Main Event Of World Series Of Poker On TV Tuesday

Event 54, the $10,000 no-limit hold 'em Main Event of the World Series of Poker, comes to TV Tuesday at 8 PM on ESPN. It will run until the 4-month-delayed final table broadcast on November 11.

The World Poker Tour season is over (the next one starts in December) and Poker After Dark is still in rerun for a while yet.

In this week's comments:

• more evidence that ESPN, not Harrah's, runs the World Series of Poker;
• more evidence that the National Heads-up Poker Championship isn't so much a championship as a TV show; and
• a rumor that the WPT Championship wasn't included in the Fox Sports Net deal.

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.

What To Expect From The Coming Football Season

Football season is about to start, so I thought I'd link to one of our previous articles for those of you who haven't seen it:

Matt Marantz, ESPN's WSOP producer, is taking over as executive producer of ESPN/ABC's football broadcasts. He intends to adopt the poker broadcasting model for football games. The shows will be shorter, edited broadcasts concentrating on the most interesting plays, with more human interest segments...

Read the rest of ESPN/ABC To Apply Poker Model To Football Broadcasts.

The WPT's Decline And The EPT's Rise

Ryan Lucchesi has an interesting piece on CardPlayer.com that documents the decline in attendance at World Poker Tour events and the rise at European Poker Tour events:

• WPT season five to six: 510 per event to 411 per event
• EPT season three to four: 435 per event to 537 per event

Lucchesi frames it as a function of the maturity of poker in the different markets, but it isn't, at least not entirely. PokerPages's Industry Index indicates that tournament volume is stable in the United States, meaning that the industry other than the WPT is growing. It's at least partly a problem with the WPT, not the market they compete in. Their move to Fox Sports Net from GSN could be a big boon to the World Poker Tour however.

WPT World Championship Airs Next Week

The season-ending WPT World Championship airs next week. The buyin is $25,000 and it's the third-biggest tournament in the world, by prize pool. The winner takes home $3,389,140. The players are Gus Hansen, David Chiu, Cory Carroll, Tommy Le, John Roveto, and Jeff King.

Next week's World Series of Poker tournament is Event 50, $10,000 pot-limit Omaha. The final table features Michael Mizrachi, Kido Pham, Billy "The Croc" Argyros, Brandon Moran, Marty Smyth, Tom Hanlon, Greg Hurst, Peter Jetten, and Richard Harroch.

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.

Poker After Dark Season Five Films October, Airs December

10 weeks of shows will be filmed for season five of Poker After Dark. They will stick with tournaments for the most part, but more cash games will be added. The Golden Nugget is the new host casino. Filming runs from October 26 to November 5, and the new shows will start airing December 30.

See also the press release.

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The One That Improves The Fastest Wins

In any field, the one that improves the fastest wins. An example from economics comes to mind: a country like France has been rich for centuries, but their economy hasn't been growing much lately. Places like Ireland, Singapore, and Hong Kong, on the other hand, were relatively poor just a few decades ago but have been growing fast since. The latter countries have been able to pass out France in prosperity in just that short time (those interested in economics may want to check out 1 and 2).

Since 2006 I've been trying to improve the quality of poker on TV through the reviews and editorials on this site. I've been disappointed to see very little change, however. Consequently, I was thrilled last week to hear that High Stakes Poker would be showing all the hole cards next season. Not showing all the hole cards was one of my criticisms of the show (though I have plenty of other criticisms and I hope they make other improvements as well). The real significance of the announcement is that it shows that GSN/Poker PROductions are able to change and improve, which makes anything possible.

ESPN, on the other hand, seems content with producing the same wretched broadcasts of the most important event in poker year after year, despite my best efforts (and are now the last one, among the big five US poker shows, that don't show all the hole cards).

World Poker Tour Enterprises has done slightly better than that. They've been criticized for being stagnant, but they did start altering the blind structure less for TV. Once upon a time they even tried to do something groundbreaking: the Professional Poker Tour was an attempt at the PGA-style organization that some people think is the holy grail of televised poker. It didn't survive beyond one season, but at least it was a valiant effort.

The WPT has now partnered with Fox Sports Net, which has a history of innovative poker programming: they've run various live broadcasts as well as Poker Dome, which won the 2007 Special Award For Innovation Poky. Unfortunately, their innovations haven't become widespread yet.

I don't think any poker producer or broadcaster is the equivalent of Hong Kong or Singapore in economics yet, but Poker PROductions has made some of the most successful innovations in US TV poker: High Stakes Poker was the first cash game to air in this country; Poker After Dark showed most of the hands and recently added some cash game weeks; and now it looks like we'll see an improved version of High Stakes Poker.

