Today is the off day at the World Series of Poker, the week before the Super Bowl. I fell asleep on the sofa of our house at 5:30 this morning after we left around 4:30 from the Rio.
The Main Event is a strange competition. I’m not an old timer, didn’t head to Binion’s to watch all this back in the day, don’t have any old stories. I’ve become interested in poker just like everyone else in this tidal wave: Rounders, Moneymaker, old ESPN coverage with Gabe Kaplan, WPT, High Stakes Poker, and now covering the WSOP for two years at the Rio.
The Main Event is what it is, the largest live poker tournament to determine the winner of the largest live poker tournament. It is not a competition to find the best poker player in the world. There are many a great player who is done now, although I think this crop of players are as good a bunch of players as we’ve seen at a Final Table in awhile. It shows really what poker has become, a game now played seriously by hundreds of thousands of people around the world at various stakes. One look at David Tran’s record gives me a hint about who he is: a guy who always shows up at the regular tourneys in and around LA. Out in 14th, he battled the Amazon Flu that went through many players the last two weeks.
For Jerry Yang and Lee Childs, they’re looking for their first WSOP cash and their first live tournament cash and their first WSOP bracelet, all rolled into one. Childs is a CardRunner’s subscriber, so their excited to no end about the results.
There has been a great deal of PokerNews bashing and defending on 2+2. Let me give you my totally unbiased opinion on the Media and the Main Event, as well as PokerNews in particular. Believe me, this is unbiased, although I’m not quite sure how important or relevant it is.
In my opinion, the Main Event is a made-for-ESPN event now when it comes to media coverage. On the one hand, you can argue that ESPN has every right to drive much of the tactical operational decisions regarding everything from room layout to how PokerNews staff members collect information. CardPlayer was bashed pretty heavily last year, and they certainly were quite arrogant and difficult for most of the non-inner circle media members last year (me included). PokerNews has taken their place at providing hand coverage and chip counts this year.
The key components of this type of coverage are data capture, data triage, data translation (writing), and data entry. The data capture component for hands and chip counts is simply difficult. In my articles on player/table coverage, I tried to show what looking at one player (for example, Dario Minieri or Jason Strasser), capturing every hand at a table for three-four hours, what that would give me and you. On Day 1, it is more of an academic exercise to see how tight or loose a player plays. As the tournament progresses, it gives a glimpse of the many decisions, big and small, that you or I would have to make as we progress during a tournament. It took me probably five hours to do this for one person at one table, and I definitely didn’t get a flood of feedback saying it was groundbreaking work or anything. This then defaults hand reporters back to bustout hands or big pot hands. To fund the resources to capture more and more hands is simply a financial decision, with certain costs for the collector and certain return (in eyeballs, revenue, etc) for the Media Organization providing it. Given the constraints put on PokerNews for capturing data, it is a wonder they have done as good a job as I think they have done. There were probably twenty ESPN staff members and another twenty Harrah’s/other types milling among the last five tables yesterday, and PokerNews staff were regularly shoved out of the way.
Chip counts are eyballed for the most part by PokerNews staff. I normally just ask a player, especially when I was doing chip counts for PokerStars last year. It gave me a chance to connect with the players, which was important in the color coverage I was asked to provide. The chip color design this year was beyond bad; it was an embarrassment quite frankly. It isn’t the colors themselves that are bad; if you have to use them, then just alternate them at every fourth level of chip denomination. Have three versions of peach as a chip color makes it near impossible to count the chips, as well as slows the game down.
