Getting played at the poker table

[Announcer]

TILT. A new dramatic series about high-stakes poker players is set in Las Vegas but, unlike some other prime-time series we could name, it's not something the Chamber of Commerce will adore. Premieres tonight at 9 on ESPN.

The only high-stakes poker I ever played was while I was in college. Please note that I use "high-stakes" as a relative term, shorthand for "How much can you afford to lose?" One night in the dorm I had to cough up what remained of my monthly living expenses in a match-the-pot game and spent the next 2 1/2 weeks acquiring useful life skills such as how to scrounge crackers and ketchup packets from the student union to make soup.

Mmmmm-mmmmm, good.

ESPN's new series "Tilt" is about hard lessons, too, but it's also about revenge. It first introduces three young poker sharks - Eddie (Eddie Cibrian), Clark (Todd Williams) and Miami (Kristin Lehman) - who initially seem to have nothing in common other than perhaps some mutual contempt. But, as we're gradually shown, they're a team, and they're on a mission. Each has some sort of grudge, in some cases dating back to when they were children of people who should have been in Gamblers Anonymous, against a big-time professional card player, Don Everest (Michael Madsen). In Las Vegas and international gaming circles, he's known as "The Matador."

Everest plies his trade at the Colorado Casino, a fictional Las Vegas gaming hotel. The "Mod Squad"-like trio is determined to settle old scores with him, and so is Lee Nickel (Chris Bauer), a small-town cop who makes a clumsy attempt at trying to play at the same high-roller table with the Matador and catch him cheating. The poker legend apparently took Nickel's brother to the cleaners at some point, underhandedly the lawman believes.

Now, vaguely intrigued potential viewers well may ask, what, beyond the payback plot, does "Tilt" have to offer that NBC's Monday night hit "Las Vegas" doesn't?

For starters, a less romantic view of Sin City. Some might even call it a seamy view, what with casino management routinely referring to patrons as "suckers" and houses doing whatever they can to improve their odds.

The executive producer is Orly Adelson, who served the same function on "Playmakers," an ESPN dramatic series that met a premature demise because NFL officials were livid at its intimating that professional football players used illegal substances, tomcatted around and acted overindulged. Luckily for her this time, Vegas doesn't have a commissioner or a players' association.

Masden's character takes full advantage of his reptilian qualities, the hood eyes and cobra stare, and Don McManus plays casino manager Bart "Lowball" Rogers like a human oil slick. And they're just the tip of a lowlife iceberg in this show.

Along with its favoring of underbelly over glitz, the other seductive thing about "Tilt" is the way the writing-directing team of Brian Koppelman and David Levien take viewers into the thick of the poker games.

Television often has been called a medium of close-ups, but rarely has its natural bent been so adroitly exploited. Tight head-shots, expressively inexpressive faces and masterful editing turn bluffs and raises into "High Noon" showdowns.

Whether Koppelman and Levien can sustain the tension of tonight's premiere is anybody's guess. "Taking down" the Matador seems like a limited premise. But given that there are millions of people watching celebrity wannabes play cards, I wouldn't bet against the vastly more compelling "Tilt" keeping card-obsessed viewers so inclined at the table for a while.

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Source: Casino Buzz
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