Advertisement

Behind the scenes at the Philippine Poker Tour

Many people know me as a billiards and football commentator. But I've done other games too. And one of my favorite sports to cover is poker.

Televised poker is a hoot. Gotta love the outrageous bluffs, sick reads, and massive three-bets (raise, a re-raise and another re-raise on top of that.) Poker always seems to feature crazy characters, entertaining table-talk and unbelievable two-outer suckouts (come-from-behind wins on the last card) that leave everyone gasping in shock.

A few weeks ago my buddy Noel Zarate invited me to commentate on the Philippine Poker Tour with Ron Regis. We've just wrapped up our first leg in the Metro Card Club. The first episode should be up on TV in few weeks.

It's a good one. There is no shortage of telegenic hands with plenty of dramatic twists and turns. You'll probably never guess who takes home the P612,000 first prize. It'll make for riveting TV.

The tour is the brainchild of Jojo Allado, an attorney who picked up the game three years ago. Since then he's played in the World Series of Poker and now wants to make an impact in the local scene with the PPT.

There will be 10 legs, some planned for the provinces, with the leg-winners meeting in a final event. The winner of that tournament earns a slot in next year's WSOP main event.

That means there will be plenty of awesome No Limit Texas Hold 'Em coming your way. I'm expecting a smooth and slick show. But the arduous work that goes into it behind the scenes is worlds apart from the finished product.

Every tennis fan would die to have a courtside seat in Wimbledon. Your typical NBA nut would offer up a limb to see the NBA Finals live. It's a golfer's dream to stand behind the ropes at Augusta National during the U.S. Masters. But many poker enthusiasts might shy away from watching Poker live.

Poker on TV is completely different from poker live. The televised variant has been properly edited, with only the most exciting hands, out of hundreds, left in. Plus you can see the hole cards, so you can follow the action.

When you're watching poker live, you only see the cards in a showdown. It can get dreary and repetitive, sometimes akin to a Bataan Death March with cards and chips.

That's how it went down last Monday at the Metro Card Club. The tournament started with 341 players three days earlier. We start our final table with 9 players shortly after dinner. After much fanfare to kick things off, we get comfortable in our chairs.

Watching live poker is hour upon hour of library-like solitude followed by a few minutes of intense panic. Then back to the tedium.

After ages of interminable folding, suddenly... OMG! Someone's all-in!! And we have a caller! The players stand up. The tournament director stands up. Everyone but the dealer stands up. There are catcalls from the railbirds. We want blood! We want carnage!! The hole cards are flipped... and... they are... the... same. The players have been betting and reraising WITH THE SAME CARDS.

The board is run. Split pot. No one wins, no one loses. The dealer halves up the pot and ships them to the two players. Everything sits down again, and we slip back into another hour of....

Fold.

Fold.

Reraise 3x Big Blind. Everyone folds.

Fold.

By late evening we are still at 6 players. Noel, playing the role of executive producer, has the gravelly voice of death. He has gone hoarse thanks to an earlier event he hosted in the rain. The prod crew is restless and glassy-eyed. I pop a Red Bull in preparation for an all-nighter.

There was one televised final table that is still talked about in Pinoy Poker circles. The legendary standoff between Vic Catalan and Johnny Tan in Filipino Poker Tour 14. These two, playing like "rocks" or extremely tight players, duked it out in heads up (one-on-one) for the final prize.

They refused to take risks. They hemmed and hawed. They circled and clawed. Parried and clinched.

Like MMA fighters grappling on the octagon, they battled away and didn't give ground. For seven-and-a-half epic hours.

Eventually Tan shoved all-in with 2 pair on the flop. Catalan called and Tan's hand held up. At 10am, the day after the final table commenced, Tan was declared the champion and handed the winner's purse of P2 million.

All throughout my final table I'm thinking, please, not again.

Eventually six players become five, then slowly four. Then, hours later, there were three. Wholesale catatonia has by now enveloped the crew. It is something like 2 am. The cameraman look like zombies with their headsets. One prod assistant look like she wants to cry. My Red Bull is wearing off and I'm fading fast.

The three-handed phase is akin to a tennis menage a trois. Chips go one way, then back the other. Just when we think one is on life support, he wins a pot and is back in the hunt.

Finally at what feels like 4 am, we are down to two. We tape an intro spiel to the heads-up. I am barely coherent.

The protagonists square off. There is a feeling of excitement, and also dread. Will our champion be greeted by daylight again?

Fortunately not quite. After a reasonable heads-up period, we have a winner. An air of relief fills the room. After an epic working day, we can all go home. It's time for the editors to do their work, cull the mountains of footage into action-packed episodes.

So please watch the Philippine Poker Tour on TV soon. Or better yet, buy in. It's just P5,000. Because the thrill of poker is best experienced either on the tube, or with chips and cards in hand.