What I HATE About the TV Poker Shows

The players fiddling with those damn chips. Clickety-clickety-click-click. All night long.

I'm watching Poker After Dark, and at one point I think all six of the players were doing it. No one was talking, just nothing but chip noise in stereo.

Do they have mikes on the table? Can't they filter that out? Sounds like they are cranking it up.

Thank goodness you can't hear that on online poker.

Someone ought to tell somebody who cares that that is lousy television.

I like the noise of the chips clicking together whenever i play poker that is one the things i do move shuffle my chips if you know how to do it you'll be surprized how relaxing and fun it is to do it. Its the third best thing to do after talking/conversing and eating food at the poker table.

Chip noise is quite common in live poker rooms with experienced poker players.

Filtering out chip noise during TV poker would be the equivalent to filtering out the sound of the bouncing basketball in an NBA game or leaving out the crack of the bat in an MLB game. Could you imagine watching a motor race without hearing the engines roar? It would be quite poor television.

Chip noise is a poker player's "engine" imo.

I shuffle chips while playing online...music to my ears.

You hear that in ANY poker room.

Well, it might be like a band of angels live, but it's annoying on the TV. To me anyway. But I can see how you would learn to filter it out.


By the way if you want to see how your brain focuses, watch this.
Carefully watch the white team and see if you can count how many basketball passes they make.

YouTube - How Observant Are You?

The thing I find really irritating with Poker After Dark is you can hear every chip clinking, but its difficult to hear what the players are saying. The bets they have on what will flop are pretty interesting, but all you can hear is everybody playing with their chips.

^^^This - Great response!!! So very true! I play a lot of live poker and I shuffle my chips for hours on end, it is very soothing.

I stopped shuffling chips to make this post. It busies the hand and stimulates the auditory system, therefore helping you focus on what your doing. MrSticker also had a great take on this. Any poker player that has been playing for a few years LOVES this sound. I went to a home game a couple of weeks ago and they had those stupid plastic chips that are too light to really shuffle and they sound dumb too, my game was totally thrown off because all I could focus on was how much I hated these stupid chips.

I shuffle my chips. I love doing it but I only shuffle my chips when I'm not in a hand. When I am bored at work, i'll get a few dollars worth of quarters and shuffle them when I'm sitting at my desk.

This is what you hate about TV poker??? Not the fact that they pretty much only show big hands and makes the donkeys feel they can win with any hand, because they see top pros raising with 52 off and hitting straights, yet they dont realize that that same pro probably folded the last 25 hands dealt to him. Thats what bothers me about TV poker.


By the way my signature is a quote from OP.

I can't resist either, and I am not to good at the chip shuffle but I am learning. The could show more of the drink girls though.

i love the sound of chips makin noises. If u dont like it, stay away from live poker games then. Thats all u can hear for hours and hours lol.

Yeah - OP, never play live poker if that noise bothers you because you'll be hearing it from the first hand to the last. It's just what happens at live poker games and the TV shows accurately reflect that.

I agree with grossberger, the skewwed image of how long the players have been sittng at the table. After all the WSOP main event only takes ten hours to complete right?

You have a remoted control with a ''-'' on it. Use that button and everything is fine...

Problem solved....

I guess you can read lips, even when the speaker is off camera.

This^^^ try going to the wsop lol, that's all you hear with thousands of people doing it at the same time, if hearing it on TV makes you weak wait till you go there you'd go absolutely bonkers

Did you see the moonwalking bear?

lol

Me too, I have a stack of 10 red chips that live at the corner of my mousepad. I'm constantly shuffling them anytime I'm playing online or just waiting on something at the computer, and I too love the sound in a live cardroom.

+1
Absolutely agree with this

Since this discussion seems to have become more of a debate about chip shuffling than the quality of poker TV shows, I have a few questions because I am totally fascinated by the phenomenon and also agree that the sound is part and parcel of live poker. Also, when I'm playing on the southern IN riverboats, people who chip-shuffle expertly seem to gain respect the minute they sit down. As such, this skill is a definite asset as far as initial table image goes.

