New York City Underground Poker

Somewhat off-topic post here, but it seemed worth writing about.  THis wek launched the first week of The Pokerstars Big Game.  With the NYC poker games being a little slow these days (everyone being in Las Vegas for the WSOP), I’ve been spending my time playing more online poker and watch trashy poker tv.

This show actually isn’t that trashy though.  The format is interesting, something at least a little fresh, and they have a good group of professionals at the table.  For those of you who don’t know, the format of the Pokerstars Big Game  is a 6-handed game of pot limit hold’em pre-flop and no limit hold’em post flop.  The really interesting part though is that only five of the players are the standard TV professionals we usually see.  The 6th player is what they call the “Loose Cannon.”  This is a player who qualified through Pokerstars and then made it through a casting call.  The Loose Cannon gets $100,000 from Pokerstars, but the twist is he / she only gets to keep the profit above that $100,000.

This week the Big Game’s Loose Cannon is a starstruck DC-ite named Ernest Wiggins.  Ernest seems like a perfectly nice man, but his play is, for lack of a better word, garbage.  I generally don’t like to criticize people’s play on this blog, but Wiggins’ play really is astounding.  The problem is that he is clearly scared of his opponents (Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, Phil Laak, Tony G and Phil Helmuth), and is getting run over by them.  Anyway, I think the lesson from this show is never to be concerned about the people you are playing with.  Just know who is good and who is bad and play accordingly.  Don’t get scared of people and don’t let reputations proceed anyone.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…