WSOP Ratings Decline To Below Pre-November 9 Levels

Date: Thu, Nov 11, 2010

Ratings for this year's WSOP Main Event final table declined 39% from last year to below pre-November Nine levels, barely edging out Beth Shak's appearance on Bravo's Millionaire Matchmaker an hour earlier. The 17 hour final table was edited down to just over two hours, running over its time slot for the second year in a row.

Year	Winner	Format	Rating	Viewers
2010	Duhamel	Nov. 9	1.1	1.563 M
2009	Cada	Nov. 9	1.8	2.199 M
2008	Eastgate	Nov. 9	1.9	2.364 M
2007	Yang	delayed	1.4	1.635 M

Reasons for the decline may include delaying the starting time till 10 PM from 9 PM in the past and the lack last-year's Phil Ivey star power. Viewership of the live stream was too low to have affected ratings.

Sources: TVByTheNumbers, Wicked Chops Poker, Pokerati, Fifth Street Journal.

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A WSOP Main Event Final Table Review

Date: Wed, Nov 10, 2010

Will Wright of PokerTableRatings.com opines:

I’ve watched (the WSOP Main Event final table) every year since Moneymaker pulled off that sick bluff against Sammy Farha in 2003. In all those years, however, I don’t remember it ever being so………unmemorable. Maybe I’m getting older and have seen too many of these things, but I doubt it.

I really thought the coverage lacked substance and any sense of continuity when it came to showing what mattered—-the hands. It was full of extravagant intros, bright lights, and [weak] attempts at character development, but was totally devoid of any real story on the felt. I admit that the hands that were shown were insane and there were some ridiculous beats, but there were barely any hands shown. It was very tough to feel the flow of the game in any concrete way because every hand was interrupted by six commercials and two stories we’ve already heard. That’s what the other 20-odd episodes are for—character development. When I tune into the final table of the biggest poker tournament in the world, I’d much rather see how interesting it is than hear how interesting it is. There were only 24 hands shown in the entire two hours (2 heads-up), and almost all of them were all-ins—not particularly interesting from a strategic point of view. It would be nice if ESPN would broadcast some more extensive coverage when it comes to the real action at hand. I know that it was streamed online, but staring at a computer screen just doesn’t do it for me.

I watched part of the live stream this year and found it much more interesting (even without hole cards) than the TV broadcast.

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WSOP Main Event Final Table, Other TV Updates

Date: Fri, Nov 5, 2010

The WSOP Main Event final table live streams start at 3:00 Saturday on ESPN3.

There's an episode of Million Dollar Challenge on Fox this Sunday, generally airing at 4:30 after football. The next episode will be on November 21.

The WSOP Main Event final table is televised at 10 PM (not 9 PM) to midnight Tuesday on ESPN. It ran over two hours last year.

Saturday's episode will be the final one for the Doubles Poker Championship as a winner is decided.

The Big Game is in rerun till November 29.

2+2er GrindUnumb has joined the Fifth Street Journal team and will be writing mostly about online poker.

This week's newsbites:

• Taping of the next season of Poker After Dark is under way at a new location, Aria.
• Whales is a new poker comedy show under development at Showtime by the producers of its hit show Weeds.
• A poker mockumentary, Hitting the Nuts: The True Story of the Scott County Series of Poker, won an award at the Cincinnati Film Festival and is seeking distribution.
• Krantz (of 2 Months, $2 Million), Ryan Firpo (of From Busto to Robusto), and Taylor Caby are producing a full-length documentary about the online poker boom.
• PokerStars will provide free online poker rooms to Fox Sports and ESPN.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the full list of shows running new episodes.

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High Stakes Poker Season 7 Tapes In December, Biggest Winners/Losers

Date: Fri, Nov 5, 2010

High Stakes Poker season 7's taping has been delayed till December. That probably pushes back our previously estimated February 13 air date. There's a report that High Stakes Poker's new location will be the Bellagio. They are also expected to raise the blinds for season 7 (19:10 in this Mori Eskandani video), possibly to $600/1200.

Due to its popularity I'm reprinting the win/loss records for the televised hands on the first six seasons of High Stakes Poker:

Tom Dwan +1,756,500
David Benyamine +904,150
Doyle Brunson +782,300
Mike Matasow +609,350
Patrik Antonius +418,490
Phil Ivey +332,400
Eli Elezra +312,650
Barry Greenstein +277,600
Erick Lindgren +273,550
Mimi Tran +251,400
...
Mike Baxter -200,700
Todd Brunson -202,400
Jamie Gold -217,140
Daniel Alaei -222,300
Shawn Sheikhan -243,900
Antonio Esfandiari -273,050
Dario Minieri -328,400
Ilari Sahamies (Ziigmund) -362,150
Phil Galfond -406,300
Daniel Negreanu -2,182,850

The full list is here.

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WSOP Main Event Final Table Live Streams Start Saturday

Date: Mon, Nov 1, 2010

The WSOP Main Event final table will be streamed live on ESPN3 without hole cards:

• Saturday, November 6th at 3 PM Eastern they will play from nine players down to two.
• Monday, November 8th at 11 PM Eastern the heads-up match resumes and they will play down to a winner.

With the recent addition of Time Warner cable ESPN3 is now available to subscribers of most cable systems (full list). Any serious poker fan should watch the Main Event final table live at least once: even without the hole cards it's the only way to get a true sense of how the final table went down. The TV version of the final table will air on ESPN at 10 PM on Tuesday the 9th.

Update: ESPN comented on viewership: “Our live streaming of the telecast on ESPN3.com, Saturday through Tuesday, delivered some strong numbers with 61,266 unique viewers for a total of 136,600 hours consumed and an average time spent of two hours and 14 minutes per unique viewer.”

