Norm debuts

Norm Macdonald started his stint as host of High Stakes Poker by denigrating his own poker abilities. That was probably a good idea, given the annoyance over Gabe Kaplan's firing from the show.

As it turned out, Macdonald's commentary on the play in his debut last night was competent and sometimes humorous. But he was occasionally surprised by a frankly surprising move. Like when the pictured Doyle Brunson folded a very serviceable pair of queens.

The play itself got interesting in a hurry with two huge 400K+ hands. Poker pro Vanessa Selbst crashed and burned when she ran her pair of queens into a set of threes held by amateur Phil Ruffin. Fellow amateur Bill Klein wasn't so lucky when eccentric pro David "Viffer" Peat hit a flush on the river.

The play then simmered down as people got a bit more cautious. Still, Barry Greenstein won a gutsy bluff against Klein, who definitely took his lumps in the episode. A lot of new faces showed up at the table. Top players like Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey were MIA due to some asinine dispute between a couple of online poker sites.

All in all, I enjoyed the new season, though the show is still using Kara Scott as just routine eye candy. Not that I have anything against eye candy, but she should be doing some genuine commentary on the poker.