Data triage is the decision process of what data gets turned into a post and what doesn’t. Is it relevant that Gus Hansen on a short stack has moved all-in three times in the last two orbits when a player has raised in middle position? That is what I would call data triage and analysis. The analysis part of the process requires being able to see trends in the data itself. I think PokerNews did a fair job in this regards, but I’m not sure they were either asked to provide this nor really set up to do so. Some of it came in from the bloggers (MeanGene, change100, Pauly, BJ), but it relied on their own feel of what they were receiving or the insight from their field people. Advanced analysis (e.g., VP$IP of a person, pre-flop raising, folds to re-raises) is impossible to analyze in the current system of traditional cards and visual data collection of many tables of data. The triage part of this, what gets reported and what doesn’t, really goes to a few core questions. Who is the audience for the information? What drives the most traffic, an indication of interest? If the audience is hard core, 2+2 card carrying poker zealots, then we want as much raw information as possible. Seemingly meaningless hands for the masses are very interesting for the poker fanatic. A fundamental question regarding player coverage is should PokerNews and the rest of the media cover celebrities? I had my bad run-in with Tobey Maguire, so I never mentioned him in coverage this year. Shirley Williams was a regular in the $2/5 NLH cash games here then cashed in the Main Event. Is she a story? The public knows her as a mother who supported her son several years ago, so I think it is a story that she learned to play poker and outlasted enough players to cash. All of these decisions are part of the editorial decisions that reflect the vision and purpose of a media outlet.
Data translation is turning the cards and bets into some sort of big or small story. How many ways are there to say that someone is no longer in the tournament or that they folded a hand? PokerNews staff make this data interesting, and probably it isn’t too important how you describe much of this. Most people want to know the basics of poker hand reporting: position, stack, bet, action, cards, and some observations (having a mini-stroke, sitting like a statue, having to pee).
Data entry and data translation is done simultaneously by the bloggers. This cuts down errors as it eliminates a step in the process. Some quality control issues are unavoidable in a handwritten data capture environment vs. PDA capture or some sort of form to reduce errors. The bloggers were more data entry operators than writers as the amount of data was overwhelming for the most part.
Several other media outlets tried to compete with PokerNews for data capture, clogging up the aisles or crowding players on big hands. It’s all about driving eyeballs and revenue, but you don’t see it at any other type of competition. You see tenfold to thousandfold more media at other competitions (Super Bowl, World Cup, Olympics), but you don’t have a dozen people trying to get on a basketball court to see who made a shot and an assist then get it up on a website within a few minutes. I could probably think of the closest thing, but it makes my head hurt to think much about it now.
Which circles back to a fundamental question: is the poker media important? This is a homey group of folks, all working extremely hard to make an honest buck. Many of the media here are paid next to nothing and work obscene hours to provide poker players around the world with up-to-date information. In return, the media outlets get download revenue and advertising. Is it important to give access to PokerNews and let them coexist with ESPN cameras? Should they get totally out of the way and all play stop until two ESPN cameras and boom mikes get into position? Should other press have access to that type of information as well?
Looking at all of this objectively, I’m not quite sure of the answer. On a personal note, I don’t see why I could not have gone through the tables when it was down to four tables once an hour, as literally a couple dozen people were standing around, chatting, or just watching while PokerNews and ESPN cameramen did their jobs. I don’t see why the final four outside tables couldn’t have been spread out to give many spectators a chance to actually see what was going on.
It wasn’t too long ago that I was on the other side, back home hitting refresh on six or seven websites to see the absolute latest about who was in and who was out. I’ve gone from bewildered walking among these people we watch on television to having Joe Sebok or Kristy Gazes call me by name. I don’t attempt to pretend I’m lifelong friends with players as they have plenty of people in their lives, I’m sure. It’s enough for me simply to receive a smile or hello occasionally.
If the Main Event is a Made-for-ESPN event, does it matter? I probably think it doesn’t matter, that it’s more important that ESPN get good shots for you to watch in a few weeks or at midnight in several months than it is for me to see if the river was a Jack of hearts or Queen of diamonds. It doesn’t make it less frustrating for me to endure being here to work when you can’t see any of the action at a table or have no idea who the players are at a table, even when we’re down to thirty-six players left in this penultimate event in poker.
So my unbiased opinion is that PokerNews has been an improvement over CardPlayer in their coverage, and certainly the staff have been courteous almost to a person for people like me. Most of the problems with coverage are system problems, with causes outside of their direct control. You should reach out to those people who have provided insight, timely information, and give them some good love.
Back to day job work. That’s been by far the toughest thing for me, working hard here while also trying to do client work and sell other work. Just not the funnest thing for sure. One big item to close with. If anyone wants me to get them anything at the WSOP store, let me know by noon tomorrow. Just email me at csquard@gmail.com with request/size, and I’ll get it for you before I leave.
nice write up on the behind of scenes of the wsop….
Great coverage!