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In the 1990s, ESPN ran a series of commercials advertising Monday night football that featured Coolidge’s famous poker dogs. This page provides information and pictures of those commercials. A couple of the videos can even be viewed online.
Picture of the production set that Animal Makers sent me.
Before I say more, I would like to thank Animal Makers (the company that helped with the “animal aspect” of this commercial) a LOT. When I was doing my initial research on Coolidge, I sent letters to basically anyone remotely related to his dogs. They received on as well and actually responded to me personally, sending a picture of this commercial’s filming as well. That is more than I ever expected from them and am much appreciative.
The companies that were responsible for the animals in the dogs playing poker commercials were Click 3X and Animal Makers. Animal Makers specializes in working with animals on screen. Some information on these commercials and even clips of them are available on their website.
The following is an account of some of the filming of these poker dog commercials based on information that was previously posted on the companies websites and an article from Post Magazine, but neither of those documents are publicly accessible anymore.
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The commercials were created with a combination of real dogs, animatronic puppets, splicing scenes together, and computer morphing. A total of thirteen thirty second commercials were created for ESPN’s promotion. In these commercials canines sit around a poker table, sometimes with a NFL star, and discus everything from a bulldog’s encounter with a car to whether Tennessee should be allowed to be called the Oilers.
The filming of the commercials was done by director Joe Pytka of Pytka/Venice. Five real dogs were used in the production of these commercials. A special set was also constructed which resembled Coolidge’s paintings and allowed for the trainers to control the dogs. No “green screens” were used in the shooting. Dogs were actually sitting around that poker table. The dogs, however, tended to be older so they were relatively cooperative and stayed put.
The paws seen in the commercials holding the cards were not the dogs’. They were animatronic paws either controlled by operators under the table or off screen. The creation of these fake paws was quite an ordeal. Only seven days were available to create sets of paws for five different dogs. In order to make the paws seamlessly integrate into the commercial, exact measurements were needed for each of the animal actors. Also, at the last minute, two of the dogs were changed. Although they were the same species their color did change slightly. Since the commercials were produced though, it looks like all of the paws were created in time.
Unfortunately, dogs can not talk, so the crew lip-synched over the animals and made their jaws move properly. To make this process go quickly and smoothly, the dog’s real jaw was removed (in post production, there was no canine surgery) and replaced with a simulated jaw and tongue. This technique allowed for realistic speech movement from the dogs mouth. The fact that the dogs constantly moved their heads in all kinds of different angles complicated that process. They would need to create a different jaw to paste in or morph an existing one.
During production the team also paid a lot of attention to the dogs’ eyes. Eyes can play a major role in an actor’s presentation, so they wanted to ensure that the dogs conveyed emotion and feeling through their eyes. Since dogs obey commands to “roll over” and “sit”, but not “show more emotion,” the feelings were added later. “Eye blink, winks, and eyebrow movements” were frequently added to the dogs’ original performances. They even enlarged the dogs’ eyes so that pupil motion would be more noticeable. The artists kept tweaking the footage until they created a scene that portrayed their vision exactly.
Despite this, the production crew ran into a few difficulties working with these unpredictable animals. Being dogs, they would occasionally bark, which made their entire body spam. In order to cut down on total filming time, video from two different shots of the dogs would be carefully spliced together creating a seamless scene in which no dogs barked. Also, the bulldog would occasionally wipe his tongue over his entire face. Although it lasted only a short time, the crew had to remove those scenes manually by pasting good shots of the canine’s face over the tongue. In several scenes both the fake paws and the dog’s real paws were visible simultaneously. Since it is unlikely that a pooch would stick all four of his legs above the table at once, the real set had to be removed in post production.
From all that I have read, creating these short commercials took a lot of time and effort. Even after Animal Makers coerced the dogs into sitting around the poker table to get footage, much of post production work was required to tweak the film to get the desired effect. I am glad though that ESPN decided to create these awesome commercials, and others put the time in (even if they were paid for it) to create them. Maybe ESPN will produce more of these commercials sometime.
Joe’s Diner Résumé
By Jay Lovinger
Page 2
LEDYARD, Conn. -- Remember when you finally left home for good as a kid, perhaps to go to college, and you realized your mother wasn't there ... so you could stay up as late as you wanted to? Remember what a great feeling that was?
Well, I decided to try to recapture that feeling -- 40-plus years later -- at Foxwoods last week by playing poker for at least 24 straight hours, just like we used to do in the good old days.
I don't want to give away too much this early in the column, folks, but I'll drop a hint here:
When the good old days are over, they are over.
