See also:
- The press release on Krantz's blog;
- our article about the filming of the pilot;
- Poker News Daily's article; and
- the DeucesCracked video training site, where founder KRANTZ will be running videos of his play during the show.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
2 Months, $2 Million: Online Poker Reality Show Coming in August
2 Months, $2 Million, a reality show about online poker, will premiere on G4 in August. Four well-known online poker players, Jay “KRANTZ/pr1nnyraid” Rosenkrantz, Brian “flawless_victory” Roberts, Emil “whitelime” Patel, and Dani “Ansky” Stern, will attempt to make two million dollars over the course of two months while sharing a house in Las Vegas (and living the high life as well, we're promised). Filming starts this week, and the two months of the title are June and July. 10 half-hour episodes will air.
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The show airs at 9 PM Sundays starting August 16. Check out the videos on the show's site.
Possible spoilers:
- If you've been watching the WSOP you know that Ansky had a $500K+ cash around the start of filming. KRANTZ says it doesn't count towards their goal, but it should make the first episode all the same.
- It's been widely reported that Viffer lost over $500K to KRANTZ during an online match set up for the show.
KRANTZ was watching G4 during the filming of the show when he saw a teaser for it. He says: "that was one of the most surreal moments of my entire life."
More on the surreality of it:
- KRANTZ thought of having a film crew follow him around being filmed.
- "Asking the talent coordinator, Jillian, where Brian is (I need the car keys!) and hearing her ask 20 people for “eyes on Brian” on the portable mic."
- They have a couch that says "pimp" on it.
Plenty more details about what to expect are in the lastest press release, including:
To help push each other and keep things interesting, the guys decide to implement a penalty stunt for the player who loses the most money each week. The stunts become more and more outrageous as the weeks roll by, including one “loser” having to wear a ballet tutu to dinner at an exclusive hotel buffet...
G4 is marketing this as a show about four math whizzes (lol), and this article came out of a recent meeting between them and the press: Poker nerd insists, 'Honestly, we’ve had sex before'. KRANTZ says about the press event: "Lorenzo Lamas was there too, but he’d have to wait until we were finished."
KRANTZ and Ansky were on the 2+2 Pokercast. The KRANTZ part, from 1:21 to 1:51, was interesting. Among other things, he talks about the origins of the show a few years ago, how the four guys have long been friends, and how Team Israel has been in Vegas every summer for the last three years.
Is the show realistic or not? KRANTZ's range seems to be polarized:
- While filming the pilot he said "one thing i've learned from this production is that reality tv is certainly not reality as you see it, and at the end of the day they need to sell a tv show."
- Now that the film is about to air he says "Anyway, the crew who worked on 2M2MM told me that our show leans much more towards documentary work than anything else they'd ever done, and they'd worked on a lot of reality TV... apparently many shows are scripted, situations staged, etc. Not the case here (and none of us would have done this show or anything like it if that would have been the case). I mean, you obviously know you're on camera. But you get used to them really quickly. Everything that's on this show - that's actually what happened to us this summer. So the story wasn't written beforehand, it happened as it happened, and the episodes were developed around what was actually occurring out in Vegas."
I'm hoping it's closer to the latter.
KRANTZ has posted some more stuff about 2 Months 2 Million on 2+2, e.g. they sent cameras to some opponents' apartments for prearranged matches and he defends Whitelime against people pointing out that he's lost $1.6 million online according to one database.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal has a terrific piece on the show. You should read the entire thing, but a few tidbits in case they don't give the show's history on the show:
But spending the summer in Las Vegas is nothing new for 25-year-olds Emil Patel and Jay Rosenkrantz and 26-year-old Brian Roberts. The three of them, along with three other friends, did the same thing last summer, sharing a luxury home and hanging out during World Series of Poker season. "Last year, there were six of us, but we cut the fat," says newcomer Dani Stern, 22, who joined the "2M2MM" cast after one of the resident poker aces opted for law school instead of reality TV. The remaining regulars "needed a high-stakes poker player that we were friends with," Rosenkrantz says. That turned out to be Stern. Like Rosenkrantz and Patel, he lives in the New York-New Jersey area. Roberts calls Austin, Texas, home.