The ability to change and improve is the key to success in any field. It's easier to improve a TV poker show than a fictional show, so there really isn't any excuse for the slow rate of change. Fiction requires talented writers, but poker TV shows can be improved just by making the technical changes talked about in our reviews and editorials (as well as poker forums all over the net). It's time for TV executives and poker producers to commit to making some simple changes for the better in their next broadcasts.

Next Week's Poker on TV

Next week's WPT event is the Ladies' Championship from the Bellagio. They're saying it was a real catfight. Vanessa Selbst and Van Nguyen are the most famous players.

Next week's World Series of Poker tournament is Event 45, $50,000 HORSE. The players are Barry Greenstein (the only player to cash in the event all three years, with two final tables), Huck Seed, Scotty Nguyen, Erick Lindgren, Lyle Berman, Matt Glantz, Michael DeMichele, and Patrick Bueno.

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.

Podcast Interview With Mike Sexton and Amanda Leatherman

The PocketFives.com Podcast interviewed the World Poker Tour's Mike Sexton and Amanda Leatherman a few weeks back. They didn't say anything groundbreaking, but it's an interesting listen and the podcast is only 29 minutes long.

High Stakes Poker Season Five Plans Announced

Update: see our latest High Stakes Poker articles.

GSN Vice President Kevin Belinkoff and Poker PROductions President Mori Eskandani discussed plans for season five of High Stakes Poker with CardPlayer. Changes for the new season include:

• They will show all the hole cards.
  
• Mori Eskandani says "There's a good chance it'll be a much bigger buyin" and CardPlayer reports "Eskandani hopes to see the minimum buy-in increase to $250,000, allowing the blinds to increase to $400-$800."
• They intend to announce a new venue soon.

Previous rumors had them taping in November and moving to the Golden Nugget. See the CardPlayer video and article.

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The River Review

The River shows the WinStar World Championship Series, a $3,000,000 tournament and the satellites leading up to it. The show has good commentary, but there’s a lot of non-poker content and the onscreen graphics are weak.

Greg Raymer has long been one of my favorite poker commentators. He’s good here, whether doing analysis or being interviewed by host Norm Hitzges, and co-commentator Annie Duke is nearly as good. Norm Hitzges is a local personality, not a poker expert, but he’s better than most at asking poker questions and interviewing people.

One major problem with the show is that there’s too much non-poker content: it’s a talk show almost as much as a poker show. They interview people (frequently Raymer and Duke), answer reader questions, and have educational segments. Early on I didn’t mind this much, as Greg Raymer makes a fascinating interview. By the time Norm starts interviewing Dave Stann (a celebrity blackjack player) and players that have already busted out of the tournament, however, I lost some interest. They do a better than average job with these segments, but there are still too many of them. The WWCS partially makes up for that by spending multiple episodes to show a final table, even devoting a full episode to a heads-up match.

The show can also be a bit hard to follow because of the unknown players and weak onscreen graphics. There’s one major problem with the graphics: they show the amount of raises instead of the amount raised to, which is a confusing departure from the standard. They’re also bad about telling us the blinds/antes and other information (though that’s true of most poker shows). Even when discussing the effect of the payout structure, they didn’t bother to tell us what it was.

I’ve heard people say that the WWCS is one of the worst poker shows they’ve ever seen. I don’t think it’s that bad, however. If they’d improve their onscreen graphics, be more selective with the non-poker content, and introduce the players at the beginning of the show it would be a perfectly decent show. I give it ** out of *****.

Venetian's Poker Stage Show To Be Taped For TV

The Venetian will be running a poker-themed stage show called The Real Deal! this fall. Two poker pros (Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, and seven others are participating) will compete with six audience members in a poker tournament. Audience members will accumulate points by using seat-mounted touch-screen devices. A three-handed finale will feature the chip-leading pro, the final surviving amateur, and the point leader from the audience. No TV plans have been announced yet, but The Real Deal!'s Director of Technology Erick Brownstein says "we'll be taping every show and as you may have noticed, the members of our team have extensive TV backgrounds. A betting man would lay money on us using the experience in the theater to create a fresh and new poker TV concept."

See also: The Real Deal! web site, press release, and our previous coverage.

Next Week's TV: WSOP And WPT

Next week's World Poker Tour episode is the Foxwoods Poker Classic, featuring Erik Seidel, Ted Forrest, Robert Richardson, Andrew Barta, Frank Cieri, and Adam Katz.

