PRO POKER SCHOOL Learn Before You Earn

Poker Review

Review by Jon Eaton

Shout Factory's World Poker Tour Season 2 DVD, an eight-disc collection of the second full season of the Travel Channel's smash hit hits the shelves today. Featured on the eight-discs are 14 episodes of the WPT tournaments, each about 90 minutes in length, and a load of special features that were not available in the first season DVD collection.

The most noted special features in World Poker Tour Season are the two audio tracks of commentary by Daniel Negreanu and Erick Lindgren, both WPT champions. Their commentary over the PartyPoker.com cruise and the PokerStars.com cruise tournaments are both top notch, with a lot of thoughts about the play and their own actions throughout. Daniel was in both, notching a 3rd in the PokerStars.com episode, and Erick beat Daniel heads-up in the PartyPoker episode.

The duo work together amazingly for their two episodes. However, it's so interesting to me I wish they had simply done this on every episode with one or two players. Hopefully, next time this is expanded upon by Shout Factory.

Also included is an extended "Poker Corner" show, that featured pros Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth and Negreanu talking about the season finale, the WPT Championship at the Bellagio. There are also player profiles (of which are featured throughout the episodes themselves), poker corner bits (again, the bits all organized that are featured by Shana during the show), and a featurette about the WPT Hollywood Home Game. If you watch the Travel Channel and the WPT religiously, there's nothing new here, but a lot of people might have missed the "Poker Corner" show.

If you've seen the episodes on the Travel Channel, then you know what to expect as far as content goes for the episodes themselves. As far as what I think of the World Poker Tour, if you've never seen it... then I would definitely recommend every player watch these discs. If they plan on playing poker fairly seriously, then you have nothing to lose watching these.

As far as the best tournaments of the season... I recommend the PokerStars.com Cruise, as well as the WPT Championship. All of the episodes are entertaining, so there's little reason to not watch all of them.

For those of you who plan on maybe playing in a big event, these are valuable studying tools. It of course is all short-handed final table play, but you can at least learn some hands that players you might face have played. Information is priceless in tournament poker.

Overall, the DVD's are a valuable learning tool as well as a great piece of entertainment. Some of the extras aren't all that great, but for the $59.99 retail value of this massive DVD set, it's well worth your money.