Silence isn’t golden if poker hopes to grow

November 29, 2007

Perturbing extracts from the latest Gambling Online:

“A 47-year-old father of three wins EPT London at an all-too-quiet final table…”

“…there were precious few ‘epic’ moments at the final table”

“All the big names, among them such chatterers and natterers as Daniel Negreanu, Roland de Wolfe and last year’s winner Vicky Coren were all out - so the glamour factor was severely lacking…”

“Starved of the motor-mouths, this was the quietest final table GOM has ever witnessed…This was poker doing a very decent impression of a chess match.”

“We imagine that PokerStars weren’t best pleased to have so little drama on their televised final table, either.”

“But the overall impression for the casual first-time spectator…would be that poker is a quiet and unspectacular game.”

I tread on thin ice in highlighting this as a problem, because at the other extreme, the antics of messrs Guoga and Hellmuth at their worst have been criticised as much here as anywhere else.

I also acknowledge that poker tournaments should be about skill rather than cabaret and that asking people to play at being something they’re not sets up a far greater potential fiasco than a televised table masquerading as a monastery.

So all I can do is warn what might happen if EPT London becomes the norm. TV will flex its muscles.

Open tournaments will become invitationals. Players in the upper echelon of an accepted global ranking system will be given a bye, entering the latter stages of a tournament with a starting stack adjusted to a percentage of the average chip count at the time of their entry. Don’t be surprised if that percentage occasionally exceeds 100%.

Alternatively, the favoured few will start at the same stage as everyone else but with re-buy options, should they bust out.

If that doesn’t lure enough ‘name’ players to the event, TV and sponsors will be given a number of invitations they can offer to the more charismatic ‘faces’ in tournament poker, with the entry fee being waived. Maybe this happens already, I don’t know.

But something will happen. No matter how contrived, nor how much it spits in the face of poker tradition. Television cannot afford glorified ‘dead air’ where a final table is meant to be.

It will do whatever it takes.