While I can’t keep up with all of the Olympic coverage, I’m doing my damnedest. My TiVo has been working in hyperdrive, recording everything airing on NBC, the USA network, and CNBC, and I’m watching a lot and fast-forwarding (with occasional stops) through everything else. With more than 24 hours of coverage a day, it’s a Herculean task.

One thing I’ve noticed is that PokerStars is putting up a fair amount of commercials during the Olympics, at least here in the Atlanta market. (Can anyone watching the Olympics in other markets confirm that it’s national?) The two commercials I’ve noticed the most are from PokerStars — one with Daniel Negreanu (playing pool & playing poker) and one with Vanessa Rousso (bungee jumping & playing poker). Of the two, I think the Vanessa Rousso one stands out much more — more contrast between bungee jumping and poker compared to Daniel’s billiards commercial, and it also has a taste of those “extreme sports” that the young’uns seem to like.

Regardless of what you think of Vanessa as a poker player, I think this could actually be good for the game of poker. One of the things Barry Greenstein came away with during last year’s Congressional visit (to discuss the legality of online poker) was how impressed the congressmen were with the female players who showed up — Annie Duke and Vanessa Rousso. In their eyes, Vanessa is an attractive young woman with a degree from Duke University, and plenty of opportunities open to her. But she chose to play poker. That challenges their view of poker much more than seeing players like Greenstein or Doyle Brunson.

I highly doubt poker will see a post-Olympic bounce from these commercials, but if PokerStars is targeting an entirely new demographic of sports fans, I think they could do a lot worse than putting Vanessa Rousso out front and center.

Brendan Hansen … American swimmer … just got third in his semi-final in the 100m breaststroke. (Really, how amazing is that — to be able to breast-stroke the length of a football field in less than a minute.) Anyhow, apparently he’s been struggling a bit, having posted some disappointing times in some prelims or trials or something failed to qualify for the 200m breast … and the announcer (sorry, haven’t learned who’s doing which sport yet) started speculating that it was a calculated “poker play” — not showing his best cards yet, saving them for the finals? I dunno, the metaphor’s kinda lost on me … but still, poker … olympics. Go NBC!

In case your Friday night included something more interesting than watching TV (mine didn’t), I’m here to tell you that the summer Olympics “started” with the Opening Ceremonies tonight. Actually, the ceremonies took place about half a day ago in Beijing, but NBC is presenting them in a “plausibly live” format during prime time. Hmmm … where have I heard that term (”plausibly live”) before? 

For 17 days, the Olympics will dominate NBC’s networks here in the United States, and fill up enough news coverage to finally give Americans a break from the seemingly endless presidential election. (Other countries are fortunate in the fact that they generally get less nationalistic — and often more interesting — coverage than NBC provides here in the U.S.)

During that time, I’ll be writing about some things the poker industry can learn from the Olympics. Not the game itself, or the silly notion that poker should be added to the Olympics. I’m mainly concerned with the media coverage, and what we as poker reporters can learn from it. 

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Despite previous reports suggesting the possibility of otherwise …

High Stakes Poker is not moving to the Golden Nugget — and it hasn’t yet been renewed for a new season. At least not for now on paper in any way. This comes from a well-informed higher-up involved with Poker PROductions — the company that produces both High Stakes Poker and Poker after Dark.

To be clear, HSP has not been canceled … it just hasn’t been renewed yet. You know, fine line, kinda like “collateral damage”/”mass slaughter”. However, hold your breaths, HSP fans … because supposedly a more official announcement about the show’s renewal or lack thereof is coming, in about a week-and-a-half. From whom — GSN, NBC, HSP, Poker PROductions — we’re not so sure.

Where GSN’s relationship with the World Poker Tour fits into all this also is unclear — but obviously a relevant component.

But for now, Poker after Dark is definitely back on … rumored to have a cash game component, too … and will be moving from South Point Casino to the Golden Nugget. But that’s the least surprising, since this show is really a Full Tilt time-buy/infomercial with no reason to go away.

Related:
Rebuy! High Stakes Poker Back in Action? (6/8/08)
High Stakes Poker Canceled? (5/13/08)

Venerable journalist Tim Russert has died at age 58 of a heart attack. Russert, of course, was the Washington bureau chief of NBC News and the host of Meet the Press … and he liked, played, and respected poker. It was during the 2004 presidential campaign where he addressed the Democratic strategy of trying to win the Rust Belt states by saying that going after Ohio was “like drawing to an inside straight.”

