The problem with many poker podcasts

One thing that drives me crazy about the majority of poker podcasts is their utter disregard for researching the stories they cover. Often times they rely on their “experts” that they invite on the air to explain the situation, but as was the case with a recent segment on the QuadJacks podcast regarding the “Girah” scandal on 2+2, the experts — Karak and Sgt RJ-were not up to speed on all of the assorted details in the thread., and there were a number of misstated facts throughout the segment.

This isn’t a slight on the people who appeared on QuadJacks during the segment -I could almost feel how uncomfortable they were with the hosts’ lack of insight into the entire affair– as they didn’t claim to know every bit and detail of the saga. This falls squarely on the hosts of the show. I’m sorry, but if you want to talk “news” you have to do your due diligence and be up to speed on the topic.

At one point I totally lost interest when the discussion turned to the possibility of Daniel Cates perhaps being cash-poor. First, they misquoted Mike Matusow –from their own show!-as saying jungleman had $4.6 million locked up online, when Matusow put the figure at $6 million on the QuadJacks podcast just weeks ago. But even more troublesome was their apparent ignorance to the post by Danny “d2themfi” Isaacson on 2+2 where I states:

“When we had dinner with Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates and Haseeb “INTERNETPOKERS” Qureshi in Austin in late April right after Black Friday, Cates said he had sold his Full Tilt Poker account balance (I believe for 85% but I can’t remember), … We then asked him if he had sold it to Tom “durrrr” Dwan, and his response was ‘Something like that’ and we left it at that,”

Whether this is true or not, if you are conjecturing about the liquidity of Cates based on Matusow’s throwaway statement on your podcast, shouldn’t you at least point out what Isaacson said?

Now, there are a few podcasts out there that do their homework on a particular topic before discussing it. Todd Witteles on DonkDown Radio comes to mind, the PocketFives podcast, as does Jon Friedberg’s TheRail podcast -there are others as well, but these three come to mind. Now this isn’t to say that these shows are not opinionated and unwilling to jump to conclusions, BUT the difference is that more often than not they have a firsthand understanding of the details of the topic.

Just because you have a guest on that claims to have been following the minutia of a particular story doesn’t absolve you from also looking into what happened. Not only could your “expert” have overlooked something, or not given a particular aspect the scrutiny it deserves, but they could also have an underlying agenda that makes their commentary suspect at best -think about the political talking heads when they appear with a friendly, uninformed host, opposed to when they are confronted with a knowledgeable host with a differing opinion.