Here’s the complete TV listing. Exceedingly lame coverage again this year, focusing on hold 'em almost exclusively with one night of Omaha in the middle and an hour of stud as an afterthought. At least they’re showing different limit structures of hold 'em this year. One point in their favor is the expanded coverage of the $50,000 HORSE event. Looks like actually going to cover the ORSE this year as opposed to last year’s inaugural coverage, which was two hours of the all NL hold 'em final table. I can’t be the only person in America who wants to see other games besides NL hold 'em on TV. One of the best hours of coverage in the last few years was the Razz final table with Cloutier, Lederer and Boyd.
If anyone is wondering and doesn’t feel like clicking on the link like I had to, this is about poker. I assume WSOP is World Series Of Poker (it’s never explained even in the link).
I hate ESPN’s coverage. Hate it. Hate it hate it hate it. If they showed more than three hands between commercial breaks and didn’t focus on the innumerable all-in race situations, it might be better.
As it is, however, I’d rather watch Poker After Dark and get my WSOP coverage from pokernews.com.
Pokernews.com is indeed the best coverage (they outbid cardplayer.com for the rights)… (and still get it ridiculously wrong, but not nearly as often as cardplayer did… )
But I still rail Daniel Negreanu at his website message board (www.fullcontactpoker.com). Call me a fanboy if you must, but he’s the bee’s knees.
Go DN!
Yes, absolutely.
It’s actually HORSE at the HORSE final table. Wow. I don’t know what idiot dreamed up last year’s fiasco of a NLHE “HORSE” final table, but it sucked, sucked, sucked. (and then it sucked some more)
I agree, and, no sir, you aren’t.
[me going back in time, with every post]
Sarcasm warning (ESPN POV):
Regular idiot schmoes who watch poker aren’t smart enough to understand anything but holdem.
They play their idiotic home games, seeing every flop, then pushing all-in every top pair. It’s a crap shoot, they all pretty much break even over time in their home game, because they all play equally horribly. They remain aggressive, because the announcers on TV remind them that’s important. Maybe one guy in their home game is a consistent winner, mostly due to his semi-tight preflop play and semi-well timed post-flop agression. But he’s still clueless.
Then they watch their heroes and root them on, trying to figure how they themselves lost playing “the same hand”.
They don’t care about anything but Phil Hellmuth winning another bracelet, and don’t recognize any of the other players.
ESPN=Money.
I hope that clears the godawful ESPN bullshit coverage of any wrongdoing.
You have no idea how pissed I was when I found out about that. It was totally illogical and a blatant attempt to smoke ESPN’s cock. I’m getting incredibly bored by conventional hold 'em TV coverage, and I thought the HORSE event coverage might be interesting… until I found out what they did. I didn’t even watch it.
The only thing I actually look forward to watching these days is High Stakes Poker. I cut out just about everything else, except non-NL hold em WSOP events and I usually watch the main event.
Tournament hold 'em, particular of the variety where the depth of stacks make it a simple joke of a game. The game itself isn’t simple - it’s a very complex game, it’s just that they way the structure the tournaments, and how they choose to cover it on TV, makes chess into checkers… or… maybe go fish. ESPN does their best to make it the least interesting it can. It’s sort of like the trend in modern game shows - real poker is something like Jeopardy, where tournament poker covered on TV is more like “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?” - a dumbed down version where more emphasis is placed on drama and suspense than the actual game.
Yeah, I’ve been fairly well disgusted with ESPN’s coverage for the last few years. I’ve already vented about the over-emphasis on NLHE. They also completely suck at accomodating important events that arise during the course of the series. I seem to recall hearing that they would have had no coverage of Chan’s winning his tenth bracelet if Jennifer Tilly hadn’t pretty much ordered a camera crew to cover his table.
And I hate Norman Chad. He occasionally says something pertinent to the game (and even a blind pig finds the odd acorn) but I swear if he makes any mroe “ex-wife” jokes I may have to go punch him in the throat.
But, unless someone outbids them for TV rights, we’re kinda stuck. Much as I dislike the coverage it’s not like I won’t be watching all of it.
Agreed. A local casino used to spread a 3-6 Omaha 8 game. Six of the 9 players were the same old guys every week. One always used to comment…“Unlike holdem, you need an IQ above 80 to play Omaha.”
Fortunately for me, many of these guys were so old their mental acuity had already come and gone. Retirees with ample bankrolls playing it like a home game (which it pretty much was for them). I made money in 6-of-7 sessions before the casino had to shut down. 
He’s horrible. The worst. There’s not ANYBODY else that could do color commentary here? He doesn’t even do any ANALYSIS, just occasional quips and comments.
That’s funny. Limit O/8 is a much simpler, more mechanical game that takes a lot less poker smarts to play decently than hold 'em.
Don’t rag on my man Norm.