Two New Episodes Of I Bet You

Two new episodes of I Bet You (a prop bet show featuring Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari) have appeared: The Lost Footage Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Airings on Mojo include Saturday at 11 AM, 4 PM, and 10 PM; and Sunday at 1 AM. Check a programming guide for additional airings.

EPT Live is showing the final table of the EPT London today (Saturday).

We’re up to the last few WCOOP events, with the Main Event on Sunday. Barry Greenstein got good reviews for staying to answer viewers’ questions during the break of a recent tournament (download it).

Next week’s Poker After Dark features Phil Laak, David Williams, Annie Duke, Andy Bloch, John Juanda, and Clonie Gowen.

ESPN is airing day 6 of the WSOP Main Event next Tuesday.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes, sign up for our weekly newsletter, and contact me with any suggestions or corrections.

Poker on TV Update, September 22, 2007

Tuesday's WSOP broadcasts cover day 5 of the Main Event.

This week's Poker After Dark features Antonio Esfandiari, Shawn Sheikhan, Mike Matusow, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Laak, and Daniel Negreanu.

The final table of EPT London is on Saturday the 29th. Hopefully we'll get a live broadcast of it at EPTLive.com, though it isn't listed on the site yet.

PokerStars's WCOOP coverage continues through the Main Event on September 30. David Tuchman or Bart Hanson provide commentary, with guests such as Barry Greenstein and Daniel Negreanu.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes, sign up for our weekly newsletter, and contact me with any suggestions or corrections.

Poker on TV Update, September 15, 2007

WSOP Live (review) is covering the final table of the WSOP Europe's Main Event on Sunday the 16th.

Next week's Poker After Dark series is WPT Multiple Winners. The players are Erick Lindgren, Howard Lederer, Daniel Negreanu, Michael Mizrachi, Gus Hansen, and Tuan Le. Poker After Dark has become one of my favorite poker shows on TV.

ESPN covers day four of the WSOP Main Event Tuesday.

Survivor: China premieres Thursday, September 20, at 8 PM on CBS. Jean-Robert Bellande is a contestant.

PokerStars will stream every final table of their World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), the largest online tournament series. Hole cards won't be shown, but Bart Hanson, one of poker's best commentators, will be providing commentary for most of the final tables. The schedule is here, or you can find the tournaments at Events/WCOOP/Main Events in the PokerStars client. The WCOOP just started, and it runs through September 30, when the $5,000,000-guaranteed Main Event airs. There's a link to the stream in the tournament lobbies, or you can just click this link.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes, sign up for our weekly newsletter, and contact me with any suggestions or corrections.

Poker After Dark Returns To TV

Poker After Dark returns to TV Monday night with a tournament featuring players who have won at least five WSOP bracelets each: Doyle Brunson, Layne Flack, Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel, and T.J. Cloutier. It airs on NBC at 2:05 AM Tuesday through Saturday (late night Monday through Friday) and 1 AM Sunday (late night Saturday; it's a recap show). Some NBC affiliates aren't airing it but you can always watch it on the web.

ESPN is covering days 3 and 4 of the Main Event this Tuesday.

WSOP Live is streaming the WSOP Europe Event 2 final table this Sunday, and Event 3 next Sunday.

Monday and Tuesday it's Montel's Vegas Adventure on the syndicated daytime show. He plays poker with Ben Affleck and does various other Vegas things. Check a programming guide for time and channel in your area.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes, sign up for our weekly newsletter, and contact me with any suggestions or corrections.

