… is the dumbest sounding idea for a TV show I’ve heard in a while.
I realize they’re trying to ride poker’s popularity, but poker can be interesting to watch. It’s a complex game of applied knowledge and experience. In theory, watching celebrities play it could be vaguely interesting, although the games are of such low quality as to just annoy me personally, but blackjack is a game of chance where knowledge can be applied but it only really changes the house edge by a few percentage points. Why anyone would want to watch this… well, I dunno, it’s no more exciting than celebrity roulette or celebrities buying lottery tickets…
Well, I watched the first episode and was amused enough by the commentary that I didn’t turn it off. There were a couple of hands with unusual outcomes which led to momentary spikes of interest. I wouldn’t go out of my way to catch it but if there was nothing better on I would probably watch it again.
GSN did a non-celebrity tourney with professional gamblers using betting strategy and that was entertaining.
I do have a question relating to the first ep though. One of the celebs got dealt two aces and split them, then got a third ace and split again and the commentators said something about how she could only get one card per ace at that point? I haven’t played any casino blackjack and I’m unaware of any rule about limiting the number of hits after splitting. She didn’t double any of them so it had nothing to do with that. Is this a casino rule about one hit per split card or a C.B.J. rule or what?
So if you split aces, you get one more card per ace and the ace automatically counts as 11? IOW, dealt AA, split them. End up with A-3 for hard 14 and A-J for hard 21, which is not blackjack, and that’s it? Can’t hit the A-3 as a soft 14?