Like so many, I like poker.
I don’t play online poker. I’ve never played (non-video) poker in a casino. I do play in a semi-regular game, but it’s not that regular. I’ve been a poker fan ever since I saw Rounders in college. I’ve been a religious watcher of the World Series of Poker for the past handful of years. In terms of the Main Event, this year feels like a great tournament with a few things that kinda ruined it at least for me.
If you don’t know… The World series is a yearly event in Las Vegas of a bunch of different poker tournaments which culminate in one of two events: The Main Event and the H.O.R.S.E. tournament. While the H.O.R.S.E. tournament is more about overall poker skill the Main Event is the bigger tournament with the biggest payout… And that’s what I’m focusing on here.
To be able to milk broadcast revenue, the main event is aired in two hour blocks every week for a few months. But the tournament isn’t actually played like this. So there isn’t a month gap between the winner being crowned, they run the tournament until the final table which is then restarted and broadcast soon thereafter.
So anyway, I felt the main even (based on watching the broadcast) was great. That is up until about a month before the final table. From there a confluence of three events that made it extremely, extremely annoying.
The first was that about a month before the final table, an advertisement by a poker website made it public that a professional endorser of their company had made the final table. This is extremely poor form that takes a lot of suspense out of the next many weeks of broadcast.
The second was that the day before the broadcast, SI.cnn.com put a detail about the Main Event winner that basically tells you who wins… So great. I knew who was going to win as well as who wasn’t going to win. Again, poor form.
The last was kinda an afterthought in that the broadcast bled over into another time slot and my DVR didn’t get all of it. Thanks ESPN / Dish Network for getting your listings correct.
It was just a fitting ending for a bad production.