How Many of You Remember Dr. Science?

Not to be confused with Bill Nye the Science Guy, Dr. Science's catch phrasewas, "He knows more than you do!!!" On TV in the late 80's, they'd always pump up the reverb on the catch phrase, giving it a nice echo effect, and making it sound really ominous.

What does this have to do with poker? Well, I got this feeling recently when watching yet another broadcast of the World Poker Tour, this one at the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas. Once again, Poker Professionals Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten provide expert analysis which is almost always, wrong!!!

What makes me say this? Well, for one thing, they can see all the cards of every poker player, whether in the hand or not. At my home game in college, we had a term for this, "Inside Information." It became a catch phrase of our own, which we would use when we'd see someone at the table making an impossible draw, as at that time, seven stud was our game of choice. I hope I'm not dating myself, which as you know, can get awful lonely.

Back to what we were talking about, about, poker in the Bahamas. Specifically, a hand came up where in I started shouting at the TV. Even if the broadcast was live, I don't think they could've heard me across the country and the gulf.

Yet another instance of mistakenly thinking that you can learn the game from watching it on TV; I felt as if I were losing poker IQ points by the minute as the commentators continued to bloviate on the hand. The hand itself is not important. What you need to know is that with almost the exact same situation as a previous hand just ten minutes before TV time, they gave entirely different commentary. Why isn't the situation the same? As with all things poker, it depends....

More on this when it comes up again.

72 and sunny in Redondo Beach.

See you next time.

"Matches Malone"

Editor's note: Matches Malone has been writing for us for a couple years now, and you can read his blog notes at PokerAllStar.com

Note: All News and Press Release information on the pages of PokerAllStar.com is cited from public sources on the internet. Articles appearing on PokerAllStar.com are written by contributing authors, and the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only.