A Few Yuks For the Channel Surfer (A Review of ESPN's WSOP Coverage)

ESPN executives are smart: they figured out that no one is interested in watching poker on TV. Their response was ingenious: target their "poker shows" at people who aren't interested in poker! I figured out their strategy when I counted the hands they showed on some of the WSOP episodes this year. For the first episode of the Main Event they showed 8 hands (down one from last year; two other WSOP episodes I watched showed about 11 hands). They spent more time than that showing bleeding chunks (hands where no preflop action is shown; there were 11 in the first episode of the Main Event). But ESPN devoted the largest number of segments to non-poker content (about 16 in the first episode of the Main Event). Ingenious: if no one is interested in watching poker on TV, then ESPN should target channel surfers! And what's the gold standard in veg-out TV, the caviar of channel surfing? Sitcom reruns of course! So ESPN found a couple of old sitcom stars, Ray Romano and Brad Garrett, and showed them yukking it up for a while. They also figured out that channel surfers are interested in old and blind people and provided a satisfying dose of each. And we're interested in watching people throw Frisbees! Send the cameras! But that's not the end of ESPN's genius: they figured out that Nielsen's People Meters were providing inaccurate demographic data! While ESPN had always thought that their audience was heavily skewed towards young men, they found that it was actually... moms! In the past ESPN might have focused on Evelyn Ng and Liz Lieu, who were at featured tables (the ones with hole card cams), but instead wise ESPN producers directed their cameramen to cover David Williams and Jamie Gold's moms, who they found at outer tables.

ESPN doesn't take poker seriously. In fact, their broadcasts are the antithesis of what a poker broadcast should be... making ESPN the Great Satan of Poker Broadcasters. I give ESPN's 2007 WSOP broadcasts 1 1/2 stars, only because they have some entertainment value and cover the most important events in poker.

I won't justify a show that doesn't take poker seriously with a serious review. Those of you who are interested, however, may find greater detail about the problems with ESPN's poker in some of these classic articles:

• ESPN Presents Short-Attention-Span TV (A US Poker Championship Review)
• Fans Say ESPN's (poker) Coverage Deserves Penalty
• Norman Chad On the WSOP: "The Viewers Don't Care"
• ESPN/ABC To Apply Poker Model To Football Broadcasts
  
• 2006 WSOP Review
  
• ESPN Expands WSOP Final Table To Fit Phil Hellmuth
• Changes For ESPN's 2007 World Series of Poker Broadcasts

Video Of WPT Season Six Hostesses Layla Kayleigh and Kimberly Lansing

The above video features Layla Kayleigh, the WPT's Season 6 hostess, on the lap of Kimberly Lansing, who does an excellent job with the WPT's online video segments. If you enjoy that, you may also like this one.

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PokerStars Streams World Cup of Poker IV This Week

PokerStars is streaming the World Cup of Poker IV live this week. It's an invitational competition between nations. The announcers have access to the hole cards and sometimes tell us what the players hold, but they aren't displayed onscreen. The stream has PokerStars's usual excellent video quality. The schedule is:

Tuesday, 4th September	HEAT 1 10:00-15:00 ET HEAT 2 16:00-21:00 ET
Wednesday, 5th September	HEAT 3 10:00-15:00 ET
Thursday, 6th September	HEAT 4 10:00-15:00 ET HEAT 5 16:00-21:00 ET
Friday, 7th September	FINAL 12:30-17:30 ET

Poker on TV Update, September 3, 2007

This week's WSOP episodes cover days 2A and 2B.

WSOP Live is streaming WSOP Europe Event #1, £2,500 H.O.R.S.E., on Saturday the 8th. You need to pay the $50/year subscription fee to view it.

Season two of Poker After Dark resumes on Monday the 10th.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes, sign up for our weekly newsletter, and contact me with any suggestions or corrections.

Full Tilt Sponsors More European, Not US, Shows

Full Tilt Poker will sponsor seasons two through four of Million Dollar Cash Game, to be broadcast on Sky Sports in the UK. Season one was never aired in the US, and I doubt future seasons will be either. Full Tilt used to sponsor excellent live poker broadcasts in the US. Now they're concentrating on the less mature and legally-less-restrictive (they can advertise their .com site there) European market. PokerStars is doing the same: they sponsor the European Poker Tour. If an American wants to watch either of those shows we have to download a torrent. I don't blame the poker rooms for their business decisions, but I wonder if the US will remain the leading televised poker producer for much longer.