Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

From Steve Rosenbloom's mailbag column at espn.com:

[ QUOTE ]
From Darren of Chicago: "Steve, great poker column. I wanted to get your thoughts on the current climate of distrust concerning ESPN poker broadcasts. There have been numerous and substantiated claims that the production teams have manufactured drama by creative editing and, at times, flat-out guessing the hole cards. It's frustrating that the game's integrity is not being maintained by the standard bearer of progressive sports television, ESPN.''

Darren, I know there has been a lot of discussion on poker sites about this, especially ESPN's World Series of Poker circuit event involving Phil Ivey's and Jeffrey Lissandro's hands.

So, I sent your entire e-mail to ESPN and received this response from Keri Potts, the associate manager of communications for ESPN and ABC Sports: "We log every hand played and record every hand played at our table. All our shows are edited down to show the main 12-15 hands. We cannot possibly air 12 hours of unedited footage from an event's final table. But we do not manipulate the result."

And I received this response from Bob Chesterman, head honcho for ESPN's original entertainment broadcasts: "We do not reshoot any hole cards. The cards in question were not clear. In some cases, when we can trust the player, we ask them what they had afterwards.'' The first year we did reshoot some hole cards because we had cameras that went down. We have learned from our mistakes and do not do this anymore"

[/ QUOTE ]

Other good questions in the mailbag can be found over here.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

[ QUOTE ]
And I received this response from Bob Chesterman, head honcho for ESPN's original entertainment broadcasts: "We do not reshoot any hole cards. The cards in question were not clear. In some cases, when we can trust the player, we ask them what they had afterwards.'' The first year we did reshoot some hole cards because we had cameras that went down. We have learned from our mistakes and do not do this anymore"

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, so in the Lissandro case where the cards were not clear--did they "trust the player" or what? That part remains unclear.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

i did ask a friend of lisandro, who confirmed with me that jeff had tens. unless jeff lied to his friend (who is a good friend of mine), i'll take their word for it.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

[ QUOTE ]
i did ask a friend of lisandro, who confirmed with me that jeff had tens. unless jeff lied to his friend (who is a good friend of mine), i'll take their word for it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah I know what you mean. I talked to my Uncle Buck whose had a daughter whoses boyfriends cousin saw Chan lay down quad K's in the 88 World Series on a board of Ks Kh 9h 10h 2c. Seems Chan was positive that the guy had JQ of hearts and this lay down allowed him to save his chips and go on to win.


Anyway....am I the only one tired of these friend of a friend of a friend talked to Mr. X so it must be true posts.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

did i ever even try to convince you with my post that he had tens?

i'm telling you from second hand information. you can accept it or not. i accept it because i know the source well. you don't know them, so you don't have to accept it.

no need to be a dick. so what i posted a friend of a friend told me. it's second hand information, not fifth hand information. believe me or not, i don't really care.

now get back to your message board flaming since you have nothing better to do.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

No offense bro your story could or could not be true I have no idea. But,,,,there are 10 posts a day on here saying,,,"my cousins buddy is a dealer at the bellagio and he says gus hansen is in debt 40 million dollars" so i am skeptical anytime somebody posts what a friend of a friend says on here.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

I believe sketchy and know his source. So it's likely true that Lissandro did in fact tell sketchy's friend (a friend of mine too) that he (Lissandro) did in fact have TT.

There ya go folks, you heard it here first: A friend of mine told a different friend of mine that the hand Lissandro folded was in fact TT.

But I have a theory to debunk the veracity of this gossip, too: If Lissandro had already told the ESPN producers that he had folded TT (as the ESPN producer implied was the case), he'd certainly keep the story straight if he told anyone else.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

[ QUOTE ]
And I received this response from Bob Chesterman, head honcho for ESPN's original entertainment broadcasts: "We do not reshoot any hole cards. The cards in question were not clear. In some cases, when we can trust the player, we ask them what they had afterwards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are people finding some way of reading this that doesn't validate my original contention one hundred percent? Of course lisandro told ESPN he had two tens, that's the whole point. He told them that and they believed it. It doesn't even matter if lisandro had two tens (and nobody can ever know for certain except him) when ESPN doesn't know whether lisandro had two tens but represented it to the viewers anyway.

More simply, the use of the phrase "when we can trust the player" is game, set, and match.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

[ QUOTE ]
More simply, the use of the phrase "when we can trust the player" is game, set, and match.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ace!

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

I outplayed Lissadro he just got lucky. Donkeys always draw.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

I knew this was true all along, but for people like, I don't know, my father who enjoys watching poker on TV, there's no way I'm telling him this story as he genuinely just enjoys casually watching something he knows his son is interested in and knowing that something he sees might be fake ...

... you can never go back.

And sometimes it's best believing in Santa Claus.

Ignorance is, as the cliche rolls, bliss.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

[ QUOTE ]
No offense bro your story could or could not be true I have no idea. But,,,,there are 10 posts a day on here saying,,,"my cousins buddy is a dealer at the bellagio and he says gus hansen is in debt 40 million dollars" so i am skeptical anytime somebody posts what a friend of a friend says on here.

[/ QUOTE ]

You realize that sketchy is the main reporter for a respected site that did thousands of updates for the WSOP, right?

