The Live WSOP Era upon Us

Marvin in Somewhere — shoot, I forget where he\’s from, but somewhere in America, I know — writes in to complain:

I\’m watching the \”Live\” ESPN coverage and it sucks. It\’s like it was before the cameras. Not only don\’t we see all the hands, but we don\’t know whether the better has the \”Nuts\” or is bluffing. Since they are afraid of people telling what the other players have, how about a one hand delay?

Marvin, Marvin, Marvin … c\’mon, can\’t you see the positives at all? This is semi-monumental … not the kinda Poker TV you see on Versus, ya know? Though not perfect yet, they gotta start somewhere, right? You bring up some good points that I\’m sure they\’ll consider in the future … but really, remember, while not necessarily \”alpha\” version of live coverage, it is rather \”beta\”.

In an ideal world — according to Pokerati — all cards and chips would be RFID\’d worldwide and you could watch all poker anywhere in any place at any time, as live as possible as permissible by gaming jurisdiction, and decide for yourself whether or not you wanna see hole cards. (I tend to enjoy guessing sometimes.) With super-duper extra-HD All-360 technology, of course … on my iphone should I so choose. But we\’re just not quite there yet!

And remember, one other factor complicating matters here is approval by Nevada Gaming. Even just allowing twitpics in casinos and cell phones in sports books is relatively new territory for them. And there are some people who don\’t believe you should be able to know a players cards a half-hour later when your buddy — or even the players themselves — can find out if that key tell thy picked up goes along with the nuts or nothing.

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