Poker has its legends at the felt, but behind the scenes, the men and women who bring the game to millions around the world are just as important.
This week, we spoke to a World Series of Poker legend and a man who feels like part of the furniture in the game – Norman Chad.
As one half of the legendary WSOP Main Event commentary duo with Lon McEachern, Norman has brought the game of poker to millions of television viewers, with his pithy takes on the drama as it unfolds and hilarious jokes in the background of the action.
Is Norman the Best Bettor?
For many years, Norman has been gambling mad, so it’s appropriate that his YouTube channel is named exactly that. While he brings his decades of knowledge to NFL and other sports picks, we learned that for some time, Norm had a better than 50% record flipping coins on the NFL. We had to start with that legendary tale.
Last century – yes, last century – I was working for a newspaper called The National Sports Daily. The Editor-in-Chief, the late, great Frank Deford, asked me one day if I had any ideas on how the paper could do an NFL gambling column.
I thought about it and told him that all these experts give you all these analytical trends, and they’re still wrong half the time. So let me do a weekly column writing jokes about the games, I’ll flip a coin on every pick against the point spread, and I’ll do just as well as them.
At that time, the National had four experts picking games – two sports handicappers and two sportswriters – and none of them finished at 50 percent. Norman, however, did.
With my coin, I beat them all, several games over 500. This was one lucky coin! The first nine years I wrote the column, I finished over 50 percent each season.
Norman’s Gambling Mad show is about gambling, natch, but also gives him full rein to entertain fans with his personality, which poker fans have loved for many years. The interaction is something Norman was thinking of when he set it up.
Much like with my NFL column, I wanted to work the other side of the street on gambling [with] a more light-hearted approach, plus deal with the realities of sports betting, where almost everyone loses. I quickly decided to expand it beyond gambling to sports, culture, food, politics, and whatever else I found interesting.
While in its infancy, the show is growing all the time and allows Norman to explore the paradox of being told the opposite of what he has been for many years.
People seem to be telling me to stick to poker. Which is funny – people in poker have been telling me for years to find something else to do!
The Sound of the World Series
For many years, Lon McEachern and Norman have been the sound of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) on TV. All poker fans identify the WSOP with the duo, and Norman tells us that he loves the work as much as ever… and Lon, of course.
I still love the WSOP and the Main Event itself remains a fascinating, energizing fortnight, with qualities unmatched anywhere in sports… though poker is not a sport. I still love Lon – well, I tolerate him more than I love him – but as for the process and how the job has changed, that’s trickier territory.
On the edited telecasts, they take a lot of prep to get them right, and it’s been harder for me to get them right due to many factors, including age and long Covid.
The other part of the job – the live streams that thrill fans along the journey – are also reliant on Lon and Norm bringing the game to the recreational players who continue to grow the game we all love.
I love doing them and decry the movement toward productions that become more poker-centric with more poker strategy talk. I think this is a lousy way to grow the game and grow our audience.
The Value of WSOP Bracelet Events
Our discussion on the WSOP leads us into difficult territory in some ways, with Norman a firm fan of the brand yet reluctant to give his full backing to re-entry events he believes dilute the value of a WSOP bracelet.
Poker has absorbed more extreme changes than most games, Norman tells us. Bracelets are a perfect example of this. Go back to 1985, 40 years ago, where there were about a dozen bracelet events, with almost every event attracting fields of 150 or less.
The game has grown, as indicated by the size of the field in most events these days, so it’s natural we now have many more bracelet opportunities. The number of bracelets does not cheapen them to me that much, but what does cheapen them are the multiple re-entry events and the online events.
Re-entry events aren’t new, and they’re going nowhere, as Norman acknowledges. But his argument is that with more re-entries, the prestige of the poker bracelet is diminished.
The most prestigious tournaments, such as WSOP bracelet events, should not be re-entry. I am still wary of online bracelets; too many of them are unlimited re-entry, and I won’t fully trust the virtual version of poker until we can see who we are playing against.
The King of Snacks
Norman has always been the most passionate NFL fan, and his Gambling Mad show often features the WSOP legend linking snacks to the action. We asked him to plan his perfect Super Bowl spread.
Gambling Mad has two unpaid sponsors, Fritos and Fresca. Frankly, I keep expecting to hear from Fritos and Fresca asking me to please stop attaching their product to my show.
Anyway, I am big on old-school snacks rather than newfangled snacks, so my Super Bowl gathering would have Ruffles, Fritos, Cheez-Its, and even Bugles. For the main course, if my current wife Toni is talking to me, I’d have her prepare her fabulous salmon lasagna, mac and cheese, fried chicken, biscuits, and brussels sprouts.
Guests would need to have liquid refreshment too, and Norman is keen to keep his visitors happy by stocking the cellar.
A good red wine, plus Coca-Cola, Coke Zero, Fresca, Orange Crush, Canada Dry Ginger Ale, and Dr. Browns Black Cherry. We finish with Toni’s carrot cake, ranked among the top five carrot cakes west of the Mississippi River.
In poker terms, Norman is something of a superfan of players such as Jesse Lonis. For a WSOP commentator to have favorites and champion them is rare, but Norman is refreshingly honest.
We live short lives, so I have tried to stop anti-sweating anyone – better to root for those you like – and poker has so many people to like. Over the last year, I decided to celebrate three players I root for 24/7 – one is a friend, the wonderful, kind, and talented Ari Engel; one is a great player I have sat with many times at the WSOP, Benny Glaser, and the third is Jesse Lonis.
Norman interviewed Jesse when he was largely unknown after he won an online bracelet in 2022, and a bond was born.
I just loved everything about him, and it turns out he is an otherworldly high-roller heavyweight. I also root for Maria Ho, because who doesn’t root for Maria Ho?
With the future of poker in very good hands at the felt, it’s a comfort to millions of poker fans that an old hand still has one hand on the tiller as the boat rolls forward into uncharted waters.
Norman Chad will always be in love with the gambling heart of poker.
