The Circuit 2.0

The holidays are swiftly coming to a close. I’ve noticed a few folks starting to get back to their blogs. The combined effects of heavy doses of tryptophan & spiked egg nog have apparently finally begun to recede. Most seem to be gravitating toward “year end review/new year resolution”-type posts. Dunno if I’ll bother with either of those. For some good year-end reviews of what happened in the poker world in 2006, go to the Poker Prof.’s blog and/or Pauly’s always-worthwhile Tao of Poker. Poker News has also been working its way through a month-by-month recap. As far as resolutions go, I got nothin’ other than to try to keep having fun (and making a few berries here and there) playing our favorite game.

After a few days away from the tables, I logged onto Full Tilt today and found professional player (and new co-host of The Circuit) David Singer sitting at a $1.00/$2.00 limit table. Easy to tell which one was Singer. Besides the custom avatar, he was also the only one with over $20,000. (Your guess is as good as mine as to why he thought he needed to bring so much.) I jumped on the waiting list, thinking perhaps I’d get to experience a little of that “mixing it up” I wrote about last post, but unfortunately Singer left before I’d made it to the top of the list.

Ended up watching several of the hands, and saw Singer chatting it up in a very friendly way with the rest of the table. He seems like a nice enough fellow. Not sure, really, how good of a fit he is for The Circuit, though. The new crew -- which includes Singer, Konan Luce, and Rich Belsky -- made its debut a couple of weeks ago at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic. Singer is the lone pro of the trio, and while he’s certainly knowledgable and even demonstrates a dry sense of humor now and then, his understated monotone probably makes it difficult for most listeners to remain attentive. Of the amateurs, Belsky seemed fairly comfortable and did a fair job during the shows asking guests about particular hands. Luce seemed mostly out of his element, however. I don’t think the group necessarily deserves all of the negativity spewing on the Circuit forum (over at CardPlayer), but they do have a lot of room to improve, I think.

The Circuit is fairly unique among all of the podcasts in its on-the-spot coverage of the major tournaments. (Have yet to check out The Tournament Trail over on Hold ’em Radio.) I’m pulling for the new hosts to figure out how to make the show work. I mentioned something before about how the new hosts -- whoever they turned out to be -- were going to have Shana Hiatt-esque shoes to fill thanks to the high mark set by Scott Huff, Gavin Smith, and Joe Sebok. (Posted that observation over on the Circuit forums and here’s what Circuit intern, forum moderator, and funny guy Justin “Shronk” came up with in response.)

Think I’ll go take a look that DVD of The Cincinnati Kid I found in my stocking Monday morning. Probably looking at a review here in the not-too-distant future.

Welcome back, all!