Poker Night on ESPN

[Fraubump]

Anyone else watch this?

I found the show to be pretty weak. Production values were low and the show didn't contextualize the situation well enough for anyone watching to really care who won.

Major problems:

In all-ins, sometimes both hands weren't shown, so you couldn't tell what the matchup was.

Chip counts were rarely made clear: seems like a graphic showing approximate chip counts should have been put on screen often.

Announcers were kinda bozos, not giving much insight into the action. One of them made the same joke several times.

That all said, it was still somewhat interesting to watch, but if the poker community want corporate sponsorship/tv to turn tournament poker into a major money sport they are going to have to do a lot better than this.

[Fitz]

And, what's the deal with Jerry Van Dyke? Does he play? And, is he any good?

[Abagadro]

That was a recycle of stuff that has been shown several times before on ESPN. When I saw the listing as "Sunday Night Poker" I was hoping it would be something new, but it wasn't. That was a particularly bad one IMO because of Van Dyke's idiocy and the generally bad production value. There is a better one of I think the WPO(the one where the singing guy from Puerto Rico won) that has "sneak peaks" at the hands while the players are thinking things over, which is nice. Hopefully they will pull it together as a regular feature with the better elements.

[balt999]

The problem with the telecast was they painted a picture of the poker world as a bunch of degenerate gamblers, especially with the All-In Moves.....To the average viewer who doesn't have a clue about poker, they would view it similar to someone playing blackjack and betting their entire stack on one hand....

They need analysis who will give good in-depth insight on why a move is being made...Phil Hellmuth, love him or not, did an outstanding job of trying to give the viewers of idea of what tournament poker is all about and why someone was making a move...The other morons were just trying to entertain each other...NOTE TO ESPN: if you're going to bring in a celebrity for the telecast....bring someone with a little bit of appeal.

It also didn't help that none of the 6 finalists had any charisma.....I know you can't force it upon them, but you can do something to overcome it..I like what the Travel Channel did during the 2001 WSOP when 5 of the 6 players from the FINAL TABLE were profiled and you knew a little about them....You gotta give people a reason to watch....the production has to be centered around the players or the action...

Serious tournament players want the world to view tournament poker as a sport, but it'll be a long time before corporate sponsorships will get behind it, because the stigma of "gambling" will always stick with poker....but with advent of the WPT and more coverage on TV...I think the time will come....Remember you have to crawl before you can walk....

[true_chris]

I watched it and was disappointed. They didn't always make clear what the players were holding when there was an all in situation and the commentary sucked. Of course I still enjoyed it. I agree with the comment about the travel channel coverage of the WSOP.....much better. I don't think the ESPN program would appeal to anyone but hard core poker players. Travel channel seemed to be trying to appeal to a wider audience. My wife even watched that with me and she doesn't even play.