Thanks to the usual construction fiasco on the Connecticut Turnpike, I arrived a few minutes too late to play in the Monday night limit hold 'em tournament. So I immediately went scouting for a game that looked like it might last through the night. I settled on a $5-5 no-limit hold 'em game -- my usual side game -- because it had a must-move table with an open seat, and there were at least three players at the must-move table who I knew liked to play into the wee hours.
(A must-move table is a feeder for the main game -- like the NCAA is for the NBA, or the Royals are for the Yankees. As soon as there is an opening at the main table, the person who has been sitting the longest at the must-move table must move to the main game. No options to stay at the must-move table, no matter how lucrative. So, the fact that there was a must-move table assured that the main game would not be breaking up anytime soon.)
I sat down at the must-move table at 9:30, and by midnight I was in the main game. That was a bit alarming, since it meant that nine players had dropped out in less than three hours. A further discordant note was hit when Dennis, one of the guys I was counting on to make it till breakfast, said, 'I'm worn out. I'll think I'll take a couple days off and not play till Thursday.'
It was a pretty congenial group. After Al, an eightysomething from New York City, was raised $100 pre-flop, he said to the raiser, 'Can you make it $60 -- you know, a senior citizen discount?'
At about 1:45 a.m., a couple of guys moved over to the main game together and began talking Russian to each other. 'Hey, where you guys from?' one of the locals asked.
'Eastern Europe,' said Russian Guy One.
'Where?'
'You don't know where Eastern Europe is?' Russian Guy One asked.
Long, long ago, I had taken a couple of semesters of Russian in college. I told Russian Guy One that the only phrases I could remember were ya nee znai-you and ya nee pon-ee-mai-you ('I don't know' and 'I don't understand'), which, by some strange coincidence, were the two phrases I had most frequently used in class way back then.
'Got a C, right?' he said.
I nodded.
'Must have been the accent,' he said.
Meanwhile, we had a situation developing that would render moot all thoughts about how long the game would last -- namely, I was in the process of losing all my cash at a personal record rate. I had started with $1,200 -- more than twice as much as I had ever lost in a single session -- and had access, through my ATM card, to another $400. By 3:45, I was already making that long walk across the poker room to the ATM machine near the front entrance.
Re-armed with $400, I was determined to nurse my tiny bankroll back to health and through the night, when, as luck would have it, I was dealt an A-K suited on the button on my very first hand back. Russian Guy Two, sitting across the table, raised the blinds $25, and I re-raised to $100. Only Russian Guy Two called.
The flop came A-9-7 rainbow, Russian Guy Two bet $100, and, like a stealth bomber, I just called.
The turn was an ace, and Russian Guy Two bet $100. Suffused with the joy of blissful ignorance, I went all-in for my last $100, figuring Russian Guy Two for an ace with a good kicker, though not as good as my king, of course. I was wrong. He was holding 7-7, which meant only a nine or the case ace on the river could save me. The river card was the last seven, giving me aces full -- a monster, but no match for his quads.
As regular readers of this column know, my 'philosophy,' following a painful loss, is to get up and walk around away from the table until I have regained control of my emotions. Of course, sometimes that philosophy is honored in the breach. In this case, however, it was easy to follow through, since I was totally tapped with no access to more money till the morning.
So, only six hours in, my 24-hour marathon experiment came to an ignoble conclusion, and I slunk back to my room for a few hours of fitful ZZZs.
A BAD RUN
Tuesday was more of the same. I got up at about 9, and, in a futile attempt to win something, quickly dropped $60 playing an Act I. Then, in rapid succession, came a $180 beating in a side game of Omaha high-low, quick bombouts in a couple of Act IIs ($300 more down the drain), and $330 gone forever in a no-limit hold 'em rebuy tournament.
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I like to think of myself as a good loser -- that is, someone who can keep playing his best game even after a long string of disheartening results -- but I'm probably kidding myself. Reality check: I tend to go into a defensive crouch, playing ultra-carefully, which prevents nuclear losses, but sometimes makes it hard to break bad streaks.
As I wandered around, dazed, after the tournament -- I had busted out on a huge toss-up hand (Grant: a small pair; me: two overcards) -- I made a good decision:
Tomorrow is another day.
FORTUNATELY, THE NEXT 'DAY' ALSO CONTAINS 24 HOURS
When I finally awoke the next afternoon, at about 4, I realized I had slept for 14 hours straight, the longest stretch of sleep I've had in years, if not decades.
And there must be something to being well-rested for poker, because right off the bat I won $295 in a couple of hours in the $1-2 no-limit hold 'em game (known at Foxwoods as 'the low no-limit game,' because there's a maximum buy-in of $100). At 8, I entered the Wednesday night $100 buy-in seven-stud tournament. By 9:30, I was playing in a $10-20 seven-stud side game, and, when the game broke up at 3:30 in the morning, I was up a little over $300.
At this point, I resurrected my plan to play for 24 hours straight -- or longer -- only not all 24 in a single game.
