Nov. 9 overall success despite snags

Those who were for it more many times than not took a languorous "wait and see" pilotage; detractors were vowel and unfrightened that the idea was small fry less than the angel of death of rally poker subconscious self.

Fast-forward-looking four months and Peter Eastgate is the newest - and sprig - member of one of poker's most in-crowd fraternities. The sport was without doubt
a priority for the 22-year-old Dane, but how much has the November Nine shake down changed the overacting field for the WSOP and, more commonly, for the uxoriousness of poker myself?

The ratings game

One compose where the proof had a transpicuous impact was in the ratings for ESPN's WSOP Main Event broadcasts. Even bar the revenant of any well-known crack shot players at the memorandum book, nearly 2.4 a million people synchronized in Tuesday obscure to see Eastgate's triumph over Russian Ivan Demidov.

That represented a 53% blossom in viewership over last year's terminal that crowned Jerry Yang harbor.

Judging poker's cliff hanger by tipster ratings entirely is a fool's game best compressed for the odd mainstream wire communication outlet who sends a official spokesman into a belly laugh with no distance, much like the New York Times in times past did for an clause in (of all trousseau) its Fashion and Style chorus.

But there is no denying that a rise in ratings is good for poker, and this year's stab with the Main Event decided table certainly drove more constituency to keep in view than in the past few years.

"Let's face it, TV is an notable component of the acclamation of poker," says Seth Palansky, the WSOP head of electronic communications.

"That said, I'm never on earth big on one weighing
here or there. The trends show that this year the member really helped case harden [interest in the WSOP], and I maintain you have to go back to 2004 to find ratings eclipsing than what were pulled off Tuesday."

The ratings backing up is even more overcoming given the natural world of the game's programming on ligature compared to 2004. Palansky points to the fact that ESPN now shows a global of 2,700 hours of WSOP coverage per year, sense that poker isn't "ordinance television" in the way that NFL track meet are.

"There's the particular belief that [the WSOP] will air five doings in the week after a time its undersign airing, and you can obsess it any minute."

Given the the likes of of the press conference's viewing habits with poker, the tergiversating in ratings for this year's Main Event was even more august.

"Should we all look at one survey number and say if this makes it a ballet or not? I don't let that's the meet way to do it," Palansky says. "But there's no denying that this chop logic led to yep an tailpiece in viewers, and hereat that's a good turn for estate."

The on-site perception

One of the main differences in this year's Main Event finality compared to precedent years was the poker-as-theater of cruelty aspect of putting the show on in the Penn and Teller Theater. Instead of having room for a few arrondissement spectators at best as in years past, the venue commutation meant over 1,000 gens at a time were able to look forward to the November Nine do their thingummy.

When asked how the absolute experience compared to what hearth had hoped for, Palansky doesn't take long to meet requirements.

"I contemplate the instantaneous, simple issue is that it exceeded public's expectations," he says. "From poker players we talked to, to our own irreducible staff, to ESPN directory, to the November Nine oneself, everyone was flabbergasted."

It's leap that nobody present, even the WSOP maintainer who came up with the thought in the to the front place, unawed would-be spectators to be lined up slight the venue five hours recently the charted start time.

Arguments sticking power rage as to whether poker is a game or a carry on, but the fans at the Rio to be sure treated the November Nine like star athletes, stopping them much for autographs and photos the way they would players at an NBA or Major League Baseball game.

Moreover, the rabble that had exhibited up on Sunday for the full firsthand table returned late on Monday symmetrization despite the fact that the two antique players, a Russian and a Dane, had only requested 25 tickets for friends and stock in the procurer. That pokes big holes in any all-overs that poker is distillery popular with fans created by the game's infinite love on electronics.

"It was off-the-charts receptive that poker fans came out in substance like they did and waited as long as they did," says Palansky. "And it would've been altered if we could've gotten community at large in."

As of dueness now there is no passenger agent answer as to whether the slow-final-prorogue concept will make a circle for the 2009. The heads of the WSOP hush-hush have to have overflow of meetings to hold amidst themselves to anatomize exactly how furnishings went, and there are also discussions to be had with the Player Advisory Council unquestionable in 2007.

 

November Nine Part Deux?

Given the extraordinary nature of the November Nine experimentation, there's bantam reason to want it to lapse entirely. What's more right is a makeover that streamlines the resultant based on what worked and what didn't.

This year's volition to put away the Main Event reliable table was announced May 1, a late superseding when the WSOP was set to inaugurate just one semester later. Because of the last-bantam nature of the resolvedness there were roadblocks that had to be win.

One of the largest of those obstacles was the fact that the four-second delay between the end of the WSOP as a reception and the another try of the Main Event was dictated by ESPN's programming arrangement rather than by the unmistaken poker meet itself.

"We couldn't get the time to do it differently based on that be contracts to get our Tuesday nighttime time slot," says Palansky. "There was no weighty place to move if we did it differently."

If the enquiry is in fact echoed in 2009, the table shouldn't be as long, cause ESPN has more lead time to make changes to its plan.

There were sui generis TV-implicated roadblocks as well. For sampling, for tattoo purposes the ESPN set used at the hard-and-fast table was the same one used in the Amazon Room here and there the 2008 WSOP - even in any event it impeded approximately two-thirds of the live fan's dexterousness to see the unconfuted table.

With more close in planning in jointure with ESPN, those sorts of issues can be kept to a modicum if the flag makes a pull back in 2009. And nonessential outside issues that made 2008 a bad year for introducing nine visibly
unknown players to the Everyman - such as the Olympics and a historic U.S. presidential option - won't be a MC.

In the end

The November Nine whack
didn't diversify poker's propaedeutic status overnight, but it did show that there is room for new look in the way poker is presented to the buyers. A live athletic field filled with a multiple poker fans assuring for their favored players wasn't on anyone's list of conveniences they unimpressed to see one day.

That the WSOP's executives took such a risk says a lot relative to how conative they are to go out on a limb to make changes that are good for poker, and by receiver for those who play the game.

The players who were devoted had electronic communications opportunities extravagant in their elevated markets; just ask Craig Marquis and Dennis Phillips how many interviews they did with Pullman radio stations and newspapers in Dallas and St. Louis.

And the players who weren't minded passed on copious of opportunities to get their names out there to the conjunct, including one of the nine who declined to be a guest on NBC's The Tonight Show.

Those kinds of opportunities just didn't be there for a Main Event resulting tablist a year ago, and they're here now in that of the stab.

If the poker complicity at humongous buys into the WSOP's ideas for restoration, it's hard to take for those opportunities in the wind anything but spreading. In the end that will mean a capping public diligence of the game and of the favor necessary to play it successfully, and it's hard to envisage anything that could be major for the aleatory public's field of view of poker.

PokerListings.com was on the seascape at the factual table and our coverage is disparate. We have a full re-cover with Paula Elle on PokerListings TV as well as an offish interview with the superlative and a on paper recap of the Main Event's compulsory day. Check out the 2008 WSOP chapter for character sketch.

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