I’ve been watching the Poker Superstars tournament on Sportsnet over the past few months, and it’s been pretty good. The preliminary rounds were televised on Fox Sports Net in the US (I think.) and were interesting at times, though the blinds seem too big near the end, which reduces the skill level of the players quite a bit.

Anyway, so last night I watched the finale, which was originally aired on NBC, and I realized that I’d seen it before. There was a big difference though - when I saw it before, it was two hours. What I saw last night was only an hour. To start the broadcast, Howard Lederer was in second position, but despite that, three or four commercial breaks in he hadn’t been shown playing a hand yet. Remarkably, he was eliminated (along with Chip Resse) during the break. !?! At one point, Johnny Chan was forced to go all in for his last $20K with KJ, and he sucked out against Barry Greenstein’s AK - putting him at slightly over $40K - the next time I noticed his stack was > $800K and he was in second position. Not a single Johnny Chan hand was shown in between. It was the worst editing job that I’ve ever seen in my life. I say hyperbolic things like that a lot, but this time I don’t think I’m exaggerating. It’s as if I were watching a Riders game, and they were up 12 points in the first quarter - they cut to a profile on Nate Davis’ clothing tastes, and when they come back, they’re losing by 30 and the backup QB is in the game - with no explanations.

Simpson’s quote of the day:
Homer: “If you don’t start making more sense, we’re going to have to put you in a home.”
Grampa: “You already put me in a home.”
Homer: “Then we’ll put you in the crooked home we saw on Sixty Minutes!”