Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 21 January 2011 / Leave a Comment

Last weekend came something of a landmark moment in the history of televised poker. Poker fans around the world were able to watch every hand from the final table of the PS Caribbean Adventure Main Event (on a one-hour delay), with hole cards!

The telecast began at 5 p.m. (Eastern time in the U.S.) as an online-only stream via ESPN3 for Americans whose ISPs are affiliates and via online elsewhere. Then at 10 p.m. ET the show became available on ESPN2. At that point five players remained, and for the next five-plus hours the show continued on the regular cable network.

This sort-of-live, hand-for-hand broadcast of the PCA Main Event final table was not the first time such an experiment has been tried, but it was easily the biggest tournament ever to feature such comprehensive coverage, with eventual winner Galen Hall earning a whopping $2.3 million for besting the field of 1,560. Initial reviews of the show have been mostly very favorable, with the die-hard poker players and fans in particular voicing a lot of positive feedback in the forums and elsewhere.

I, too, found the show highly compelling to watch, something I didn't necessarily expect to happen. As someone who has covered a number of live events, I know how tedious it can be sometimes to follow lengthy sequences of relatively uneventful hands (e.g., those ending with a single preflop raise). And like many others who watched the show last Saturday, I've also seen a number of the EPT Live streaming broadcasts and the WSOP and WSOPE coverage online -- excellent productions, but ones in which one also must endure a great deal of "down time" (relatively speaking) between more exciting confrontations.

But here we had something different -- hole cards -- which I soon realized changed everything about the viewing experience. We're used to seeing hole cards on the edited programs such as the World Poker Tour and the WSOP, but to see what every player has on every hand like this provided an incredible amount of context for every action.

We saw, for instance, how once it became five-handed (and the show moved over to ESPN2), overwhelming chip leader Chris Oliver was open-raising and three-betting with all sorts of marginal hands. And when those hands made it to the flop, we saw how he seemed to be hitting them more often than not.

For example, on the hand in which Mike Sowers was eliminated in fifth place, Sowers had opened with a raise with pocket fours, then Oliver three-bet from the button with the lowly 8s-2h. Sowers called the reraise, and when the flop came 3d-8h-2s it seemed reasonable that he would be pleased enough to commit more chips.

But like happens when we watch a play in which we know more about a given situation than the characters do, we could appreciate the dramatic irony present in the scene when Sowers deliberated, then check-raised all in following a c-bet from Oliver.

Of course, that hand may well have played somewhat similarly in an edited version. Probably the best example, though, of a hand in which the live, unedited feed with hole cards proved especially effective was one of the first played between Galen Hall and Chris Oliver during heads-up play. The hand took several minutes to complete, and proved all the more thrilling thanks to the format.

Oliver began heads-up play with a commanding chip lead. When this hand took place, the cap-wearing 21-year-old started with about 33.5 million to Hall's 13 million. The blinds were 100,000/200,000 with a 20,000 ante.

Hall opened from the small blind/button with a raise to 450,000. We could see he held 8c-4h -- certainly not such a great hand, a fact of which commentators James Hartigan and Daniel Negreanu predictably made note. Oliver just called the raise with Ad-2s, and again the commentators pointed out how Oliver might well have chosen to reraise instead.

The flop came 5d-3d-2c, pairing Oliver and giving Hall an open-ended straight draw. Oliver checked, and the 24-year-old from San Francisco took a moment before continuing with a bet of 575,000. Oliver acted quickly -- as he'd done nearly every time the action was on him at the final table -- and made the call.

The 2h came on the turn, giving Oliver trips. Both checked, and Negreanu noted how a river ace might prove quite an interesting card. Sure enough, the As landed on the river, improving Oliver's hand to a full house while completing a wheel for Hall.

Oliver checked -- again, very quickly -- and after some deliberation Hall made an almost-pot-sized bet of 2 million, leaving himself around 10 million. This time Oliver did not act immediately, taking a few seconds and then starting to count out some chips. Then, suddenly, with a wave of his hand he announced with a shrug that he was all in.

Watching the show, I immediately thought there was little chance Hall was getting away from the hand. But he didn't call immediately, and as more time passed it was clear that he was doing some serious searching within his memory of what had transpired. Could it be that he was really going to find a fold?

He did! A truly fascinating hand to watch, made all the more so thanks to the fact that it was unedited and we knew what each player held.

Hall was still in not-quite-but-almost-desperate shape chip-wise, and would remain so for some time after that hand before winning a couple of big preflop all-ins and then finally taking the last of Oliver's chips. (Read the full final table story here.)

The Entities at Wicked Chops this week provided a thoughtful list of pros and cons regarding the broadcast in which they praised the production and commentating but faulted the relatively sterile-seeming set and lack of variety for a broadcast of such prodigious length. They reasonably conclude that while the show certainly gave a lot to those of us who are already hardcore poker players/fans, it might not have offered that much to those unfamiliar with poker.

I tend to agree that it is very unlikely many (or any) of those new to poker were as captivated as I was by the show. However, I think if we view the broadcast as an experiment it was not only quite interesting, but successful, too, insofar as it certainly provided valuable information for future attempts at something similar. I would not at all be surprised if at this year's World Series of Poker we saw the experiment pursued in some fashion yet again, perhaps even at the Main Event.

Meanwhile, l'll add my appreciation of the show to that voiced by many others. Who knew watching a player fold could be so exciting?

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comment: