When World Poker Tour Enterprises announced almost two months ago that the company was facing dire economic strain, one of their upcoming aces in the hole that they hoped would dig them out of the recession was their China edition of their World Poker Tour TV show. Now at last, the show was arrived.
WPT China debuted on China’s Nanjing Entertainment Television channel and is already making history, as the program represents the first time a government-sanctioned poker tournament has been aired nationwide in the country. The series has 16 planned events to take place within China, but most interestingly enough, the main game of the tournaments will not be Texas Hold’em, but rather Traktor Poker.
Basically, Traktor Poker is a cross between bridge and gin, where teams of either two or four players play against each other. Traktor is dealt using two full decks complete with jokers, and is actually considered an official sport by the CLSAC (China Leisure Sports Administration).
Filming has already been completed on the entire first season and four tournaments of season two, with the first episode appearing this month in the Jiangsu province. Broadcasting will then be expanded into additional provinces in the months to come. The grand finale will be played in Beijing in June.
As an avid WPT fan, I’m definitely on the bandwagon of supporting any and all things WPT, and so should any international players that have the ability to watch the WPT China episodes. If nothing else, you get to see what team-based poker is like! Check it out!
I recently posted an entry explaining my dislike of many of the aspects of the new method of showcasing the WSOP Final Table that ESPN undertook this year. Well, apparently I’m not alone, as a number of pokers best and brightest have voiced their criticisms of the program as well.
In an interview with Card Player TV, Mike Matusow explained, “If I was a fan, it’d be a big letdown. As far as that, I think it was a failure. As far as Harrah’s and ESPN, I think it was a major success.”
He’s right on the success part when it comes to ESPN. The final table program garnered 46% more viewers than in 2007, despite the fact that fans had to wait four months after the rest of the Main Event had ended in order to watch it. But for purists, it’s the content that matters, not the hype, and the fact that the final table, which ran for 17 hours total (the longest in WSOP history), was edited down into a two hour elimination montage, continues to be severely disappointing.
“They just never showed any hands,” said Matusow. “They just showed everyone’s bust-out hand.”
Over 274 hands were played at the final table, 23 of them made it to air. With just nine players at the table, that means that almost half of the hands shown were the ones that knocked players out of the tournament. And in an almost criminal fashion, only two hands total were shown during the final heads-up action, when in fact over 105 were played between winner Peter Eastgate and runner-up Ivan Demidov.
Chris Ferguson has come out and said, “The one glaring omission was that the heads up lasted two hands on television. It really didn’t show the entire battle between these two great players.”
The Mouth, as usual, also had an opinion on the lack of heads-up footage, saying, “It’s a shame the rest of the American public didn’t get to see that. It would’ve been so sick to watch.”
With the next WSOP still over half a year away, we’ll have to wait and see if Harrah’s and ESPN decide to stick with their new formula. Hopefully, they heed the advice of the pros and make some important and needed changes.
If you’re like me, you’re a fan of the Game Show Network (GSN) hit poker show High Stakes Poker because it showcases some of the best cash game players in the world, all playing super high no-limit poker with their own money at risk. Pots regularly get up into the hundreds and thousands of dollars, and it’s not unusual for someone like Doyle Brunson to buy into the game for a cool $1 million.
For the fifth season though, the minimum buy in for players will be raised. As soon as the first cards are dealt in the new season, everyone must put up at least two hundred thousand dollars to even be able to sit down at the table. The previous buy in limit for the other four seasons was set at $100,000, though due to player demand, the buy in was raised for a short period to $500,000 towards the tail end of the year.
“High Stakes Poker, by a wide margin, has become a must-see on Game Show Network for poker players and poker fans all over the world,” said Henry Orenstein, an executive producer of the show.
Production for the new season will commence on Dec. 19th – 21st, and the game will continue to take place at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with GSN in filming their fifth season of High Stakes Poker,” said Brett Kellerman, the chief operating officer for the Golden Nugget. “It is a perfect fit for the players, the fans, and the Golden Nugget.”
Just how big could the play get with the new table minimum? If past seasons have been any indication, there is going to be small fortunes won and lost during each episode. Just make sure to check your local listings for the start of the fifth season of High Stakes Poker.
By now you’ve probably at the very least seen some highlights from last Tuesdays ESPN WSOP Final Table event. I was able to watch the whole thing from beginning to end in my cabin aboard the Norwegian Star during my WPT poker cruise that I was on all last week. From the opening moments to the end credits it was obvious that ESPN was trying to go for something very different here and take a chance at doing the impossible, making poker a spectator sport.
