Much of this post is reproduced from another post of mine, but some of the words have been changed and there have been additions.
Pokertropolis, an internet poker site, is the presenting sponsor of next week’s UPA Event called the Big Apple 9 Ball Challenge, and it got me thinking a lot about televised pool vs. televised poker. What can pool telecasters learn from televised poker’s meteoric rise in popularity? Though I’m sure somebody could, it wouldn’t be easy to argue that poker is an inherently more interesting game to watch than pool.
Taking in the personalities of the poker players is most of the fun in poker. The player profiles and interviews are fascinating. During a poker hand, players can be stoic, aggressive, passive, quiet, or talkative. When the hand is over, they can be openly elated, devastated, overwhelmed, or disgusted. Another thing I really like about poker is that the announcers are objective. They don't hesitate to praise or knock down the individual decisions of the players. They give you a sense when a player has done something brilliant, creative, reckless or stupid. When a player makes a mistake, they give it some context (inexperienced, still "hot" over that last hand, "out to get" a certain player). They'll tell you that a player bested another in the last poker event and that a revenge motive is in play or that "these two have never much like each other." Such comments heighten our interest in the game. Between the demonstrative animation of the players and the objective critique of the announcers, I get a great sense of the game's psychology, and the game's psychology is absolutely fascinating.
But pool has all these elements, too. Televised pool, unfortunately, focuses on the shots, and rarely on the personalities of the players, and nearly never on the game's psychology. The human element is missing from pool telecasts. The player interviews and profiles leave you nearly in the dark. Far too many pool players act like robots in televised play. When did you last hear an announcer call a player's shot selection to be flat-out wrong? On the contrary, very modest accomplishments are lauded as extraordinary by the pool announcers. Mitch Laurance will watch someone execute a shot that most good players would have at least a 95% success rate on and call it outstanding or comment that it's a shot he's always struggled with. Is this what we need to hear? Though there are a few exceptions, scholars of the game who make it to the microphone are usually nearly as bad, focusing on the good, often acting as an apologist for a player that has just made an error and, in general, covering up the bad in a way that it far from objective. When a scholar of the game is the commentator and sees a player making an ill-advised shot and says nothing, it's really disheartening.
Those of us that have been around pool for a while know that pool players have lots of personality, that they can be demonstratively animated during the play, that they play mind games with their opponents, that they do the right and wrong things for a variety of different reasons, that their behavior may vary from rack to rack and match to match, etc. We also know that this makes them fascinating to us every bit as much as their superb play. Nobody who gets their full dose of pro pool from TV knows it, though, because televised pool manages to drain the game of practically all of its human elements.
Those that televise poker understand the importance of stressing the human element in their game and stage a production that ensures that the focus is on the personalities and on the psychology of poker, and not just on the cards dealt. If the focus were on the cards only, televised poker would be every bit as dull as televised pool.
Pokertropolis, an internet poker site, is the presenting sponsor of next week’s UPA Event called the Big Apple 9 Ball Challenge, and it got me thinking a lot about televised pool vs. televised poker. What can pool telecasters learn from televised poker’s meteoric rise in popularity? Though I’m sure somebody could, it wouldn’t be easy to argue that poker is an inherently more interesting game to watch than pool.
Taking in the personalities of the poker players is most of the fun in poker. The player profiles and interviews are fascinating. During a poker hand, players can be stoic, aggressive, passive, quiet, or talkative. When the hand is over, they can be openly elated, devastated, overwhelmed, or disgusted. Another thing I really like about poker is that the announcers are objective. They don't hesitate to praise or knock down the individual decisions of the players. They give you a sense when a player has done something brilliant, creative, reckless or stupid. When a player makes a mistake, they give it some context (inexperienced, still "hot" over that last hand, "out to get" a certain player). They'll tell you that a player bested another in the last poker event and that a revenge motive is in play or that "these two have never much like each other." Such comments heighten our interest in the game. Between the demonstrative animation of the players and the objective critique of the announcers, I get a great sense of the game's psychology, and the game's psychology is absolutely fascinating.
But pool has all these elements, too. Televised pool, unfortunately, focuses on the shots, and rarely on the personalities of the players, and nearly never on the game's psychology. The human element is missing from pool telecasts. The player interviews and profiles leave you nearly in the dark. Far too many pool players act like robots in televised play. When did you last hear an announcer call a player's shot selection to be flat-out wrong? On the contrary, very modest accomplishments are lauded as extraordinary by the pool announcers. Mitch Laurance will watch someone execute a shot that most good players would have at least a 95% success rate on and call it outstanding or comment that it's a shot he's always struggled with. Is this what we need to hear? Though there are a few exceptions, scholars of the game who make it to the microphone are usually nearly as bad, focusing on the good, often acting as an apologist for a player that has just made an error and, in general, covering up the bad in a way that it far from objective. When a scholar of the game is the commentator and sees a player making an ill-advised shot and says nothing, it's really disheartening.
Those of us that have been around pool for a while know that pool players have lots of personality, that they can be demonstratively animated during the play, that they play mind games with their opponents, that they do the right and wrong things for a variety of different reasons, that their behavior may vary from rack to rack and match to match, etc. We also know that this makes them fascinating to us every bit as much as their superb play. Nobody who gets their full dose of pro pool from TV knows it, though, because televised pool manages to drain the game of practically all of its human elements.
Those that televise poker understand the importance of stressing the human element in their game and stage a production that ensures that the focus is on the personalities and on the psychology of poker, and not just on the cards dealt. If the focus were on the cards only, televised poker would be every bit as dull as televised pool.
) would liven things up, in addition to ESPN adding more interviews and player histories to flesh the players out, give them more than two dimensions -- as you pointed out, we do have some real characters!
