘Here comes the flop, and ohhh, the Devilfish’s two sevens are down in flames, as Anand’s matched his eight with the eight on the table. Two snowmen freeze out the Devilfish!’