The series, from Park Slope Productions, grew out of a six-minute 2007 documentary that aired on the Current cable channel and captured the players' camaraderie.
Poker Curious has a long, interesting (mostly the earlier parts) interview with KRANTZ. He says there will be cameos by Tom Dwan, David Benyamine, and aejones. He talks about moving away from professional poker to DeucesCracked and perhaps writing. And busting a sucker after reraising preflop with 86o while high on weed brownies.
My initial thoughts:
- I wanted it to go on longer.
- It's overproduced, fast-cutting, short-attention-span-theater type stuff. Most reality shows are like that, however, so I expected it.
- Overall, it's the most exciting poker show I've seen on TV since the fist episode of High Stakes Poker, or maybe ever. I'm into online poker and poker culture though.
After some further thought:
I would have liked to see more background on the players and hope to see more character development in future episodes. I'll likely need to see some story and characters that can generate some interest, or the short-attention-span-theater elements might end up overwhelming the rest, whereupon I'd become bored.
I love that fist episode.
Are you the guy who did the PokerDome technology veeRob?
Ansky defended their cars on 2+2 saying: "I can't disagree with you on the Range. That pretty white baby though is MY Audi s4, and there is nothing lame about it. If you disagree, I will drive it through your living room."
Blewjob has posted on 2+2 and his blog about the heads-up battle he had with KRANTZ that was featured on the show.
Jay and Dani are on the latest Inside Deal, at about the 18-minute mark. Not much new there, but it sounds like Jay does a great penalty stunt later in the series.
More tidbits about 2 Months $2 Million:
- Ratings seem to be good.
- Foxwoods Fiend didn't return to the show, after filming the pilot, because he was afraid it would hurt his career.
- The other team of online poker pros they'll meet next week is aejones, luckychewy, zugwat, and starky. aejones is famous, but the other ones aren't well known to me.
More 2 Months $2 Million stuff, from KRANTZ's blog:
- Tom and Phil actually set lines and bet on whether we would hit the goal. I think the line was 2.6:1 or 2.8:1 against and Tom snap bet on us. Would have liked to have seen that in there. (Referring to Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond, who they met for dinner)
- My only complaints - would have liked to see us discuss our attack plan for the goal (I imagine that will come into play soon), and what we think of the goal individually.
And Jordo (former roommate?) posting on KRANTZ's blog:
…but I can tell you I did not experience reality. It was pure, unadulterated surreality. The house was like a countryside manor, my friends were playing characters of themselves.... prepare for surreality television.
Ansky interviewed about the show with Mediocre Poker Radio.
The first episode of 2 Months $2 Million had more downloads on the Poker Bay than any other recent show, including the Main Event. It's been removed now however.
2 Months $2 Million star Dani "Ansky" Stern is moving on from Poker Savvy, the training site he worked for, to pursue opportunities opened up by the TV show.
Ansky moved to DeucesCracked, the training site founded by KRANTZ.
KRANTZ made an interesting post about 1) how they had to negotiate with the production company to get enough time to play poker and 2) how the chronology of the show doesn't match real life.
Krantz had a couple of interesting blog posts about 2 Months $2 Million. In one he talks about interesting deleted scenes. In the other he defends the $2 million goal, saying, among other things, that they'd made at least two million dollars each of the previous two summers.
KRANTZ did an interview with Poker News Daily. You should read it: his story of the Viffer match is much more interesting than it was on TV.
Dani "Ansky" Stern did an interview with Poker Curious. It's more about him and poker than the show.
I missed it at the time, but Bluff's Michael Friedman spent two days with the guys to do a thorough article that gives a lot of insight into the show.
KRANTZ also had a terrific article on Bluff, about the origins and vision for the show and other things. Guy can write.
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