Too true …

Back in the day, Russert played in a home game with Johnny Carson.

photo: Steve Hall / Pokerfolio

There probably wouldn’t have been a Chris Moneymaker without this guy. The same might be said about a new season of HSP.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day we learned the future of the World Poker Tour. No such luck. However, WSOP stalwart monopodder Steve Hall hears from Eric Drache, who was playing in Day 1 of the $10,000 7-stud World Championship, that High Stakes Poker will be back. The word is that HSP, along with Poker after Dark, will be moving from the South Point Casino back to the Golden Nugget. High Stakes will reportedly begin filming new episodes in August.

No info yet on time-buys or even what network will be airing the show(s) — but all indications point toward NBC. Drache is one of those important poker people who few of us have heard of — his last cash coming in 1991, where he finished 5th in a 7-stud event in Laughlin. But since then he’s gone on to manage all sorts of card rooms — including the Golden Nugget — and most recently has served as a consultant for NBC.

Drache is also the guy credited with creating the concept of tournament satellites and the “must move” table, according to Wikipedia.

UPDATE: It’s possible but not likely we are wrong on this. Less traceable thirdhand sources are saying no way this is happening at the Golden Nugget.

I’m currently watching the Heads-Up Championship on NBC — round of 16. Mildly entertaining … it was fun to see Orel Hersheiser slightly outplay Freddy Deeb in a hand, and Full Tilt has some pretty cool new commercials. But still, the show as a whole isn’t as exciting as the commercials for the PGA Players Championship. Maybe someday … This would be much better, of course, were it being aired pseudo- or semi-live, when we still cared about our brackets.

The side profiles are pretty good — Doyle Brunson on the old guys, Orel on the similarities between poker and baseball … And I gotta say, Ali Nejad is proving he’s a top-notch color analyst — witty and well-informed.

Overall, the show is sucking me in. I give it a solid A-minus. 90 if you’re using numbers. I know Oliver (Tse, not Nejad) will have many thoughts on the ratings this show is getting, and what that means for the future of televised poker. I say more coverage of the outside tables — with or without hole-card cams — would make it better. (They only had two tables cammed up when they recorded it.)

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NBC Heads-Up Championship was on today. Did anyone see it? I saw about 10 minutes of it — but I blinked so I missed Tom.

However, interestingly, I was watching it with a non-poker-player … and he was a little confused, thinking it was live. He seemed a little disturbed when I explained it was shot like 6 weeks ago or so. Then, unsolicited from me, he said, “Why don’t they show poker live? That would totally be sick. I would really get into it if it [were] live.”

“What you are saying is more interesting than you realize,” I said. “It’s kinda a hot topic right now.”

“So you already know the winner of this?” I nodded and he changed the channel to hockey.

Tomorrow be sure to watch the World Poker Tour on GSN. Tom is back to his old tricks finishing in fourth place and getting a full 10 seconds of TV time.

The BTT crew: Poker talk fused with gay jokes and fat commentary was all the rage in 2007.

Some of you have been wondering, why no new episodes of Beyond the Table? Tom, Karridy, and I have been wondering the same thing. It’s been a good run, and with drinks in the air, three guys who clearly love/hate the sounds of their own voices are calling it podcast quits.

Back when we started, our show about poker but not really about poker stood out as revolutionary in a sea of lame poker interviewcasts with questionable audio quality. Soon after iPod sales were booming as more and more of the world got hooked on downloading poker audio with funny intros and Angry Julie cameos. But Tom couldn’t handle the celebrity and Karridy developed a crack addiction lives got busy and producers for Beyond the Table fared about as well as drummers for Spinal Tap. The show hired Shamus at a fraction of a Cambodian farmer’s wage to pump up our numbers — did he ever get his T-shirt? — but with a new generation of poker podcasts getting better and stronger (Lou Kreiger, Gary Wise, 2+2, Pocket Fives, Ante Up, Poker Road, et al) old-school payola wasn’t enough to save us from going out on the podcast bubble.

Listen below to a heretofore unpublished episode (recorded on 2-27, my dream flop) as your favorite semi-amateur yammerers phone it in for the last and final-ish time:

Beyond the Table: Fin

Thanks for listening via RSS, iTunes, play-in-popup, and direct download … we already miss ourselves.

You can still prank call Karridy on the Beyond the Table listener line at 888-820-8091.

Well shoot, got scooped by my own peeps. I was-gonna surreptitiously pimp my own pimping by talking about the actual substance of the article by Gary Wise, and his suggestions for improving the selection process in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which could be an even bigger deal for NBC if they want it to be:

• Pick some of the players through pre-established criteria: WSOP champion, WSOP Champion one year removed, HORSE Champion, WSOP heads-up champion, WPT World Champion, WPT Player of the Year, Card Player Player of the Year, Bluff Magazine Player of the Year, European Poker Awards Player of the Year, EPT Grand Finale Champion, NHUPC Champion, NHUPC Champion one year removed. That should do it. Make these criteria available to the public.
• Continue to allow sponsors to fill some slots, but do so by having them submit a list of representatives with the understanding that the producers get to choose from that list. The producers could hand select, appoint a committee of poker people from across the industry or…
• Pick some of the players through fan vote: Want an old-schooler who reminds us of days of yore? Hey fans, come to our Web site and participate in the “rounders” vote for one of T.J. Cloutier, Billy Baxter, Jay Heimowitz or Berry Johnston. Pick two players from our “Big Game” election, two from our “online stars” election and one from our “divas of poker” election. At least this way, you’re getting representatives of each archetype the people actually want to see.
• Get rid of some of the personalities who haven’t done anything in years. Guys like Ferguson, Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson will give you an entertaining broadcast anyway.

