"The contestants learn to pay attention on The Poker Star"
October 30, 2009
It was week five of the Joe Hachem hosted poker reality TV show The Poker Star, as we were down to our final seven competitors all gunning to win the chance of a lifetime as a professional poker player and title of “The Poker Star”.
Each week Joe’s code teaches the players a valuable life lesson, and this week the theme was “Recall“ – the ability to pay attention to detail.
“Nothing is ever what it seems,” pondered Shane as the contestants exited their limo and awaited the arrival of Hachem and co-host Lee Nelson, for their next challenge. Shane’s words couldn’t have been more fitting as the producers threw a very nice little curve ball.
As the group waited on the street for some direction for their next challenges, they were witness to a series of events ranging from a courier van delivering packages, to pedestrians carrying balloons and finally to a hit and run car accident right in front of them.
Most players appeared to be wise enough to realize the incidents were something to do with their instructions to “pay attention”, so it was no surprise when Joe and Lee emerged and informed them they were about to be grilled about the series of events as part of their recall challenge.
Amanda struggled as Josh was declared the loser of the challenge as he failed to recall much of the details. Donna once again proved to be a strong competitor but in the end it was Katie who emerged victorious as she was judged to have recalled the most detail. Katie was rewarded with dinner with Joe, Lee and a group of family and friends were she enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Joe on a more personal level.
The players then went to their weekly poker tournament where $3,000 in cash was up for grabs. The start bank was increased to 60,000 to give the players a little more game time as they were reminded to play quickly – last week one hand of Josh’s took over eight minutes!
Interestingly several weeks ago Ron was criticized when he called Donna’s all in with pocket threes. This time Donna was on the other side of the coin flip, when she called her last chips with


to be racing against Josh’s


. An ace from space landed on the river to eliminate Donna from the tournament.
Chris and Katie were sent to the elimination room, and despite winning the tournament Josh joined them after his very poor performance in the challenge. In the end, Katie poor results combined with her major error in this tournament ultimately led to her elimination from the show.
Katie was a spirited player but few moments of lost focus that resulted in overly-aggressive play were eventually her downfall. Katie will head back home to grind online, comforted in the knowledge that she is an improved player for the experience.
Only six contestants remain! You can tune into The Poker Star every Wednesday evening at 8:30pm on One HD, or at midnight Thursdsay on Channel Ten, or join Joe Hachem, Lee Nelson and The Poker Star contestants on the felt by simply logging onto PokerStars.
In further news, we were saddened to learn of the passing of Ron Sullivan on Tuesday. Ron was one of the most popular contestants on The Poker Star series and proved himself as a fierce competitor on the poker felt as he took his opponent’s chips with a smile. Ron had courageously fought but lost his second battle with cancer. Our thoughts are with his family at this time.