Next up, another $1-2 no-limit side game -- which consisted of me, an old guy named Gene and eight kids (between the ages of barely legal and 25) who, among them, had virtually no impulse control.
And by 'no impulse control,' I mean they would call all-in bets after the flop to pull for inside straights where they were getting 2-1 on their investments ... and where they couldn't be sure they were not already drawing dead.
Seemed like easy money to me.
Oops. What was that the Scottish poet Robert Burns once said about the best-laid plans of mice and men? Well, mine went about as astray as Evel Knievel at Snake River Canyon.
On the very first hand, I held 10-10, raised the $2 big blind to $12, and got three callers. The flop came 10-9-3 rainbow, and I went all-in, since I didn't want anybody chasing me with Q-J in the hole unless they paid dearly for the privilege. Mr. Big Stack called ... with J-8 offsuit ..and proceeded to find a queen on the river.
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A couple of hands later, I found J-J in the hole, which readers of this column will recognize as the hand I most dread. There just doesn't seem to be any right way to play it. This time, I tried a medium-sized raise of $25, and got two callers -- Gene and another kid with a large stack. For a change, the flop looked fortuitous to me, 8-3-3 rainbow, and I went all-in for my last $58. The kid called, and Gene went all-in for his last $40. Gene had a pair of fives, a rather loose call, and the kid had an A-Q unsuited, a truly astoundingly bad call, since he was only getting about 2-1 on his call -- Gene called after he did -- and could easily have been drawing virtually dead. At best, he was hoping for a miracle ace or queen, about a 4-1 shot.
Needless to say, an ace came on the river.
I went into my wallet for another $100.
Later, in an unraised pot in the big blind, my 8-5 turned into a set when the flop came 5-5-4. I raised Gene's $25 bet to $50, then put him all in for another $50 when a blank came on the turn. Gene showed an 8-7 suited, giving him only a gutshot six for a straight -- so he was investing $50 to win a little over $100 on an 11-1 shot. 'Gene, you're over 70, you're supposed to know better,' I was thinking, when .. you guessed it ... a six arrived on the river.
By the time I left this game at 8 a.m. to grab a llttle breakfast, I had managed to cut my losses to less than $200, but I felt like the Yankees' starting lineup after an evening chasing Tim Wakefield's knuckleball -- I'd need at least a couple of days to get my timing back.
Kids. What are you gonna do with 'em?
By 8:30, I was on a long line for the Thursday morning $100 buy-in limit hold 'em tournament, a game I rarely play. But I figured I needed a change of pace after four hours of Gene and The Kids.
During the first couple of rounds of the tourney, I actually nodded off between hands a couple of times. As if in a dream, I'd hear a voice coming through the haze: 'Uh, sir, your action.' And I'd pop awake, like the dormouse in 'Alice in Wonderland,' only to apologize before folding. But by the time we got down to the final 30 from a field of 200, I was my usual alert self -- which is to say, dazed but actually awake.
With 26 players left -- they were paying 25 -- I had a single chip left (worth $500), when the average holding was about $15,000. So I was hanging on for dear life -- I didn't even have enough for a full big blind -- when one guy who could have waited for me to be blinded off foolishly went all-in with a marginal holding and busted out.
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When I first signed up for the limit tourney, which started at 10 a.m., I figured I'd be out in a couple of hours -- partially because my limit skills are, well, limited, and partially because I was having trouble keeping my eyes open -- and I'd be able to grab a few hours of sleep before the Act III at 8 that evening. But, since I played until 4 in the afternoon, thereby fulfilling my goal of playing poker for 24 hours straight, more or less, it seemed to make more sense to have dinner instead and maybe a shower that would be a mercy to my opponents' olfactory sensibilities before the Act III.
The Act III was an anti-climax, though I did manage to stay awake until I was eliminated. Feeling a bit on the wired-up end of the spectrum, I decided to play 'just one more' Act II -- I finished second, earning myself a free replay -- and then collapsed after 32 hours of poker without sleep.
For an old man, I felt damn righteous.
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Of course, it took me a few days of constant napping to get back to 'normal.' And, upon reflection, I realized that I had busted myself out of both the Act III and the 'just one more' Act II because of uncharacteristic impatience, thanks to my lack of sleep.
So, though I managed to recapture a little of that 21-year-old magic of yesteryear, it was painfully clear that I was now stuck with the recuperative powers of the 60-year-old I actually am.
Bottom line: As we used to say back in the day about our misadventure in Vietnam, 'Never again.'
ATTENTION, IRS: HOW JAY IS DOING IN HIS NEW CAREER
Last week: Lost $831
CTD (career-to-date): plus $27,996
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins. You can watch the 2004 World Series of Poker Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
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