High Stakes Poker. Staged? (spoilers)

jayteecork

Ok so I used love watching High stakes poker, and I was watching the first episode of season 4 on dailymotion.
So you have Phil Laak, Mike the Mouth, Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari and a ouple of others. Anyway Phil Laak pipes up "If you win a hand with 7-2 then that player gets $500 off everyone else at the table".
They all agree. Not 2 hands later Mike The Mouth raises with K-K and Hellmuth reraises out of position with 7-2 to $7,000. Mouth flat calls. Flop was Q-J-6. Hellmuth checks. Mouth bets $15,000. Flat call by Hellmuth. 2 on turn. Check. Check. 6 on river. Hellmuth thinks for a while and bets $40,000. Mouth also thinks then folds. Hellmuth shows the 7-2 and cue tons of whooping for the crowd.
Now, there's no way Mouth was laying down K-K on that board. Second of all his reaction to Hellmuth showing the 7-2 was not a mouth reaction to losing a pot of $90,000. He was strangely calm.
Iy's my opinion that the producers got the players to stage the whole thing.
Also, and I thought this was extremely dodgy - Antonio(real name Amir) Esfandiari's parents are both Iranian and moved to the states when he was little. Anyway for no reason at all he exclaims "I love America. I'm glad my father moved here. If he didn't I'd probably be riding around on camels shooting guns and stuff"
Now as you know there's huge political strife between Iran and USA. I find it extraordinary that The Magician uttered that statement, let alone it be aired.

Rb

Don't really see what the issue is with the comment tbh.

Regarding the hand, doubt it's staged.

Ace2007

The fact that hellmuth reraise the "mouth" preflop and out of position, means that he probably had a big hand - i.e high pocket pair - i.e AA,KK,QQ,JJ or in fact 7-2, if he has AA,QQ,JJ - The "mouth" is beat. If he has KK - he is calling
a 40K bet just to split the pot.... therefore i don't see why he wouldn't lay the hand down...

btw it's being a while since i saw the episode - but when u say it was 2 hands later - this may not be ture as some hands are edited out... so in fact it could have been 30 mins later for all u know..

DeVore

There's this thing called "editing". There may have been a bunch of hands, and a bunch of comments before those two, but those were the juicy ones so the editor decided to include them and not the others.

Personally, I know I have no terrific love for G. W. Bush, but I think its fairly safe to say that USA > Iran for living in. I'd say most of the Iranians who live in the US feel that way believe it or not. Certainly most of the 2nd generation ones, particularly the female ones I'm guessing!!

DeV.

jayteecork

You're probably right, but the episode played out a lot different.
The director seemed to focus for ages on Phil Laak talking about the 7-2 thing, then they had prefilmed footage of Antonio and Phil talking about the 7-2 thing.
To have such a big hand beaten by 7-2 2 hands into the show was very, very suspect in my opinion.

But as the man above said, editing did play a big part in it. Who knows.

hatedajacks

jayteecork wrote:

Ok so I used love watching High stakes poker, and I was watching the first episode of season 4 on dailymotion.
So you have Phil Laak, Mike the Mouth, Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari and a ouple of others. Anyway Phil Laak pipes up "If you win a hand with 7-2 then that player gets $500 off everyone else at the table".
They all agree. Not 2 hands later Mike The Mouth raises with K-K and Hellmuth reraises out of position with 7-2 to $7,000. Mouth flat calls. Flop was Q-J-6. Hellmuth checks. Mouth bets $15,000. Flat call by Hellmuth. 2 on turn. Check. Check. 6 on river. Hellmuth thinks for a while and bets $40,000. Mouth also thinks then folds. Hellmuth shows the 7-2 and cue tons of whooping for the crowd.
Now, there's no way Mouth was laying down K-K on that board. Second of all his reaction to Hellmuth showing the 7-2 was not a mouth reaction to losing a pot of $90,000. He was strangely calm.
Iy's my opinion that the producers got the players to stage the whole thing.
Also, and I thought this was extremely dodgy - Antonio(real name Amir) Esfandiari's parents are both Iranian and moved to the states when he was little. Anyway for no reason at all he exclaims "I love America. I'm glad my father moved here. If he didn't I'd probably be riding around on camels shooting guns and stuff"
Now as you know there's huge political strife between Iran and USA. I find it extraordinary that The Magician uttered that statement, let alone it be aired.

I used to love the programme but it is getting to be too much chat and not enough hands. However, i agree with Ace2007, the way the betting went i think i could find a fold button tough as it would be.
Think u are being a bit paronoid on the Iranian link too!

cuterob

its not staged..it'd have to be a big secret to stage something like that especially with all the people in the room and production staff etc..you'd think someone woudl leak info like that after 4 seasons

Macspower

this 7/2 crack seems to be the flavour of the month.. in a certain galway casino it's 5 per head for anyone winning a pot with an "all in" and showing with 7/2. creates massive action becuse everytime someone anounces all in 7/2 springs to mind.....

jayteecork

Reading Patrik Antonius' Blog. He's involved in a $500,000+ pot on Season 4 of High stakes. Didn't state the outcome.
Antonius is my favourite poker player at the moment. Amazing to watch.

newbie2

jayteecork wrote:

Flat call by Hellmuth. 2 on turn. Check. Check. 6 on river.

Turn was an 8 - giving straight possiblities to Phil.

[URL]http://[/URL]

jayteecork

newbie2 wrote:

Turn was an 8 - giving straight possiblities to Phil.

[URL]http://[/URL]

So it did. My mistake.

Lafortezza

Matusow couldn't reload and play on, all the money he had with him that day was in front of him so he didn't want to risk it. Plus the hands that Hellmuth reraises with out of position aren't that many, AA/QQ/JJ all beat him. So really all Mike beats is a bluff.

Mellor

The director seemed to focus for ages on Phil Laak talking about the 7-2 thing, then they had prefilmed footage of Antonio and Phil talking about the 7-2 thing.
To have such a big hand beaten by 7-2 2 hands into the show was very, very suspect in my opinion

The film everything,
then obviously made sure to included and make a deal of the 7,2 comment,
as it actually happened. The cutting room has the benefit of hindsight.
And it probably wasn't two hands later

phantom_lord

jayteecork wrote:

Also, and I thought this was extremely dodgy - Antonio(real name Amir) Esfandiari's parents are both Iranian and moved to the states when he was little. Anyway for no reason at all he exclaims "I love America. I'm glad my father moved here. If he didn't I'd probably be riding around on camels shooting guns and stuff"
Now as you know there's huge political strife between Iran and USA. I find it extraordinary that The Magician uttered that statement, let alone it be aired.

he says that all the time.

Hectorjelly

in a reraised pot it would actually be standard to fold KK on a QJx board to a lot of action from a tight player, and he quite clearly tilted after that hand.

Clareman

it's a good show, I wouldn't mind having an unedited copy of it tho to see what really happens, the 1 thing that really annoies me about TV poker is they show all the big hands and leave out all the stuff that card players would be interested in. Late Night Poker shows every hand but all it is is a SnG with only 1 place paid

Mellor

well in fairness, the shows aren't aimed at poker players. Its aimed at the masses.
That is obvious from the typical poker rundown every 15 mins

"Well the game here the texas hold 'em, each player is dealt two cards, called hole cards......"