What next? (A commentary on the TV poker craze.)
by Brian Heptinstall

I'm just like the next guy: I love to snuggle up in my bed with my teddy bear and a bag of popcorn to watch the newest showing of the WPT or the WSOP. Who doesn't? But here lately, I've become a bit jaded over the quality of some of the shows to hit the airwaves in the past year or two. Yet there are a few shows that still fill me with a glimmer of hope. I even came up with a few ideas that are sure to make the Golden Globes.

First, I'm going to discuss the great shows. I think the newest show to come out happens to be the best show. "Poker After Dark" on NBC is a show that takes six professional players and puts them in a sit-and-go environment. The purse is $120,000 and winner takes all. This show takes place over several hours and that's what you get over the course of five nights. I think this is a great learning tool for the amateur player. It shows the all-around play of each player, rather than the key "bust outs" of the tournament. Plus, where else can you see Phil Hellmuth complain about everything?

"The World Poker Tour" might not be high on the list of poker shows for most, but I have to disagree. Even though it doesn't follow the same outline previously mentioned in the last paragraph (except the Hellmuth part), it does have a mix of several great ingredients. They do start with six players and give them two hours to unravel their strategies. The biggest benefit to this show would be the dynamic duo of Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten. These two are my candidates for the Golden Shark (which is a prestigious award I just made up). The one drawback, which is pretty obvious if you ever get to see a taping, is how they make the poker table and its surroundings into some type of disco floor. The flashing lights, TV monitors and the big red and blue signage all around make me want to dance John Travolta-style, or go into seizure and swallow my tongue.

"High Stakes Poker" takes mere mortals into the land of giants ... giant chips stacks, that is! Every week we see how the pros make their bread and butter by playing each other and even a few fish. This show is only a cash game that would otherwise be totally boring if not for the various prop bets and chatter that goes on between the players. The biggest negative to this show would have to be the weak commentary put on by Gabe Kaplan and A.J. Benza. These two seem to try too hard at what should be an otherwise easy gig.

For all the good, there is obviously bad. The worst of the worst to me would be the "Mansionpoker.net Poker Dome Challenge." They put these Internet qualifiers in a "dome," give them 15 seconds to act on their hands, and this is supposed to be entertaining? Nothing about this show says poker to me except the name and the dealers. You wanna make this show better? Why not put them over a shark tank and feed the losers to the real sharks. Or attach some battery clamps to their bodies that would shock them if they don't make their decision in say... six seconds?

"Celebrity Poker Showdown" on Bravo in some opinions did great things for poker in the mainstream. I agree with that, but they did two things wrong: 1. Removing Phil Gordon and replacing him with Phil Hellmuth, and 2. Allowing celebrities to drink and play cards at the same time. Thank God they didn't get Mel Gibson! Once again, leave the great games to the pros. If you want a celebrity poker show, give it some tag-team wrestling effect. "In this corner weighing in at a total of 125 pounds ... Jennifer Harmon and Calista Flockhart." (Jennifer probably weighs 100 pounds by herself). They could put the pros in one room, let them watch the celebs on the felt in another room, and we can watch the pros slam their play.

In the beginning of the poker monomania, there was but one show that would be responsible for the blast of all the aforementioned shows. The ESPN coverage of the "World Series of Poker" did as much for our beloved game as Tiger Woods did for golf. It was a ritual for me to make a night out of the 2003 coverage, which led to Chris Moneymaker winning it all. Back then, it was great, commentary was average, and the coverage of the tourney was fairly good. But over the years, things have gone awry as Norman Chad tells the EXACT same ex-wife jokes every year, the coverage gets less and less, and the amount of No Limit Hold 'Em games have become mind-boggling.

WSOP coverage has, in some ways, mirrored the actual fields in these tournaments. The 2006 coverage didn't even show Jeff Cabanillas' amazing final table play against the likes of Marcel Luske, Isabelle Mercier, and Phil Hellmuth. Getting rid of Norman "Ex- Wife" Chad will do the poker world some good. Maybe a few Omaha or Seven Stud tournaments would help. Perhaps they should have a Razz circuit event in every city they visit, or pay the winners with something that is indigenous to the city that the circuit is in. Tunica would give $800,000 in cotton bales, Indiana would pay out with ears of corn. This would lead to another show where we follow our winner around as he tries to sell his newly-acquired commodities.

There is still room for good poker shows on television, but I warn those who try, please take the game into consideration, not how many times you can get Hellmuth on tilt. Don't even try getting the amateurs involved; we don't know who they are and probably don't care to know them. And lastly, the game is much like a football game -- it involves many small plays that lead up to getting into the end zone and scoring. CBS wouldn't take an hour to show the national championship "highlights!"

About the Author:
Brian Heptinstall began playing poker like most everyone else by learning in a Sunday night game in college. Since then, it's been quite a whirlwind for him as a player, and a person. Brian is a graduate of culinary school and once worked for Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He resides in Hoover and is an avid Crimson Tide Fan.