It’s understandable what Harrah’s, the WSOP and ESPN are trying to do here.
While the Main Event is and will always be the anchor of its WSOP coverage, they want recognizable “stars” to have more of a presence during their coverage. And they’ll get just that by covering tournaments like the Up For Africa charity event and the newly conceived $40,000 Hold’em Championship and WSOP Champions Invitational events. The powers at be realize that the die-hard poker fans will be watching no matter what. But by covering events with celebrities from inside and outside the poker world they will be able to draw the “casual fans” and by airing just Hold’em tournaments they won’t put off this group of viewers with games they may not recognize. “What we’ve learned from the past is that games other than No Limit Hold’em do not draw as big of an audience for TV,” Pollack explained last week. So we can appreciate the reasons behind the change in format. And we’re honestly looking forward to seeing these new events on TV. But the bottom line is that ESPN’s coverage isn’t as diverse as it could be, at least from a true poker fan’s perspective. Here’s a look at 10 additional events we’d like to see on the tube this summer when we settle in each Tuesday night for our weekly fix of WSOP coverage: Seeing players like Evelyn Ng on ESPN this summer would make for good TV. (photo by Vin Narayanan/Casino City) 10. Ladies $1,000 Hold’em World Championship Some of the most recognizable stars in the poker world are females and the reason isn’t just because there are slew of women poker players who are easy on the eyes. These girls can play the game. Put it all together and this is a natural for TV.
7. $10,000 World Championship Mixed Event This is basically a H.O.R.S.E. tournament on steroids as every eight hands the game changes between Triple Draw 2-7, Limit Hold’em, Omaha 8, , Stud, Stud 8, No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha. Simply put, this is a hard-core poker fan’s delight.