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How Poker TV Shows Are Made - Video

Date: Mon, Nov 1, 2010

441 Productions, the company that produces the WSOP broadcasts, did the live stream/TV taping for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. The video below gives a behind-the-scenes view of how the shows were made. It's a pretty boring 8 minutes but it will at least disabuse some of you of the notion that producing poker TV shows is cheap.



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Vanessa Rousso: An Ordinary Girl - Documentary

Date: Mon, Nov 1, 2010

Vanessa Rousso: An Ordinary Girl is a 17-minute documentary filmed over a week in Monte Carlo. We get to meet Venessa's husband and mother as well. I found it well worth watching.



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Poker Player Documentary: Nick Schulman

Date: Tue, Oct 12, 2010

Poker player Nick "The Takeover" Schulman is the subject of this week's episode of the MTV documentary series World of Jenks. I thought it was worth a half hour of my time. You can watch it below or in the usual places.

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iPhone Poker, For Real Money, Finally Here

Date: Fri, Oct 8, 2010

iPhone poker with real money has finally arrived with Switch Poker. They're giving away free iPads and iPod Touches to early depositors; see the comments below for details.

Real-money iPhone poker hadn't arrived before now because Apple won't allow real-money poker rooms in its App Store and it won't implement Flash (which most online games use) in its mobile devices. Apple has good reason to dislike Flash: it's resource intensive, running slowly on cell-phone processors, and causes a lot of crashes. That meant that Switch Poker had to find another way to reach iPhone and iPad users, however. Their solution was to create a web application written in HTML and JavaScript, which browsers can understand. That means you can not only play on the iPhone and iPad but also on your computer (Android support, however, is a while off at 10/2010).

The games on Switch Poker are 6-max and heads-up no-limit Hold 'em with stakes from 1/2¢ with a 20¢ buyin on up. They plan on adding other games later. The software is simple, lacking basic things like pre-action buttons, but otherwise perfectly playable and improving. You can even multitable: click the lobby button on the upper left, join another table, and then move among them by clicking the table icons on the left side (which indicate when the action is to you). They offer various payment options through Moneybookers, and will add Neteller and other options soon, but there are no US-friendly deposit options.

Open an account and give it a try.

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Cash Game on Poker After Dark

Date: Mon, Oct 4, 2010

For the next two weeks Poker After Dark will be showing a new cash game featuring Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Gabe Kaplan, Eli Elezra, Alan Meltzer, and David “Viffer” Peat. The minimum buy-in is $150,000 with $300/$600 blinds and a $100 ante. Read NBC's preview.

PokerStars's The Big Game is back today (preview video below). PokerStars's Million Dollar Challenge season 2 is already underway; you can catch episodes you missed at PokerStars.tv. Heartland Poker Tour season 6 is also underway. You can find times and channels for all the shows currently running new episodes in our poker on TV schedule.



If you missed it, the Nightline feature about online poker did eventually air and can be watched online.

This week's newsbites:

• Fox Sports Net will continue airing the World Poker Tour for seasons 9 through 11. Season 9 premieres in January. The show will feature pre-final-table action and Kimberly Lansing will be anchor. Sexton and Van Patten continue their roles.
• WSOP ratings are down 16% this year.

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WSOP Europe Web Stream With Hole Cards Monday and Tuesday

Date: Mon, Sep 27, 2010

The final two days of the WSOP Europe Main Event will stream on ESPN3.com with hole cards on a five-hour delay Monday and Tuesday at noon. ESPN3 is available to subscribers of internet service providers including Comcast (full list). Details from ESPN:

Coverage of the event, being held at the Casino at the Empire in London, will begin with 27 players on Sept. 27. Action on Monday will continue until the final table of nine players is reached. On Tuesday, fans will be able to watch the final table in its duration on ESPN3.com until a winner is crowned.

Hole cards will be displayed anytime a hand reaches a flop or if a preflop decision takes more than one minute. The five-hour delay is in place as a consideration for that aspect. Veteran poker insider Dave Tuchman and Bart Hanson will call the action and will be joined by a variety of poker players throughout the broadcast.

Phil Ivey and Viktor Blom are among the players remaining at the start of the webcast.

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Rescheduled Nightline Featuring Online Poker Pros Expected to Air Tonight

Date: Tue, Aug 31, 2010

Tonight's Nightline, at 11:35 PM on ABC, features two online poker pros: Joe Cada and Blaine Brount, a 19-year-old student at the University of Illinois. It was rescheduled from the previous expected air date.

Update: you can watch it online now.

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Nightline Features Online Poker Pros Tonight

Date: Tue, Aug 24, 2010

Tonight's Nightline, at 11:35 PM on ABC, features two online poker pros: Joe Cada and Blaine Brount, a 19-year-old student at the University of Illinois. Update 8/29: was postponed; I'll let you know when it airs.

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Poker on TV Update: WSOP to 9 PM

Date: Tue, Aug 24, 2010

The WSOP moves to 9 PM today with day 2 action (preview).

PokerStars's Big Game, which has gotten some very good reviews, will be in rerun for a while after this week's episodes. Poker After Dark is in rerun till October 4. The next upcoming shows are World Team Poker and Heartland Poker Tour Season 6 in early September.

This week's newsbites:

• Fatty's is a proposed new reality show featuring Lacey Jones set in a fictional New York City underground cardroom. See their web site and ESPN's interview with cast members at the WSOP.
• Poker News has pics of the recent taping of Big Game episodes for the fall.

Support the blog and get a free €3 at G2G Pros (US-friendly): just sign up through this link and email code PKB3 to Support@G2GPros.com. We've also updated our article on the very profitable Everleaf private tables.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the full list of shows running new episodes.

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