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

I agree with paul on this one. Whether he had pocket 10s or not makes no difference. The fact that ESPN admits to trusting what the player said he had... completely undermines the integrity of the show. How can i possibly believe any of the weird/interesting hands they show from now on? Just having to ask myself if a hand actually happened the way they showed it makes ESPN's broadcast of the WSOP a complete joke.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

i still agree with the principle here. espn shouldn't be doing this for "reporting." this would be akin to me asking a player later for a huge pot that i barely know what his hole cards were during an event i'm reporting at. i will do it if i know the source will be truthful. for instance, there was a huge pot between mizrachi and stolzmann in tunica before the tv final table. the flop was 6 5 2 and mizrachi had opened with 63 suited, and bet the flop. stolzmann moved in with 3 3 and mizrachi had his hand killed thinking forever. all the sites reported the hand and pokerpages had video. i asked mike what he had. had i not known him or his brothers i wouldn't have asked, but i take mike's word.

that's on a totally different scale though, from espn reporting to millions of viewers at home without even knowing for sure. espn isn't a close friend of lisandro. they have no reason to believe he's being honest.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

[ QUOTE ]
I outplayed Lissadro he just got lucky. Donkeys alwasy draw.

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

I think people are forgetting *why* ESPN ended up pretending to know the hand when they did not really know it. Every broadcast is aired "as if" it were a live sports broadcast as opposed to a highly edited, after the fact, production. Viewers get cheated in a million and one ways because of this the least of which is that ESPN occasionally pretends to know a hand that they do not. But, as this thread is about the alleged pocket tens, I will start there.

If ESPN explained to viewers that what they were watching was a post-event, edited production, then they could say on air "we are not sure what cards he had, we talked to the player and he says he had pocket tens. We don't know it, but that's what he says." Then they could even debate the likelhiood of this being true, ala Paul Phillip's excellent blog, and talk about it in the context of all the play in the tournament up to that point or even up to and beyond that point. This might even make for some interesting commentary.

Unfortunately (and clearly) because they stubbornly stick to the format of commenting as if it were live they and will not take this approach. For what it's worth it's highly doubtful that this has anything to do with ESPN's integrity, and a lot more to do with their fear of breaking from the format, which, probably because they are a sports network or something, seems like the best format to attract viewers. Now, naturally, someone is going to say, but they could do both, they could stick to their format and maintain integrity simply by not showing the hand. But now we are deep in the mire of what drives a corporation to put this stuff on in the first place.... What is it? Ah, yes, now I remember: ratings. No, Ratings, with a capital R. So, if they have lack of integrity, it's about what would make the most interesting broadcast to poker players (it's an enigma, but not one restricted to the poker broadcasting world, what's good for the goose is not always what's good for the gander. And if you don't know who the goose is in this context, well, neither do I. I never really understood that expression). Whatever. ESPN chooses the format that will draw the biggest crowd. Or, at least, what they think in their infinite corporate wisdom will draw the biggest audience. Sadly, ESPN poker (and WPT) gets boiled down to a terrible format for serious players.

Now some fun. Think of all the ways ESPN or WPT broadcasts could be improved if they broke from the "as if it were live" format. The list is endless. Just a few suggestions:

1. They could show chip counts during every bet. They can't now because that would highlight more than they want to the shifting chip counts (wait, he just had $1,000,000 in chips, what happened). Well, he was ground down because despite the way we make it look, he didn't catch cards for an hour.

2. They could have re-caps of key hands that happened during the long gaps between broadcast hands.

3. They could have all kinds of interesting player stats for the final table, that mimic, e.g., the stats in pokertracker. I would love to see how many times a player raised from the button, % of hands played outside of the flop, % of times the player raised when he opened the pot, the % of times a player moved in pre-flop, the % of times a player raises on the flop. All of this would be imminently possible if only the producers could break the spell that this is a live broadcast. It would make for fascinating commentary, which I believe, would long-run be interesting to many more poker viewers than just serious players. It could turn poker into another baseball type sport (don't get me started on the debate as to whether it's a sport or not, two words: WHO CARES?).

4. When two players are heads up in the flop, I would love to know how many times they had been heads up at the final table and a summary of what happened at that final table, and at every WPT event. E.g., who wins more, who is the aggressor more often, who knows! My God, if in a baseball game they can give stats of a pitcher vs a batter, well ... you get the idea.

5. How about giving a simple hand count? As in, this is the 112th hand this final table. How about giving us a clock? As in, these players have been playing for 6 hours. Then they could tell us how long other final tables take, etc. They could give cool stats like 1) on average at a final table a player is eliminated every 2 hours, or every 68 hands, or whatever. Believe me, if baseball fans like such stats, so will poker spectators.

I for one think the broadcasters are giving up a whole lot due to their format. I think the format forced ESPN to "lie" about the hand in question, but I think it's besides the point. They liked the hand, they could not admit on air that the commentary was all being taped after the fact, so they went with a player they could trust. Bad format = bad decisions.

Re: Revisiting Lisandro v Ivey (Re: ESPN making up hole cards)
 

Regardless of what someone heard from a "friend of a friend who talked to Lissandro", the people at ESPN contradicted each other in Rosenblog.

The first person said they NEVER fix hole cards, and the second executive to reply gave a kinda "wink,wink" denial of whether they still fix hole cards afer admitting that they fixed them in the past.

So even though maybe the cards were not fixed in this exact hand, ESPN cannot be trusted to not fix hole cards in the future.