Birth of the World Poker Tour

Date: Mon, May 26, 2008

Tom Sexton has a good article on PokerNews.com detailing the birth of televised poker, particularly the World Poker Tour. We also have a few other articles on the history of televised poker: see History of the Poker Boom.

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Next Week's Poker on TV

Date: Thu, May 22, 2008

Next week's WPT episode is the Gulf Coast Poker Championship. The TV table features two well-known players, Bill Edler and "Captain" Tom Franklin, as well as John Davidson, David Robbins, Tim Frazin, and Hank Sitton (preview).

Also note the Eastern Poker Tour if you're in New England. The Poker After Dark and National Heads-Up Poker Championship seasons are over.

I reconsidered my recent review of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship after watching the last week, docking it 1/2 star for being boring.

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.

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I Bet You Will Have a Season Three

Date: Thu, May 22, 2008

From the I Bet You MySpace page:

We're going to start filming another 13 episodes in August. Probably would start airing next early Spring.

Apparently DVDs for Season 1 will be available on June 10th. I'm guessing you can buy them at www.mojohd.com, among other places. I'll post a link once they become available. There's "supposed" to be extra footage on the DVD, including the infamous paintball massacre.

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2008 Aussie Millions Review

Date: Wed, May 21, 2008

** The Aussie Millions has a serious case of ESPN-itis. I counted the segments for half of a middle episode this year: they showed 5 hands, 6 bleeding chunks (where they flit around the room to show the end of big hands), and 6 non-poker segments. On an hourly basis that's 10, 12, and 12, which is pretty close to ESPN's low water mark: the first episode of the 2007 Main Event had 8 hands, 11 bleeding chunks, and 16 non-poker segments. The non-poker segments here are generally better than ESPN's, however (except for the recurring Down Under Dictionary, which is neither about poker nor the players). I wouldn't mind the occasional capsule bio of a player, but the closest most shows come to that is anecdotal human-interest stories. The flitting, on the other hand, has no redeeming virtue: please just show me more hands at the featured table.

Showing us pictures of players folding preflop, without showing us their hole cards, is ridiculous. Are preflop decisions unimportant? Why do I keep on seeing shows that don't show all the hole cards? That is about as basic an error as one can make when producing a poker show.

Conveying the action is another basic that too many shows don't get right. This show is a mixed bad there: normally I'd say that the lack of onscreen graphics showing the action is unacceptable, but competent play-by-play by Barry Tompkins alleviates much of the problem. He's paired with analyst Michael Konik. Konik has a lot of detractors, but I'm not among them. I think he does a workmanlike, real, and honest job. I wouldn't put him in the top class of analysts, but I'd put him above Nejad and Van Patten, and in about the same league as Mike Sexton. Overall, I think the announcing team is pretty good.

One nice feature of this show is the periodic graphics showing the chip leaders, average stack, and number of players remaining. They need to add the blinds and antes, however, for us to make sense of the chip stack information. Like most shows, the onscreen graphics don't stay up long enough for us to absorb them. Another flaw they have in common with most shows is that they don't show the players' positions.

There are a few oddities about this tournament that I don't like. The featured table is physically removed from the rest of the tournament. They showed one of the players at the featured table asking if the bubble had burst yet, something he would have known if he'd been on the casino floor with the rest of the players. Also, handedness changes twice in this tournament: at 36 players they move to six-handed tables, they they go to eight-handed for the final table.

The main problem with this show is that they don't follow the story of the featured table, instead flitting around the casino to show the ends of big hands or non-poker segments. At least I wasn't bored with this show, however, which puts it above recent shows like the National Heads-Up Poker Championship and the WSOP Europe. I considered ratings in the ** (below average) to *** (average) range for this show. I won't reward a show this badly made with an average rating, however, so it gets **.

See also the review of last year's show.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Next Week: WPT Borgata Poker Open, PAD Still In Rerun

Date: Sat, May 3, 2008

Next week's WPT show is the Borgata Poker Open. The players are Roy Winston (5,335,000 chips), Scott Yoon (3,090,000), Mike Matusow (2,965,000), Eugene Todd (2,190,000), Mark Weitzman (1,750,000), and Haralabos Voulgaris (1,465,000). Roy Winston is a doctor and entrepreneur turned professional poker player and CardPlayer blogger. Amateur Scott Yoon is a Korean-born real-estate agent who satellited in. It's Eugene Todd's second WPT TV table and he has one WSOP final table. Mark Weitzman is primarily a cash game player, but he has made a number of WSOP final tables going back to 1992. Haralabos Voulgaris is a well-known professional sportsbetter, poker player, and online radio personality who's at his second WPT TV table. The prize money is:
1: $1,575,280
2: $832,725
3: $434,560
4: $380,240
5: $325,920
6: $271,600

Poker After Dark is still in rerun. The schedule for the other shows is unchanged.

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.

