Yeah, I think that’s what one of my problems with it was … the way it was cut together, it really wasn’t very different from any other episode. I woulda been just as fine watching this thing two weeks or two months after the fact as I was watching it one day after. It was too much like all the other episodes.

That’s simply not true, dude. My bad for not getting more articles up about this, but Harrah’s is hurting. All of Vegas is. (Heck, all of America is.)

Blimped out profits definitely don’t exist in anything involving the casino biz these days.

gg

Oh and Dan, I blame the black light for the bad views of the audience. That shit gave me a headache everytime they showed them.

This years ESPN main event coverage 7 out of 10. Pretty much where I put the past 2 years.

Ed

They said it would be “Live.” They should have shown at least 4 hours.

I said before that we should wait and see how it plays out. I was wrong. It didn’t play out very well.

This was not a good week for ABC/ESPN. First they have a Heidi NASCAR race, then a much too short WSOP. I think they forgot how to cover sports or competitions that aren’t football, baseball, or basketball.

Phil Hellmuth?
Tiffany Michelle?
Russ Hamilton?

The commentary would have been better if certain people weren’t on it, and will try to leave it at that.

I was extremely disappointed in the ESPN coverage. I actually listened to a majority of the audio from both of the tables on the site you linked.. Bluff’s site. Craig Marquis, Daniel Negreanu, and Barry Greenstein did an awesome job commentating.

I understand that ESPN can’t show every hand, but after watching their coverage, you had ZERO context for what was going on. You didn’t see the big up and down swings between the 2 heads up. You had no clue how long it lasted and how good the poker playing was. If you listened to the audio broadcast, it seemed that every 3rd or 4th hand was getting raised and reraised. It was phenomenal. The end looked so boring to me. I’d love to see it on a pay per view live next time.

I guess it’s like trying to compare a book to the movie. The book is always better because it goes into so much more detail. There just isn’t enough time in a movie.

I listened for about an hour or two during the heads-up. Robert Williamson and others sat in with Nick for the broadcast the day before, I believe.

(It now occurs to me that listening via laptop in the Penn & Teller Theater makes me like one of those old men you used to see at baseball and football games, watching the game right in front of them on TV, and drowning out the raw, vibrant sounds with ones run through earphones. Yikes.)

However, I turned it off at one point when it seemed to be on repeat. At first they seemed to be just a few minutes behind the action, and then it seemed like 20 or 30 minutes behind it, and before long I realized I was listening to the same words I had just heard.

Technical glitch, maybe?

I would have much rather have it broken in 3 or 4 1 hour episodes because it clearly needed at least 3 hours and probably 4 hours to show any real poker and do it justice.

For me the gold standard is still the WSOP 06 Pay Per View event where it took forever and no hold cards where shown but they showed every hand. If they are going to just broadcast the highlights, they really need to bring back the entire broadcast either online or payperview.

Who is the best player from the final table? I don’t feel like I saw enough hands to have any idea and all I do know is Eastgate was running really really well.

I don’t have all the answers either, and yes it would’ve been nice to see KK’s elimination hand. Maybe if ESPN didn’t appear to talk down to the casual TV poker fan you’d see some of these things. But in the grand scheme of things poker is such small potatoes to them, and they’ve got a great formula working for them right now.

But to get there, you (read: the WSOP and ESPN) should probably have a vision of what you think you might be doing for v 8.0.

I’m not faulting Norman Chad at all — I think he does a great job. But having a third in there to discuss occasionally some higher-level strategy (in a way that doesn’t lose the casual viewer) would do well. Seeing them check down a hand would also provide an opportunity to explain why people would check down (surely someone had a raising hand, right?) … because by working collectively, they all guarantee themselves a $300k jump in the money. Stuff like that.

Also in a non-major golf tournament, you’re only seeing those on the leaderboard in the last half of their resepective round.