So.....how did everyone learn to shuffle chips? Does doing so just come naturally or like poker does it take practice, practice, practice? Are there different techniques? Is there a totally foolproof way?

i watched some vids on youtube and practiced it while playing, in time you'll do it with ease.

It's practice. And like Freerolls says, there are YouTube videos that can show you how to do a bunch of different chip tricks.

Thanks, Freerolls and Oz! Are there any specific YouTube vids that you especially like?

I saw a demonstration on you tube, and yes it's just about practicing. Start with 6 chips and practice till you get the hang of it. At first you will probably get it right a few times then fumble around for a while. But when you finally get the hang of it...doing 10+ you will laugh at the fact that just a while ago you couldnt do a small stack. I always shuffle with my right hand and was able to do it for a while before I tried to use my left hand and it was weird how I could do it right away. Especially since I can't do anything left handed.

If you really get good at chip shuffling try this. Take 5 of 2 different colors and in 6 shuffles go from 5 colors on top and 5 on bottom and reverse the order of colors like this using say white chips and red chip im gonna use smileys for this example.

SO START WITH STACK LIKE THIS










ok first shuffle they look like this










ok second shuffle like this










third shuffle










fourth shuffle










fifth shuffle










and then the final shuffle should put your chips in reverse order










Now thats how i shuffle my chips it takes lots of practice but once you have it down you dont even have to think about it and if you have people pay attention to you doing it, it makes you a little scarier at the tables.

I also constantly shuffle chips when playing live. I don't mind the chip noise on TV poker nearly as much as I mind the chat about the prop bets. PAD needs to do exactly what HSP did and ban the prop betting during the show. It's exceedingly distracting to both the players and the audience.

i riffle chips when i play online--up until the point my grandson steals my chips - lol.
i think the riffling keeps some players on thier poker face and also helps with concentration. or maybe some are trying to show off, lol, those huge hands that can manage a huge stack.
with my small hands i can only manage eight chips comfortably and keep a smooth rythym.
gl and peace. happy riffling...............hehehe.

RichKo--wow. Thanks. I had been fumbling with my right hand and today tried my left. Like you, for some crazy reason, I did much better but still have a long way to go.

Grossberger I thought your graphic was great and I'm hoping the visual will magically trigger something in my brain about mastering this skill. Hmmm...on another note, I see you are from OH. North, Central, South? Do you play live anywhere?

The clickety clicket click has a rythem to it .
The mouse for online has no rhythm only click click click click .

when you learn how to do Pull Over Shuffling Butterfly, Butterfly Collapse, Butterfly Balance Anti Gravity Muscle Pass Twirl, Twirl Reversed Front to Back Flip, Thumb Flip Knuckle Roll, Knuckle Roll Return Multiple Rolling, Table Chip Rolling, Block Chip Rolling Chip Spread Sweep Chip Production Bounce Stack 'Rich Bet' or Hidden Chip It makes the mouse even more usless and boring to use while playing poker. You and your mouse seem inseparable though..

I like the chip noise too -- I associate it with the excitement of a new tourney starting. Try a live game/tourney and you might grow to like it.

The example i'm using below is from the PAD with Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, cool Finn Patrik Antonius, Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahmies, Howard Lederer and Eli Elezra

I think phil ivey and others where doing it to undermind Tom Dwan's aggressive play And get Tom confused on his reads because the props change how that player who is prop betting on how he plays his hand. What we saw that night what we learned of that night with them on poker after dark was priceless.
We saw how veteran poker players handle aggression at the highest levels in live play . Real gritty stuff . It was amazing ...

Shuffling your chips is a part of the game. I recently went to whatch the world series and you can hear the chip noice from down the hall, it was actaully pretty cool listening to a few 1000 players playing with thier chips. On poker After Dark its so quite that the chips are extra loud but at least they show every hand and how the game is really played, not only the best hands.

Shuffling your chips is fun. I got pretty good at it one time when I practiced every time I played online. I got out of practice and now can't do it as well. But I do agree it is a little distracting on PAD. It's just too loud. It's the only poker show that it seems this way.