Chris Ferguson beat Phil Ivey when his pocket 8s held up against Ivey’s pocket 6s (who was drawing to a 6, 2, or 7 when they got it all in).

This makes it three-out-of-four years in the history of this event that Ferguson has made the finals, and puts him position to arguably claim to be the best heads-up player out there — though being Jesus-like he probably wouldn’t ever claim to be king of anything … as he tends to leave that sorta boasting to Hellmuth … who right now happens to be sitting between Ferguson and Orel Hersheiser, apparently relaying the story to Orel about how he crashed the race car into that pole that pole got in the way of his malfunctioning race car.

Andy Bloch and Huck Seed, meanwhile, are still engaged in a pretty sedate-but-heated battle that NBC may or may not realize is fascinating to the poker geeks out there even without the long hair, big mouths, and all-ins.

NBC Heads-Up Championship announcer Jordan Siegel, who may or may not have won the gig in a $1,000 Bellagio tourney.

The NBC heads-up announcer whom I was criticizing the other day for not acknowledging runner-runner possibilities and generally lacking a little excitement in his live play-by-play is Jordan Siegel, a semi-accomplished player in his own right, who seems to be runnin’ pretty good recently, too.

We’ll see if we can’t get a photo up here before it’s too late to be relevant so you know who I am talking about. I think he has been on TV once before.

Seriously, I wasn’t trying to pick too hard — a gig is a gig and we all want to do well, especially when the HD cameras are rolling — but this event, for all the excitement around it, is reportedly struggling in the eyes of NBC. And that has me thinkin’-bout soccer, which any real fan can tell you hasn’t quite taken off in America not because the sport isn’t exciting enough, but because the broadcasters and commentators don’t know how to cover it like not-basketball, or in this case not-golf.

ALT HED: I Hope He’s Not Related to Bugsy

The Final Four is set … and PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Bodog have all been fully eliminated. The upcoming matches:

Phil Ivey vs. Chris Ferguson
Huck Seed vs. Andy Bloch

Holy crap, it looks like it will be some actual hardcore competition amongst four notably accomplished players. Who woulda thunk it?

Also totally shocking commendable is that CardPlayer’s coverage is kicking butt …

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Orel Hersheiser and Minh Ly:

Hersheiser, of course, is proving to be the Gonzaga of the 2008 National Heads-Up Poker Championship. The final 8 tomorrow:

Jonathan Little vs. Chris Ferguson
Gus Hansen vs. Phil Ivey
Andy Bloch vs. Orel Hershisher
Huck Seed vs. David Benyamine

All of the above are guaranteed $75k. The final four make $125k, 2nd place gets $250k, and first is still $500,000.

Just about everyone’s brackets have fallen apart — though Gavin Smith is still throwing around the $2,000 wagers on the outcome of each game, and considering that I have no one left alive in my bracket, I gotta pretty much surrender my $20:

Rank Predictor Score Predicted Final Winner Completed
1 Taylor Larkin - 42 Huck Seed 2/29/2008 2:20pm
2 don essinger - 41 Allen Cunningham 2/29/2008 1:05pm
3 Scott - 38 Daniel Negreanu 2/29/2008 1:20pm
4 champsampson - 29 Ted Forrest 2/29/2008 1:39pm
5 Randy Brown - 24 Phil Hellmuth 2/29/2008 12:12pm
6 Kevin Mathers - 24 Daniel Negreanu 2/29/2008 12:32pm
7 California Jen - 23 Scott Clements 2/29/2008 9:43am
8 dan michalski - 21 Howard Lederer 2/29/2008 3:41am

Taylor, Don, and Scott seem to have quite a battle brewing … though it appears they may have made their picks after it got started? Floor!?!

6:02 — Who is this announcer guy? Not too exciting nor comprehensive.

6:03 — Funny, he just made it over to the Tom vs. Gavin table … pointed out that Tom was trailing by “a little more than a few thousand chips.” He then seem confused by why Gavin had some book on the table. “Oops! I Won Too Much Money,” he said over the microphone, surprised to discover the author was right in front of him.

