I am SO very happy with the show. Wow, just amazing numbers in terms of viewers and I really think the show hits a demographic that is mostly totally new to poker and likely doesn’t watch shows like PAD, High Stakes Poker, or even the WSOP. The whole point of creating the show was to introduce people to poker in a format that they are more comfortable with: a game show format.
We retained 15% of the NFL audience with ratings of 2.1 million households
and estimates at around 4 million viewers. That makes the show officially
the highest rated poker show in US history. I’m still in a bit of shock!
As I mentioned in my preview blog about the show, as a poker player, when watching the show, you have to think about the bigger picture here. The target audience is NEW players. That’s really good for ALL of you! It’s certainly good for poker.
The poker is fast paced, but again, what that does is give the contestants a real chance at winning big money. If you have a deep, slow structure, they’d have a tough time getting through three players. The faster structure increases the luck factor, but there still is enough skill involved to make the play interesting- especially to players who are new to the game. The response as a whole has been overwhelmingly positive. Don’t forget to tune in this Sunday for the second episode.
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POKER: I’ve been playing on PokerStars.com every day as of late, mostly in the $400-$800 8-game mix which has been going steadily with several games going at once. I’ve been on a heater too, only having one losing session this entire month.
I’ve also resumed my match with "2eazy" who I’d promised I’d play 5000 hands of heads up NL Hold’em with on PokerStars in a $25-$50 game. I hadn’t played a lot of heads up since before the WSOP, and early on in our match he outplayed me badly and got me stuck. Then I essentially "gave up" and went into uber insane gamble mode, since I knew we only had 1000 hands left to play and the only way I could win the match was to increase variance. I ended up losing $15,000 in that match, and we still have another session or two to finish it.
Once we are done playing the $25-$50 match I agreed to play him a 20,000 hand match at $200-$400. That one will take a little longer obviously, and there is also an "escape clause" in that one where the losing player can quit at any point. I think it will be fun and I’m looking forward to getting that first match over with so we can start the next one soon. If you want to watch the matches, I’ll always tweet when I’m playing at Stars www.twitter.com/RealKidPoker.
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GOLF: I played in the Pro-Am this year at my home course, TPC Summerlin and it was a lot of fun. I was paired with Jeff Quinney, a guy with a swing that is similar to mine. He goes to the Jim Hardy school and has what’s called a one-plane swing which is very flat compared to other golfers.
We were killing it! It’s a best ball format with handicaps and we started out -9 through 9 holes with Quinney shooting a 30 on the front. On 10, 11, and 12 we blew it, parring all three holes and we ended in a tie for 9th place at -12. It was lots of fun.
I go down there to watch some of the golf. Today I’m going to go sweat Ben Crane who I know through my agent Brian Balsbaugh. Brian used to rep golfers and Ben was one of his clients. He’s a good dude and he’s easy to root for. He shot 68 in round 1 and should easily make the cut with a solid round today.
I also ran into Rocco Mediate who’s a bit of a poker player also and he was struggling. Saw Aaron Baddelley is off to a nice start and I wouldn’t have bet on that one! The night before the pro-am I had dinner with him and Ben at Brian’s house and his right eye was so swollen it looked completely shut. He’s allergic to dogs and must have pet Brian’s dog. It did NOT look good at all! I saw him the next day at the pro-am, though, and it looked like the Benadryl worked wonders.
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SAKE: When I get together with E-DOG at Kona Grill we end up killing the sake and the other night was no different. We always come up with bizarre ideas while there and on this night Erick challenged me to a stand up comedy set for $100,000 with some of the money going to charity. To make it fair, I told him he can hire Brad Garrett or whoever he wants to help him out, but that I’d prefer just doing it with no help from writers at all and I’d lay him a price. I’ll let you guys know if this ever happens
After dinner we all went to my house to do a golf pool for the tournament. Then, Erick went after my books again. I have boxes of my book at home that are there for me to sign and he likes to mess with them, writing messages on random pages. He’ll write "I hit the ball like a vegan, signed Daniel Negreanu" or other equally stupid stuff.
He grabbed a box and was running off with it, so I tackled him. He was gonna throw one in the pool, or who knows what. We were on marble floor and I got him in a choke hold, fell on top of him and he has a nice cut to remember the evening. We then continued to wrestle for position, and he has 50 pounds on me so he flipped me, and in the process, I could of sworn he broke my nose! It was just bruised and I’m ok now.
It got weirder after that when he tried to give me a wedgie and my underwear just ripped to shreds. I had to get even, so with his back turned, I grabbed the top of his shirt and just ripped it off of him, lol.
That only got him fired up as he took a case of my books to the pool and was threatening to throw them in. So, I got out my trusty 7-iron and threatened to smash his car. Man sake nights are awesome, lol. It was a lot of fun, and thankfully the swelling on my nose is going down.
