Acknowledgements: A big thank you to Gary Wise, ESPN writer, Bluff Magazine writer, and owner of Wise Hand Poker for
The game of poker, specifically the game of No-Limit Texas hold em’ has seen exponential gains in popularity and participation over the last decade. How did the game become so large, so fast?
It is the contention of this blogger that the game of no-limit Texas hold em’ became so large due to the improved, televised media coverage it received. Before the first decade of the 21st century, any televised poker equivocated to the filming of a group of people playing an obscure game with lack-luster commentary. This type of broadcast made for confusing, boring television, seemingly broadcast at an audience with esoteric knowledge, and refusing to give novice viewers a chance to catch on.
After the twenty first century, however, the technological improvement of the “hole cam” coupled with the adoption of professional commentators brought about a broadcast that captured the attention of all users, novice to professional card players.
The “hole cam” is a device that was invented by a gentleman named Henry Orenstein, which allows you to view the cards of all the players in a hand[1]. “His basic logic was, as much as it was cool to watch all this money being thrown around the screen, you can’t really follow all the action as it was playing out,” Gary Wise, columnist at ESPN said in an interview. With this technology, users were transported from watching nine strangers sitting silently at a poker table, to being able to put themselves in the thick of the action, viewing every exciting bluff, raise, and all-in play[2].
Not only did the “hole cam” allow audiences a more interactive experience, but it also opened the door for improvement in poker commentating. Analysts were no longer spending their time speculating at what the player might be holding in this situation, but rather commentating on why the player was making the play with the cards they held.
These elements coupled together allowed producers to create a broadcast applicable to mainstream viewers, which lent it to being picked up by major broadcasting stations.
One of the earliest adopters of this technology was the World Poker Tour. In 2002, the World poker tour signed an agreement with the Travel Channel. One of poker’s biggest ambassadors, Mike Sexton, along with Steve Lipscomb, the World Poker Tour founder approached Lyle Berman[3], a poker player who is also a business executive to help fund the show, so they would have the budget they needed to produce a high quality broadcast, according to Mr. Wise.
After Lyle agreed, they were able to license the show to the Travel Channel. The Travel Channel aired one of the first American productions of a poker tournament that included the use of hole cams, along with the professional commentating of Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten.
The new broadcast style led to immediate success of the first televised “season” of the World Poker Tour. It could be argued, that the World Poker Tour’s success might have led to ESPN licensing the World Series of Poker for eight episodes of coverage the next year in 2003, which is where this blog will pick up next week.
[2] A bluff is when a player bets with a hand that has no hope to win. Being “all-in” means betting all of the chips you have in-front of you, and is deemed to be the most exciting play”
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