World Poker Tour Best of Season 3 DVD Collection

Mike Sexton likes to say "Fasten your seatbelts" during World Poker Tour broadcasts, and that's exactly what you'll need to do when you watch the World Poker Tour Best of Season 3 DVD collection.



The collection features eight events from the $70 million third season:

• Legends of Poker at The Bicycle Casino

• Borgata Poker Open at Borgata Hotel and Casino

• Grand Prix de Paris at the Aviation Club de France

• World Poker Finals at Foxwoods Resort Casino

• World Poker Open at the Horseshoe and Gold Strike casinos

• L.A. Poker Classic at Commerce Casino

• Shooting Star at Bay 101

• WPT World Championship at Bellagio



These events made for an exciting season, and they make for an even more exciting DVD set because of several added features. You can see key hands for several episodes that were omitted from the broadcasts. All of the "Poker Corner" features are included in their own separate segments. You can see a hilarious "Shana Hiatt Bloopers" special.



You may wonder how one player increased his stack during the break or between crucial hands. Sometimes when they came back from a commercial break during the regular season, the player in third position was suddenly in the lead, and you wondered what caused the dramatic change. You can account for some of what the necessary editing caused by looking at deleted hands. Several episodes offer the choice of watching with those deleted hands in situ, or you can watch the episode as it appeared on TV and then watch the deleted hands separately.



If you ever plan on being part of a WPT tournament, you want to own and watch this series many times. Even if all you want to do is improve your no-limit hold'em game, you'll find plenty to learn here. You'll see and hear expert analysis, and better yet, you'll see technical errors that literally cost players the championship. More than one event was lost due to player mistakes.



Watch a well-known player self-destruct in heads-up play – and it's just the same way that he clutched in an earlier far bigger tournament. Granted, the editing shows only selected hands, but they clearly reveal tactical errors that cost him the championship.



Remember Tony G, the "Melbourne Mouth," the man everybody loved to hate in the first season? Well, he was back again in the third season at the Grand Prix de Paris at the Aviation Club de France, even mouthier, if that was possible, putting everyone on tilt at the final table. It all culminated in as exciting a heads-up battle as has been seen on the World Poker Tour. And Tony G trash-talked all the way to the very end.



Watch these segments and learn, because you'll see not only lots of brilliant plays, but lots of clear mistakes. You'll see bluffs that were doomed to fail because the perpetrators didn't take into account the chip counts of their opponents or the sizes of their own stacks.



Yes, they were usually playing the last of many long days of competition, but you don't win more than $1 million in just one day. That might be a justification, but all the players face the same challenge. The tough survive. You may think that youth has the advantage here, particularly when you see a 23-year-old crowned the youngest WPT winner of all time, but you'll also see one riveting performance by a seasoned septuagenarian.



The producers may have chosen these eight events specifically due to the excitement generated at the end. You will witness some of the most riveting heads-up action that you have ever seen.



You'll observe in several final-table confrontations that to win one of these tournaments, you really have to not care about the money and be willing to gamble. This is proved by the very many drawouts that you will see.



You'll see champion player Scotty Nguyen in Tunica. He has made five WPT final tables and never finished higher than fourth. He implies in interviews that he self-destructed every time, and you can watch him do it again.



Are you interested in amazing coincidences? In one event, you'll see the exact same hand – identical two holecards, down to the suit – come up three times in a row, and each time be involved in an all-in confrontation.



In episode after episode, you'll see amazing reversals and comebacks from near disaster.



The final event, the prestigious WPT World Championship, had the second-largest prize pool of any poker tournament, and some of the most exciting play.



In this event, you'll see a big mistake that provided the eventual winner a second life and another chance at the crown. He would have been eliminated had the huge chip leader at the time not made a tactical error in what he said. By misstating his intention – and he clearly meant something else, but verbal declarations in turn are, as we all know, binding – he cost himself the tournament, and close to $2 million.



You'll see that final-table leader, who had until that point dominated the table, suffer back-to-back all-in beats. Would that put anyone on tilt? Maybe. You'll be able to see if it put him on tilt, particularly coming on the heels of his fateful misdeclaration.



You'll enjoy this four-DVD set – and you'll learn. And, you'll want to fasten those seatbelts!



The World Poker Tour Best of Season 3 DVD collection by Shout!Factory is available at video retailers and on the WPT webstore at http://www.worldpokertour.com/. It has a suggested retail price of $39.98.

Michael Wiesenberg's The Ultimate Casino Guide, published by Sourcebooks, is available at fine bookstores and at Amazon.com and other online book purveyors. Send items, intuitions, and inventory of inaccuracies to [email protected].