Personally, I didn’t really get a good vibe from the whole production. Having an auditorium full of screaming fans didn’t exactly seem appropriate when you realize that the only action any of these spectators are going to see (since they can’t see the player’s hole cards) are the poker players pushing in chips or folding their hand. Not very exciting in its own right, in fact it’s down right boring. Poker in its nature is a very laid back activity, played for the most part in silent card rooms with few distractions. It’s not quite as mentally taxing as say chess, but there are numerous comparisons between the two that you can draw, and try to imagine a chess match that was televised with the same amount of over-the-top voice over and hype that the WSOP Final Table was. It just doesn’t make for a good fit.
Part of the reason I don’t believe this idea will ever be used again is because the players themselves were almost painfully boring. Despite the WSOP’s best intentions, these guys were not the all-stars that we were made to believe they would become in the months leading up to the final table event, and much like any other pro sporting event, without having someone to root for, and without having a great personality to watch (like a Phil Hellmuth or Daniel Negraneau), it was hard to stay emotionally invested with the show.
You can’t blame the poker players either, they were placed in a impossible, emotionally charged situation that was light-years different from any previous final table experience they may have had, and many of the “November 9” were too busy sweating bullets and worried about looking dumb on TV instead of providing compelling table talk or showing any kind of emotion at all that was worth watching.
For me, the final nail in the coffin was when Peter Eastgate finally eliminated Ivan Demidov in heads up play. The 22yr Eastgate had just won $9 million in cash, became the youngest player to ever win the WSOP Main Event, and he didn’t even crack a smile. Imagine watching the Super Bowl and when the winning team’s kicker makes a last minute field goal to secure the victory, he just walks off the field without celebrating. It would quickly ruin millions of viewer’s experience of the event, and Peter Eastgate’s zombie-like expression served as a cherry on top of why poker just shouldn’t be treated like a UFC type sporting event.
We have yet to find out just how many viewers tuned in to watch the final table, but regardless of the numbers I highly doubt that the production which was months in the making lived up in ESPN’s eyes to all the hype and time and money they spent trying to turn poker into something it isn’t. Here’s hoping that for 2009 we can look forward to the return of classic poker television.
If you're like me, one of the first big things to come out of the poker boom that really got me hooked on poker 24/7 was the World Poker Tour (WPT) TV show. Whether it was the charm of commentators Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patton or the shows ability to turn no-name amateurs into instant celebrities, I still to this day make sure that every episode of the WPT makes it way to my DVR.
Unfortunately, the WPTE (World Poker Tour Enterprises), the parent company of the WPT, has not been having a great economic year.
Third-quarter revenue for the company is down 39% to $2.7 million, almost half that of last years $4.4 million. The company sites a decrease in domestic television license fees and lower domestic sponsorship fees as the reason.
The first casualty of the WPTE financial hardships will be the WTP-branded online gaming website, which is in the process of being shut down for good. To try and recover from their decline, WPTE President and CEO Steve Lipscomb has announced plans to expand their reach into the Chinese market, as well as produce a new poker TV show for the Fox Sports Network, which will include 13 one-hour episodes.
No word on how/if this is going to affect their main WPT TV show, so die hard fans like myself should keep their fingers crossed that one of the biggest shows that put TV poker on the map will continue to live to fight another day.
Buy the dip and get your home game buddies ready, the World Series of Poker finale is coming up!
Final-table play starts this Sunday, November 9th and will finish up on Monday. For the first time ever though, the coverage of the final table will air on ESPN just one day after the last hand is dealt and a champion is crowned. This is a welcome change from previous years where viewers, most of whom already had learned online who had won the Main Event, had to wait a full month before viewing the coverage. It never really made any sense to me. Would you still watch the Super Bowl if you knew four weeks ago who had won?
If you haven’t been following the WSOP this year, the Main Event began in July with a field of 6,884 players. Play continued until nine players were left, and they were quickly dubbed the “November Nine”, the ones who would return to the Rio hotel in Vegas this weekend to play for the $9 million dollar first place prize.
Producers for the telecast expect to have about 16 hours worth of footage to comb through once the event is over, and they will have just one day to transform that into a cohesive two-hour package for the viewing audience on Tuesday. Play will begin on noon Sunday and will continue until the final two competitors remain. Then on Monday at midnight, the two finalists will return to play heads-up until just one of them is left. Hard to imagine that if heads-up play runs long, the production crew will have just a handful of hours to edit and finalize the package. But, I agree it’s a needed step in the right direction of poker broadcasting.
Personally I can’t wait to prop up my feet in the poker room aboard the Norwegian Star cruise liner and view a piece of poker history. Check your local listings and don’t forget to tune in to ESPN on Tuesday!
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