The Micros, in case you’re not familiar with it, started life as an animated cartoon on Youtube about the trials and tribulations of the small stakes online poker player. It came on the back of creator Jay ‘Krantz’ Rosenkrantz’s appearance on the poker reality show 2 Months 2 Million where he was bitten by the production bug and started work on a new project.
With the recent news that Full Tilt Poker who used to sponsor the series is rising from the ashes, fans of the series have started a petition to get the show back on the airwaves.
The series follows three micro stakes online poker players and their attempts to dominate the poker world. Their personalities cover all of the classic poker personalities: Chase Berger is a mass multi-tabling grinder who was a miniscule winrate, Tommy Phuoc is a winning player who refuses to move up in stakes, and Rose Ballenger is completely the opposite, an overly aggressive player that completely ignores bankroll management.
The series starts with Chase heads-up in the Mega Millions tournament where the winner get $1.2M, which he bought into with his entire bankroll. He’s facing a bet while holding KK on an Ace high board and goes all in only to his a one outer against AK to take first prize. The series proceeds from there and goes on to follow the trio as they take on higher stakes games and the live poker scene taking on the Aussie Millions and ultimately the villain of the series Max Rofls, who is the brother of the online player they defeated.
There’s no doubt that The Micros is aimed directly at a ‘2+2’ type audience. The dialogue and animation is filled with references to legends of the poker forums as well as lingo that has developed there over the course of online poker’s history. Those new to online poker and the forums will certainly be left scratching their heads about a lot of what’s said, but nonetheless the story is always engaging.
The last episode that has been aired to date sees the protagonists boarding a plane bound for the US with no knowledge that Black Friday has just occurred and that the plans they’re making for a return to micro-grinding will prove fruitless. After Black Friday and the subsequent ‘difficulties’ at Full Tilt Poker, The Micros found themselves without a sponsor and due to the costs associated with voice-over actors, animation, and licensing of music and stock photos used in each episode it proved to expensive a labour of love for the producers to continue to fund.
In a 2+2 thread in May of 2018, Krantz confirmed that a new episode had been produced with a sponsor that was secured on a one episode trial basis but didn’t give a release date stating that it would be soon but “not quite as soon as I thought”. In the interim, they have posted occasional comic strips to The Micros Facebook page, but that hasn’t been enough to keep die hard fans happy!
Take a look at episode one here:
