SKY Poker. Strangely unsatisfying
I, like many others, enjoy watching poker on telly. There is something entertaining in watching a decent poker game (which excludes anything with 'celebrity' in the title) and they are usually educational too. Either I pick up on something that the players do, or something the commentators say is new to me. Ken Lennard on Channel 5's poker show (The European Open IIRC) is particularly good at the moment.
So I've been keeping an eye on SKY's Poker Channel. It appears to be one program repeated constantly - a televising of a poker tournament ('The Open') on their own network ('Sky Poker'). Its a £25 pound buy-in tournamant starting at 9pm each evening run, oddly, on 6-player tables.
Despite trying so hard to watch the program I can't like it. Frankly they've turned a pretty good idea - building a program around a single tournament (that *you* can play in!) and produced a show that I think will appeal to noone.
The big thing in the program's favour is its a live event. The poker is going on at the time you are watching it, and poker tournaments have a vast amount of information for the viewer that could be on the screen. Think Gillette Soccer Saturday - where scores, tables, team news and goodness knows what else are displayed over about 1/3 of the screen while a small studio of pundits watch and talk about football. SKY invented this genius, and it seems clear to me that this format should be followed for the OPEN.
On the right of the screen could be the list of players (maybe even colour coded for those who have moved up and down the table, similar to the stock exchange). This information is all in the lobby anyway - stick it on the screen! People are doing anything to get their names on the telly and here is their opportunity.
At the bottom should be the blind structure, the tournament clock, and a ticker bar showing the last people who busted out. Simple. Then Dad can be playing poker, and Mum can check his progress, or Dad can see his name on the telly.
Instead the screen seems to be filled up with lots of open space revealing an impressively large studio, and little else.
The pundits are variable in quality. There is a professional presenter who doesn't really know much about poker, and proper poker player who should. Either Hale or Pace (whichever one it is) is better than you'd think and they pinched one of the presenters from the superior PokerNightLive who was also good value. But there is so much misreading of cards as to put any decent players off viewing.
Twice in 10 minutes the other night there was misreading.
Example 1:
Player 1 88
Player 2 A7
Flop 832
The comment was "only running aces will save him". This was at least from the non poker player, but it should have been corrected at very least.
The other one was even worse in that neither player saw a conterfeiting opportunity - but sadly the river was a blank so the presenters didn't have to flannel their way out of that.
There is so much opportunity for fairly advanced analysis of the play that its untrue, and yet we don't get that. Maybe the target audience would be put off, but I don't think so.
SKY didn't reinvent sports broadcasting by dumbing down, so I can't see why they are doing it for poker.
So I've been keeping an eye on SKY's Poker Channel. It appears to be one program repeated constantly - a televising of a poker tournament ('The Open') on their own network ('Sky Poker'). Its a £25 pound buy-in tournamant starting at 9pm each evening run, oddly, on 6-player tables.
Despite trying so hard to watch the program I can't like it. Frankly they've turned a pretty good idea - building a program around a single tournament (that *you* can play in!) and produced a show that I think will appeal to noone.
The big thing in the program's favour is its a live event. The poker is going on at the time you are watching it, and poker tournaments have a vast amount of information for the viewer that could be on the screen. Think Gillette Soccer Saturday - where scores, tables, team news and goodness knows what else are displayed over about 1/3 of the screen while a small studio of pundits watch and talk about football. SKY invented this genius, and it seems clear to me that this format should be followed for the OPEN.
On the right of the screen could be the list of players (maybe even colour coded for those who have moved up and down the table, similar to the stock exchange). This information is all in the lobby anyway - stick it on the screen! People are doing anything to get their names on the telly and here is their opportunity.
At the bottom should be the blind structure, the tournament clock, and a ticker bar showing the last people who busted out. Simple. Then Dad can be playing poker, and Mum can check his progress, or Dad can see his name on the telly.
Instead the screen seems to be filled up with lots of open space revealing an impressively large studio, and little else.
The pundits are variable in quality. There is a professional presenter who doesn't really know much about poker, and proper poker player who should. Either Hale or Pace (whichever one it is) is better than you'd think and they pinched one of the presenters from the superior PokerNightLive who was also good value. But there is so much misreading of cards as to put any decent players off viewing.
Twice in 10 minutes the other night there was misreading.
Example 1:
Player 1 88
Player 2 A7
Flop 832
The comment was "only running aces will save him". This was at least from the non poker player, but it should have been corrected at very least.
The other one was even worse in that neither player saw a conterfeiting opportunity - but sadly the river was a blank so the presenters didn't have to flannel their way out of that.
There is so much opportunity for fairly advanced analysis of the play that its untrue, and yet we don't get that. Maybe the target audience would be put off, but I don't think so.
SKY didn't reinvent sports broadcasting by dumbing down, so I can't see why they are doing it for poker.
posted by PP at 3:02 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home