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World Poker Tour: Season Two
Shout Factory // PG-13 // March 29, 2005
List Price: $59.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Currently running in its third season on the Travel Channel, the World Poker tour continues to tighten its grasp on taking over the world. Poker has grown in leaps and bounds in popularity thanks to some current trends in television poker: the card camera, which shows the hands that each player is playing with, and the fact that amateurs can make it to the big money tables which happens fairly often thanks to the explosion of online players and the satellite tournaments that enable the low stakes players a chance to take a seat with the big boys at a big money game.
With this DVD set, the entire second season of the World Poker Tour, hosts Vince Van Patten, Mike Sexton and the always beautiful Shana Hiatt take us around the globe helping at home players improve their Texas Hold 'em game one episode at a time.
For those not familiar to the series, the World Poker Tour is a series of tournaments that take place around the world, in places such as Las Vegas, Paris, France, Aruba and even on a Caribbean Cruise ship which lead to an ultimate tournament, that for season 2, had an overall prize pool of 8.3 million dollars, the first place winner took home over $2.7 million for his multi-day effort and extraordinary patience. The tournaments are open to anyone who is willing to shell out the entry fee, which ranges from a few thousand dollars to $25,000 for the final tournament. Van Patten and Sexton are the official commentators of the WPT, and they offer both insight and sometimes poorly executed humor into the WPT but that is part of the charm of the show, it takes itself serious enough to be interesting, but a level of camp is here to draw in the average Joe viewer and keep their attention for two hours a week.
The second season consists of fourteen episodes, each showing an edited version of the final table which is the final six players out of the sometimes enormous field of entries. The episodes are complete with the short trivia questions that appear before commercial breaks and the poker corner segments with Ms. Hiatt also included. Each of the seven DVDs contain two episodes with the option to select a single tournament or a play all button which plays both episodes. Each is broken up into chapters which let you navigate quickly to your favorite part, be it when a miracle flush appears on the River or when Gus Hansen makes a stone-cold bluff to steal a pot from the chip leader.
The DVD
How's it Look:
WPT Season 2 is presented by Shout Factory in the same format it appears on the Travel Channel, and that is a full screen presentation. Because the show is a very recent phenomenon, the episodes are all very clean and sharp, with the colors (green of the felt, the white of the cards) all looking quite bright and crisp.
I did notice some harsh edges when the camera panned around the scene sometimes, however I also noticed this when I'd watch it on TV.
How's it Sound:
Thankfully, there was no attempt to try and remix the WPT into 5.1 surround sound to try and update it for DVD, it's presented in 2 channel stereo sound which is a more than adequate way to watch this. However, the sound was slightly off compared to how it was when initially broadcast. The commentary came out sounding somewhat hollow and tinny, and didn't have the full punch that it did when initially broadcast. After a few episodes though, one does get accustomed to the sound so it doesn't come off as a big deal, but I'll admit to some inital disappointment when starting my decent into the entire season.
Extras:
I bet some of you did the math and realized that fourteen episodes, at two per DVD only adds up to seven; you'd be correct. An eighth DVD is filled with some bonus features that are a nice little touch to help us home players improve our game. All the Poker Corner segments from the individual episodes are here and are each individually selectable or a play all option is available.
Conclusion:
For the player who casually watches the WPT on TV, having this set might be overkill because re-runs are always on and are presented just as nicely as they are here. However, for the die hard players who are looking to improve their game, you might gain a little extra insight into the game of poker by watching the extra features as well as listening to the enjoyable commentaries by the players themselves. Based on the educational value of the bonus features alone I am giving this set a recommendation.
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