ESPN to Present WSOP in Brand New Way
The gaming action at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event will no longer be a secret 30 minutes after it happens, thanks to ESPN’s live WSOP coverage commencing on the night of Thursday, between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. and again from 11:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. The program will be run daily till the following Tuesday, when the 6,865 poker players participating in the WSOP Main Event will reduce to 9.
This year, like before, ESPN will broadcast taped and edited WSOP events on Tuesday nights from July to November, for a total of 16 weeks. The hole cards are revealed weeks, and sometimes months, after the hands have been played.
In the past, while taping WSOP events, the production crew could view the hole cards. This July, ESPN’s production crew as well as the commentators will also be able to view the hole cards. ESPN says that, like before, they will all be sequestered. Doug White, the senior director of acquisitions and programming at ESPN, said that the sports channel has taken all the required precautions. Nobody will be able to leak vital hole card information to the participants. This means that the sequestered area will be kept free of PDAs and mobile phones. White says that people in the production area will not be able to communicate with anybody outside the production area.
WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart said that this plan was made in consultation with the Nevada Gaming Commission and the Players Advisory Council. He said that the backgrounds of all the people who can view hole cards live have been carefully checked and that security will be tight.
This July, since ESPN is showing WSOP events 30 minutes after they happen, players can easily get information about opponent play from friends who are watching the TV show. However, Stewart is of the opinion that this will hardly distort poker, but will elevate it by giving players the chance to study their opponents better and to modify their gaming strategies half way through the tournaments.
This year, the main feature table will have a brand new set, which according to Coordinating Producer Jamie Horowitz looks like a basketball arena. A huge lighting grid reminiscent of a WSOP bracelet looms over the set, and players will have to enter the set through a tunnel. Horowitz says this will make the World Series appear like a big-time sports event while all these years, it used to look only like a reality TV show. Terming this an “evolution,” Horowitz says that ESPN is making moves toward giving players “a big-time sports feel.”
Horowitz has also revealed that ESPN will give TV viewers a greater insight into what is happening in the poker room. Poker players will be admitted into the production booth to analyze various poker hands and inform the viewers what they feel is going on within the mind of the participant who is playing those hands. This is an entirely new feature, something that ESPN has never done before.
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