Next week's World Series of Poker tournament is Event 5, $1,000 no-limit hold 'em with rebuys. The final table features Michael Binger, Jeff Williams (who won the EPT Championship in 2006), Alan Jaffray, Michael Banducci, Peter Gould, Lyric Duveyoung, Jonathan Aguiar, Steven Gross, and Jamie Rosen.

I've heard that the International Poker League is airing in some parts of the country. Check your local listings.

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.

AJ Benza Talks About High Stakes Poker

AJ Benza is on the latest On the DL podcast, where he talks about High Stakes Poker, among other things. Click the links on the right side of the page to listen to just the poker parts. See also our most recent High Stakes Poker news/rumors post.

No Licensing Fees For World Poker Tour Season 7

WPT Enterprises released their second quarter results today and held a conference call (call, transcript). CEO Steve Lipscomb talked about the change from licensing fees to sponsorship revenue with WPT season 7 on Fox Sports Net (see also 1, 2), and said "$7 million from GSN... is a paltry sum compared to the amount of money that is being spent to sponsor poker shows in the marketplace." WPT Enterprises will also get four 30-second ads per episode for the first two runs of each show. Season 7 is expected to start airing in December, 2008. Lipscomb also said that the three pillars of the company's plan to become profitable were sponsorship fees, Club WPT, and China. It sounds like they may exit the real-money online poker business and focus on getting sponsorship money from the companies that are successful in the field.

If High Stakes Poker returns to TV I expect it to be sponsored as well.

Popularity Of Poker TV Shows, Based On Forum Posts

Poker After Dark (PAD) recently aired a cash game, a tourney, and a heads-up tournament on consecutive weeks. The World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour were also airing new episodes at the same time. This provided me with an interesting opportunity to compare their popularity.

I don't think viewer satisfaction influences TV ratings much, if at all, in the short run. A typical PAD viewer won't know in advance that the week may have a new format, like cash or heads-up. He may never have seen a televised cash game before, and he won't know till after he's watched it if he likes it or not. Readers of a TV poker forum, on the other hand, are knowledgeable consumers: they know whether they like cash games or tournaments; heads-up, shorthanded, or full ring; and Poker After Dark or the World Poker Tour. It seemed to me that their forum posts and views would be a good measure of their interest in the shows; and that their interest would predict future TV ratings, which would slowly follow. With that in mind, I counted the posts in and views of 2+2 poker TV forum threads about these recent shows:

	Posts	Views
PAD Cash Game	904	94,067
PAD Tourney	420	41,997
PAD Heads-up	298	21,953
WSOP (avg. of 2 eps.)	213	16,189
WPT (avg. of 3 eps.)	36	1,924

2+2 posters' views pretty much match my own: we prefer cash games to tournaments, and find heads-up to be relatively boring. We think Poker After Dark is a good show. I think the World Series of Poker shows are badly made, but it's poker's world championship.

I did a similar exercise in the past: see The Most Popular Poker Shows on TV, Based on Downloads. It also showed cash games to be popular.

Amazing Table On Next Week's World Series Of Poker TV Show

Next week's World Series of Poker tournament is Event 4, $5,000 mixed hold 'em (alternating limit and no limit). The final table lineup is David Williams, Erick Lindgren, Howard Lederer, Justin (fka ZeeJustin) Bonomo, Andrew "Good2cu" Robl, David "Chino" Rheem, Roland de Wolfe, Isaac Haxton, and Pat Pezzin.

Next week's World Poker Tour episode is the World Poker Challenge, from the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino in Reno. Lee Markholt, David Pham, Bryan Devonshire, Jeff DeWitt, Jason Potter, and Zach Hyman made the TV table.

Poker After Dark is in rerun or off for the Olympics until September 22.

Please welcome Private Joker to the site. He will be writing reviews and editorials, and his first article was World Poker Tour Season 6 Review.

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.

New TV Show To Promote WPT's Online Poker Site

Fox Sports Net agreed to air a new TV show that will promote the WPT's subscription poker site ClubWPT.com. ClubWPT.com members pay $20/month for the right to compete for prizes by playing poker and blackjack. Most US states consider it to be a legal sweepstakes. Players will qualify for the show by playing poker and blackjack tournaments at ClubWPT.com. At least 13 one-hour episodes of the show will be produced, and will start airing in September. Fox Sports Net also recently agreed to air season 7 of the World Poker Tour.

Sources: press release, 8-K.

See all of our Club WPT articles.