Televised Poker Tournaments for 2009

by Bodog Poker | Jan 13 2009

Televised poker has become some of the most popular programming aired today. The game was never good for television until Henry Orenstein invented the pocket-cam around ten years ago. Not long after that, ESPN covered Chris Moneymaker’s Cinderella story in 2003, and televised poker exploded in popularity. Today it’s hard to look at your television guide without finding a poker show being broadcast on at least one channel. But like most television shows, poker shows are not all created equal. The following are, in my opinion, the best poker shows on television.

The most popular poker show, and my personal favorite, is GSN’s High Stakes Poker. There’s something about a cash game that a tournament structure just can’t deliver; especially one of the biggest cash games in the world. High Stakes Poker has the element of fear because the players are putting such a high percentage of their playing bankroll on the line in one game. When you throw in the super-rich amateurs like Jerry Buss and Guy Laliberte, the game becomes very entertaining. The world’s best players like Daniel Negreanu, Sam Farha, and Eli Elezra get to display their cash game talents and entertain us with high roller personalities.

What’s GSN up to These Days?

It was rumored that GSN wasn’t going to broadcast High Stakes Poker for a fifth season because poker wasn’t within the “game show” theme the channel is supposed to be presenting. I guess they realized that cutting their most popular show was not a productive move, and the fifth season of the show has already begun taping at the Golden Nugget Casino. New episodes are tentatively scheduled to begin airing on March 1.

GSN decided not to pick up the seventh season of the World Poker Tour last spring, so the WPT quickly made a deal with Fox Sports Network (FSN). Coverage began on January 4 and will include 26 one-hour episodes. Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten will return again this year, and joining them will be new WPT poster girl Amanda Leatherman. Event coverage could include action from the Bellagio Cup IV, Borgata Poker Open, North American Poker Championships, Festa Al Lago, Foxwoods World Poker Finals, Doyle Brunson 5 Diamond World Poker Classic, Gulf Coast Poker Championship, Borgata Poker Classic, LA Poker Classic, WPT Celebrity Invitational, Bay 101 Shooting Star, Foxwoods Poker Classic, and the WPT World Championship.

ESPN to Broadcast WSOPE on Feb. 1 2009

ESPN’s coverage of the 2008 WSOP is excellent, and the network continues to re-run all the televised events from last summer and the November final table. (ESPN also runs lots of archived WSOP action from previous years that you have never seen before.) But the big news coming out of the popular sports network is their upcoming coverage of the World Series of Poker-Europe (WSOPE). ESPN will broadcast the first four episodes of the WSOPE starting on Feb. 1 at 6 p.m. EST. (Not-Quite-a-Spoiler-Alert: The final table took more than 19 hours to play out and more than US $1.5 million was awarded to the first place winner, John Juanda. You may remember that last year’s inaugural WSOPE 2007 final table included Bodog’s own Matthew McCullough, who ended up taking third place following a bad beat with eventual Main Event winner Annette Obrestad.)

Finally NBC’s Poker After Dark is the last one we’ll mention. This sit-and-go structured game has become very popular, and the 13 episodes of the fifth season are already being broadcast. First timers include actor Jason Alexander and WSOP runner-up Ivan Demidov. Some of the episode themes include “Close but no Cigar” (WSOP final table players who didn’t win), “International III” (players from different countries), and “Hellmuth Bash Cash Game I&II” (self explanatory).

Test out your skill in one of Bodog’s many online poker tournaments!