What a Turrable Turnament
I don’t know what to say, one of my horses made it to the top 3 as I predicted (Dennis Phillips), although he played pretty bad in my opinion.
I’m glad Chris already wrote something up for our blog about the final table, because it gets me off the hook from having to say something informative about the actual results. I’ll sum it up for you right here…it doesn’t matter who wins, because we’re all losers. Well, not really, but I certainly feel like a donk after putting aside something important to watch the final table coverage on ESPN.
It’s hard to really comment on the play at the final table because the coverage was so poor. It’s hard to say what really happened. This has always been an issue at the WSOP. They try to squeeze an entire final table with a bunch of other ridiculous segments into a 2 hour show. I think even Charles Barkley would agree, this coverage was just turrable.
This led me to thinking today, how did I ever enjoy this sort of thing? I can remember watching poker on TV as I was learning to play and it was nothing like this. Then it occurred to me, I used to watch the World Poker Tour all of the time. I don’t think that they started filming their TV final tables until they got down to 6 players.
This let them show more of the action and how everything developed at the final table. It let them show some of the drama when 2 players would start going after each other during every hand. Not to mention, their commentary was a little bit better, and anyone that reads this blog often knows I hate ESPN’s poker commentary.
The World Poker Tour had Mike Sexton, a long time poker player. He was able to fill in the role of the “Expert” commentator. ESPN has nobody to do this, and it shows.
So far the word that I’ve gotten from the poker room affiliates is that there is no real spike in new account signups this year. In the last few years, there has traditionally been a wave of signups around the time of the WSOP broadcast, but this year there is almost nothing. This worries me more than the half-assed one liners from Norman Chad. This is something that can really affect the future sponsorship opportunities that poker rooms are going to want to put up at the WSOP.
I hope the next wave of money is on it’s way, because Guy Laliberte isn’t going to play on Full Tilt forever.
Related posts:
- Win Your Share of the WSOP Final Table Action
- WSOP Main Event down to 27 players
- Main Event Final Table To Be Delayed 4 Months
- Pre-Day 7 Notes About the Main Event
- The 2009 WSOP Schedule
Categories: WSOP Events