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WSOP Delays Final Table For TV, Sky Falls

Date: Fri, May 2, 2008

I've been reading the peanut gallery's opinions on the recently-announced delayed Main Event final table, and I've learned that no one will make it to the final table alive. Players will kill each other to move up spots, and if a player is lucky enough avoid the hit men he'll still die of natural causes before the final table rolls around. If any do survive till the final table, they won't go anyway, because they'll be busy with work, have a wedding to attend, not want to make the trip again, or be unable to get a visa. If any players do, against all odds, actually make it to the final table, they'll have agreed to collude with each other, throw the match, or otherwise engage in/be forced into unethical behavior. In short, the delayed final table will destroy the World Series of Poker.

In other news, the hole-card cam is going to ruin the game of poker... oh, sorry: I had a flashback to 2002.

None of these things could happen with the current delay, of course (the Main Event normally has a day off before the final table). The extra 115 days are different... right? No, they're not, actually: final tables with delays of a month or more have happened before, and I've never heard of the problems above happening. I'm sure people will argue that the larger amount of money is what makes this case special, but people will always find a reason to believe what they want to believe. In November we'll know for sure whether there are problems or not, and whether it's a boost to poker or not. I know which side I'm laying my bets on.

That's not to say that I'm thrilled with everything about the delayed final table. The four-month delay is extreme. I've never even liked the two week delay for the Super Bowl, but you could argue that the Main Event would benefit from more than a week's delay because most of the players will be unknowns when the publicity machine starts to work. I'd prefer to see the final table played and aired after a week or two delay, but still during the WSOP festival. The Main Event was scheduled to take up 13 of the 47 days of the festival. Surely they could add a week or two to those 13 days, run everything during the WSOP, and find a time that ESPN could air it.

I like their idea of emulating the "Olympic model," where events are edited the same day to be shown at prime time in the US. The problem with the WSOP implementation, though, is that they're shooting the final table in two pieces (schedule), from Sunday, November 9 through Tuesday, November 11, for airing on Tuesday night. One of the potential benefits of the idea is that we wouldn't know the winner when we watched. I may well be able to avoid hearing about the heads-up match on Tuesday, but, as a poker fan, it's going to be awfully hard for me to avoid hearing the fate of the first seven players to bust out of the final table. I'd like to see the entire final table filmed within 36 hours of broadcast (or less: the last final table took about 16 hours, though it was a particularly long one).

Airing the heads-up portion of the match live was apparently considered, but it couldn't fit into the two hour time slot they've devoted to the final table. It's a real disappointment that only two hours are being devoted to the final table of the most important event in poker. Every World Poker Tour TV table gets two to four hours, and they show less than 20% of the hands... and they only show the final six players, while the Main Event final table has nine players. The Main Event final table deserves at least three, perhaps four hours.

It's upsetting that ESPN is devoting only two of the 20 hours of Main Event broadcast time (see the broadcast schedule) to the final table. I'd love to see them televise only the final two tables, but do a good job on them. That would give them less room to butcher the broadcast in all the ways they do, like flitting from table to table to show bustouts and the ends of big hands.

Another disappointment is that there will be no live video stream of the final table this year. I've watched part or all of two Main Event final tables on the web. It's an amazing experience: you get to watch history being made, and it's the only way to get a true sense of what happened at the final table. Having seen it both ways, I guarantee you that seeing a few percent of the hands on ESPN does not give you a sense of how it actually went down. You'll still be able to follow text updates of the final table on the web this year if you want, but I've never followed a tournament closely that way and I doubt I'll start now.

We probably won't be able to watch live broadcasts of the other WSOP events either. WSOP Live won't be covering them. There's talk of ESPN 360 streaming them on the web, but the only way to get that is through an ISP, and most ISPs don't choose to pay ESPN to give access to their customers.

I'm happy to see that every televised final table will have two hours devoted to it this year (see the schedule): some only got one hour last year. Some will be disappointed that the $50,000 HORSE event only gets two hours of coverage this year, down from six, but I realize that most people don't play or understand all of the games. If a game other than NL Hold'em has the potential to go mainstream, I'd say it's pot-limit Omaha, and we do have one of those events on the TV schedule this year.

Delaying the final table for TV has generated a lot of controversy. If you want to read some of the opinions, I recommend:

• the opinions of some well-known pros at The Hendon Mob; and
• Roy Winston's brief summary of the arguments people have made to him, and his point of view, at CardPlayer.

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Survey Results

Date: Fri, May 2, 2008

In the survey I posted two weeks ago all four of our major content types (TV listings, news, editorials, and reviews) received good support from our readers. That surprised me: I assumed that most people didn't care about our reviews and editorials (which wouldn't have bothered me since they're primarily targeted at the industry). I was surprised that our TV listings (updates, schedule, etc.) received some "no value" ratings. They were the only category to do so, but they also received the greatest number of "high value" ratings. This site started out as me trying to figure out what to watch on TV each week, so I've always considered the listings/schedule to be the core of the site. Those low raters didn't provide any comments, however, so I remain puzzled.

I also learned that most of you read our feed or web site rather than our newsletter. Based on survey feedback I will try to work more biographical information on players into my listings, or at least to link to it. I alway encourage your feedback, whether via comments on posts or email.

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