Interview With Norman Chad
Date: Wed, May 21, 2008
Norman Chad was the guest for the May 15th On The DL podcast. They talk about poker for the first 21 minutes, and it makes an interesting listen.
Mori Eskandani Talks About High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark
Date: Tue, May 20, 2008
POKER PROductions's Mori Eskandani is a guest on the current Two Plus Two Pokercast, from 1:46 - 1:58. He says that they've been approached by several companies interested in producing cash games, and talks about the upcoming season of Poker After Dark. There isn't much new information there. See our recent articles, and their comments, for the latest information on High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark (1,2).
For New Englanders: Eastern Poker Tour
Date: Sun, May 18, 2008
Eastern Poker Tour shows the final table of a free bar poker league's major tournament, with the winner getting a WSOP Main Event seat. The first of two half-hour episodes already aired on Comcast SportsNet New England (the regional Fox Sports affiliate) and will reair at 1:30 AM Friday. The second episode airs Saturday night at 9:30 PM. Production values are low, but the commentary, by Bernard Lee and Spiro Mitrokostas, is pretty good.
Next Week's Poker on TV
Date: Fri, May 16, 2008
Next week's WPT episode is the Turks and Caicos Poker Classic (preview) featuring Nam Le, Erik Cajelais, Alan Sass, Chris Smith, Trevor Hebert, and Rhynie Campbell.
Next week's Poker After Dark features six poker commentators: Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon, Chad Brown, Robert Williamson, Mark Gregorich, and Ali Nejad. Check NBC's site as the week approaches for a preview article and player bios. It's the last PAD of the season, but next season is only a couple of months away.
WSOP Live is airing the WSOP Circuit event from Harrah's New Orleans on Wednesday.
Sunday's three hours of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship takes it from four players down to a champion.
I regularly add additional information or updates to posts in the comments (hint: you can receive comments on a post via email if you have a Google account). Some posts with interesting comments this week include Will High Stakes Poker Return To TV? (no) and World Poker Tour Seeking a New Hostess (Layla declined to return).
Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes, sign up for our weekly newsletter or subscribe to our feed, and contact me with any suggestions or corrections.
World Poker Tour Seeking a New Hostess
Date: Mon, May 12, 2008
Wicked Chops Poker is reporting: "a RawVegas.tv employee was dining in LA this weekend when a random conversation broke out with a TV producer who mentioned that the World Poker Tour is about to hold auditions for a new host. Or had already held auditions for a new host." No hostess since Shana Hiatt has lasted more than one season.
Poker After Dark Is New Next Week
Date: Thu, May 8, 2008
Poker After Dark is new next week. It features three couples: Jennifer Harman and Marco Traniello; David Benyamine and Erica Schoenberg; and Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly. Check NBC's site as the week approaches for a preview article and player bios.
Next week's WPT episode is Ladies' Night, featuring JJ Liu, Kristy Gazes, Mimi Tran, Melissa Hayden, Linda Johnson, and Pam Brunson (Doyle's daughter). You can find bios of the players on the WPT site (be careful, though: their bios tell you where players placed).
For those of you that are interested, the latest National Heads-Up Poker Championship ratings are in the comments of our recent article.
Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes, sign up for our weekly newsletter or subscribe to our feed, and contact me with any suggestions or corrections.
National Heads-Up Poker Championship Review
Date: Thu, May 8, 2008
** National Heads-Up Poker Championship is flawed in conception and execution. The days when I wanted to watch all the poker on TV are over, and this is a show that I wouldn't choose to watch if I didn't write for this site. The other poker shows among the big four on US TV (WSOP, WPT, and Poker After Dark) are either important events or good shows. This is neither: what importance it has derives solely from having the best combination of network and time slot of any poker show. When it ceases to air, the tournament will no longer take place.
I don't know why NBC chose to commission this show: heads-up poker isn't widely played, especially in tournament form, and I find it a boring format to watch. The show is a made-for-TV invitational, and some of the players clearly don't deserve their invitations. I'd prefer if they'd chosen to broadcast an existing cash game, or even tournament.
The execution is weak as well. They suffer from some of the same problems as the ESPN and WSOP poker broadcasts, e.g. too much non-poker content and trying to show a bit of everything. It's my impression that they've cut down on the non-poker content since last year, but it's still too much and of too low value (and a segment on Scotty Nguyen was so badly produced that I couldn't tell what it was about for a while). They're still showing too little poker from too many matches, sometimes even just showing the bustout hand of a match.
They should be picking just a few matches and showing us enough of them so that we can get a sense of how they actually played. They flit from match to match, and aren't good at keeping us informed about the stacks and blinds. If they'd just show us one match at a time, from beginning to end, we'd be able to follow the story of the match much better. As it is, there's really no story to follow (just a selection of unconnected clips), so I get bored and my concentration drifts. To help in following the matches I'd like to see them show all the necessary information at the bottom of the screen throughout the match: hole cards, board cards, action, stack sizes, and blinds. Some of the onscreen information is shown in the upper left of the screen, where it's easy to miss (we look at the bottom of the screen for those things), and is too small to read easily on my TV. I think the results scroll at the bottom of the screen is a bad idea. On the plus side, this is one of the few shows on TV to show position.
I'm not a fan of Ali Nejad's shtick, and it sometimes seems like he's reciting canned analysis. The announcing team pronounced various players' names multiple ways.
National Heads-Up Poker Championship earns a rating of **, below average, because it's badly conceived and poorly executed. I'm glad to see NBC running poker in a relatively good time slot, but they could easily do better than this.
See also our review of the previous season.
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