6:05 — “Gavin Smith takes down another nice pot. No one at this table is very afraid,” he said, presumably referring to Tom’s questionable call.

6:06 — Robert Goldfarb is on the other side of the room, not responding to my texts inquiring about what is going on over at his end.

6:09 — Chris Ferguson hits a three-outer on the river … I know see a hot blonde girl standing up and clapping, and am pretty sure that is his modeltastic Brazilian girlfriend.

6:13 — TJ Cloutier shows up and is laughing tickled upon hearing the report from Robert Williamson’s little sister (and favorite Pokerati stalking victim) who informs him that indeed, Hellmuth went out on the third hand. “Heh-heh-ha,” says Cloutier in his Hank-Hill chortle.

6:14 — Oh no! My personal sleeper pick and Arizona Posse-ite Hooman Nikzad is out. He got it all-in with the best, but Greg Raymer turned a set to advance.

6:20 — Tom pushes all-in, Gavin folds … to give the Donkey Bomber a 24k-16k lead. Last time these two played heads-up at the same time, both were competing for WSOP bracelets (in different events). Tom won his match, and Gavin lost his. Just sayin’ …

6:22 — At least two very Hammery flops have come in this 8-match quadrant of first round action. Both 7-7-2 flops have resulted in bets followed by folds. Very interesting.

6:30 — There are seats for about 90 spectators in this makeshift Caesar’s viewing coliseum. Twelve media spots (not counting the dozen or so NBC folks who have the run of the floor.

6:31 — Kenny Tran doubles up against Scott Clements thanks to running clubs. “The turn always gives you extra outs,” the announcer said. No it doesn’t, at least four of us in the room are thinking.

6:33 — Back to counting … there’s standing room only for about a dozen squeezed in around the rails.

6:34 — Greg Raymer can’t seem to leave, even though he’s already one. It’s clear (imho) he’s looking for camera time … not Phil Hellmuth-style for ego … but presumably to get some HD-pixel time for his patch-friends at PokerStars.

6:36 — As Raymer loudly mentioned PokerStars, a headphone-wearing producer woman just informed Fossilman that he was getting in the camera’s way and needed to leave. “Aww, c’mon,” Raymer unsuccessfully plead.

6:40 — Scott Clements’ AK holds up against A7, and California Jen’s pick to win it all moves on.

6:41 — Gabe Kaplan knocks out Antonius.

Norm Clarke — kinda like the Alan Peppard of Las Vegas, with an eyepatch — has the inside poop on the IRS shakedown of Pure. Does this sound familiar … an industry making ridiculous amounts of money, tons of it going untaxed … so the Feds rough up one of the big ones to get the model of how things really work? What happens from there I’m not so sure. But it’s kinda like Neteller, right? Either that or a mid-level agent got turned away at the door and was pissed! Evidentiary text messages between door guys and unthankful bottle-whales included … can’t wait ’til a little Paris Hilton-sex-and-drugs emerges somewhere in the records.

Meanwhile, this week, Pure will be the site of the “drawing party” for the NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship. I wonder what a doorman would say to anyone who slips him a twenty and asks for a receipt.

No, that’s not a typo. J8 is Arizona Posse member Hooman Nikzad’s favorite hand and is referred to at Casino Arizona as #1, the best hand in hold ‘em, or simply Hooman. Hooman (the player, not the poker hand), won a live satellite into the upcoming NBC heads up tournament later this month at Caesars. Tom and Hooman playing heads up on TV would make for some good stuff. Good luck boys.

Though I’m not sure how official these are, some odds on who’s gonna win the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship (Feb. 29) are out … and Tom Schneider is listed in the middle of the pack at 45:1 — the same as David Williams, Jennifer Harman, Huck seed, and TJ Cloutier. Duuude. Not bad. Clonie, after all, is 80:1, which is almost as good as Jerry Yang’s 60:1.

Click below to see the full list … and while doing that, think how funny it is that this sorta poker ink comes from marijuana.com. (And Tom says I do nothing for him …)

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It’s that time of year again. The NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is on the horizon, and many players have already confirmed that they’ll pay the $20k to get some camera time compete in the event. Sixty players have been announced, leaving four open seats for qualifiers yet to be announced.

Festivities will begin on February 28th at Pure Nightclub at Caesars in Vegas with the drawing party to determine the match-ups. The following day brings the first matches, and a winner will be determined and get his/her $500k on March 2.

Previous champs Paul Wasicka, Ted Forrest, and Phil Hellmuth will be playing, as well as numerous first-time players like David Singer, Bill Edler, Scott Clements, Jerry Yang, Brian Townsend, Tom Dwan, celebrities Jason Alexander and Brad Garrett, MLB player Orel Hershiser, and the 2007 CardPlayer favorite WSOP Player of the Year Tom Schneider.

Click below for the list of players:

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