NBC Heads-Up Championship — Poker for the Old Ages
The 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship ended yesterday at Caesars Palace here in Vegas. Along the way were several exciting matches that should make for good television. I won’t spoil it for you in case you want to watch it except to repeat a comment my good friend Gloria Balding made on Twitter about the finals: “Ah now I can see what poker was like in 1996.”
One thing everyone in the media noticed about the tournament this year was that it lacked the energy of prior years. That started at the bracket party at PURE on Thursday night (where the room emptied not 15 minutes after the brackets were finalized) and extended through each day of the tournament.
It’s hard to know why the tournament didn’t have the zing it’s previously had. Is it that the novelty of the concept has worn off after six years? That the invited players now look at it as just another mandatory marketing appearance for the online poker sites that sponsor them? That the producers have not kept it fresh enough by including more of the young guns, instead choosing the “safe” route with too many pros that have been around, as Gloria suggests, since 1996?
On that last point, one thing that struck me about the semi-final matches and the finals was the average age of the gallery. With space on the set for about 100 spectators, and poker having become predominantly a young person’s game, it was surprising to see that the average spectator was in his or her late 40s or early 50s. I joked with flipchip that producer Mori Eskandani might want to keep a three-foot pole handy to jab in the ribs of any spectator who nodded off during the proceedings. The age of the gallery seemed to be a function of the place in poker of the invited players — generally grizzled veterans of more than a decade, sprinkled in with a few younger players who’ve had significant television exposure already (for example, the WSOP Main Event winners of the last seven years).
The truth is that the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is a six-hour infomercial for the major online poker sites. Those sites want their logo plastered all over your television screen for an hour every Sunday for six weeks. When advertising spots cost $30,000 for 30 seconds, it’s much cheaper for the sites to put a stable of players into the tournament. In any event the tournament wouldn’t work without the sponsored players because few poker players would pay $20,000 to enter what amounts to a six-legged super turbo tournament.
In that regard the producers are handcuffed to inviting players who (1) have already secured a lucrative sponsorship arrangement from a major online poker site, and (2) have some “brand name” recognition with a non-poker viewing audience. That’s the target demographic here, after all. Poker junkies can rightly protest the snubbing of an excellent heads-up player like Vivek Rajkumar but the fact is that the average tv viewer has no idea who Rajkumar is. He’s not a good “draw”.
As long as this tournament keeps making money for NBC, the major online poker sites, and title sponsor GoDaddy.com, don’t expect anything to change. Instead enjoy it as a sort of time machine to what poker was like in 1996.
Go to: Riding the F Train