With the live coverage of the WSOP main event on ESPN2 and ESPN3, live poker coverage really has been taken to a new level — that much is certain. In fact, now that they are down to 14 players, the WSOP Live is about to move over for a couple hours to ESPN1. But there seems to be a rift over it all that frankly, I find kinda surprising.
While I think it\’s been friggin awesome and indeed downright historic, a cadre of Pokerati commenters seem to have a vitriolic distaste for the live coverage that goes far beyond a typical poker whine. (I\’m very disappointed in them, obv.) Not much in-between … it seems a love-it-or-hate-it affair.
So at Marvin in Bedford\’s recommendation — though I did try to remove bias by not calling the live coverage \”phony\” — I put it to the readers of Pokerati with a simple multiple choice question asking your quick gun-to-the-head take on how ESPN has elected to bring us the 2011 WSOP: