Contrarian Thoughts on Televised Poker - A concept worthy of consideration?

I have a friend who's a world-class contrarian. Let's call him Buck, as in "buck the tide." Buck will look you straight in the eye and tell you that Cats is a better musical than Guys and Dolls, and he's not only serious, he's just warming up. Get him going, and you'll soon find out that all sports are fixed except for professional wrestling, Van Gogh was a piker next to Warhol, and George Lazenby was the best James Bond. If you think it can't get any sillier than that, think again. In the alternate universe in which Buck resides, Jim Brown was an underrated actor and overrated running back, beanie babies are on the verge of a comeback, and Tolstoy makes for a better read than Dostoyevsky.

When it comes to poker, Buck likewise favors the flip side of just about every coin. In the gospel according to Buck, women don't have the right stuff for the Texas two-card game, all suited hands are worth playing from any position, and five-card draw will be the "next big thing." Lest opinions like this fail to produce the isolation he so clearly craves, Buck is one of only three people on the planet who loves to wax nostalgic about the "good old days" when you could watch televised poker without knowing the players' holecards.

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm in semiagreement with Buck on this one.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't a complaint in the world with today's poker programs. Not only are they interesting and entertaining, but they clearly deserve the lion's share of credit for the game's popularity explosion, a development for which I'm as grateful as the next fellow. I would never dream of knocking anything that's brought so many new players to the tables, and beamed Evelyn Ng into my living room. And I'm fully aware that the superior ratings of today's shows over those of their predecessors are due chiefly to the deployment of the lipstick cams that enable viewers to see the players' cards, an innovation that has effectively transformed the poker landscape.

In fact, the landscape has changed so much and so quickly that it's easy to forget it wasn't all that long ago when color analysis on TV's coverage of the World Series involved poker heavyweights like Phil Hellmuth having to speculate as to what the players' cards were. And while some people enjoyed making educated guesses along with the analysts, they were mostly aficionados; for the average viewer of yesteryear, being in the dark rendered him insufficiently invested in the action to have his attention grabbed and/or held. The alternative, afforded by the lipstick cams, of making the viewer privy to the particulars of the action offered a sense of involvement that has succeeded spectacularly in drawing him into that action. That's all to the good, and the lipstick cams aren't going anywhere, nor should they, for given the choice between being in the dark and having information, the public has indicated its preference in no uncertain terms.The only question for someone wishing to play devil's advocate is this: Is total disclosure (knowing everyone's cards) the most compelling alternative to being in the dark? Is it possible, in other words, that having partial information – which, after all, more closely simulates the experience of actually playing – might produce an even greater sense of involvement?

Putting it in flesh-and-blood terms, imagine that Daniel Negreanu and T.J. Cloutier have gotten heads up at the final table and are duking it out for a bracelet. Show me Daniel's cards and not T.J.'s and I have the opportunity to play in Daniel's shoes, for I've got the same information he has – no more, no less – and am faced with the same decisions. If when the next hand is dealt I'm shown T.J.'s cards and not Daniel's, I now have the opportunity to experience what it's like to play against Negreanu, and along with Cloutier. Show me all the cards, on the other hand, and I'm relieved of the burden of having to think at all – although I do have the opportunity to be a know-it-all, second-guessing, armchair quarterback, an always popular and gratifying experience, to be sure, albeit somewhat less stimulating and instructive.

In fairness, it should be noted that there is a current show (forgive the oversight if there's more than one) that does feature an occasional hand in which one player's cards remain hidden, thereby offering a version of the experience cited above. I say "version" because, unfortunately, it's only one hand per program, and it's on one of the celebrity shows. That's not a knock on the actors, whose chief motivation is to entertain, cut up, and have a good time, but let's face it, matching wits heads up with a sitcom star who's taken a crash course in hold'em the day before the cameras roll is not quite the same as a simulated opportunity to test your acumen against Johnny Chan or Erik Seidel.

It's true, of course, that some of the most dramatic tournament hands are those that involve more than two players, and even heads-up matchups don't start out that way. Having to pick and choose whose cards to show and whose to withhold from the outset of a hand that has no guarantee of becoming heads up could admittedly be problematic, even with the heavy editing intrinsic to such shows. Besides, lots of people like the television coverage just the way it is. That said, a program looking for a way to distinguish itself from its competition might find merit in the idea of covering most of the tournament in its present form, until the event gets down to its final two players, at which point the format could switch to that of alternately revealing one player's cards per hand. That way, the viewer would see the bulk of the event in the manner to which he's become favorably accustomed, while at the same time getting a nice change of pace at the tournament's climax in the form of a challenging intellectual exercise that more closely simulates the experience of live play.

At the conclusion of each hand, the opponent's cards would be revealed, so that the viewer would still be getting the overall "big picture" (and the chance to process the exercise in which he's just engaged), but during the course of play, he'd have a little more mental work to do because he'd no longer be watching the action from an omniscient point of view. Think of the ramifications – a whole new generation of players introduced to the game by watching expert play in a format that practically forces them to get in the habit of thinking hard.

Hmm. On second thought … hold on a minute … I may not have thought this all the way through. In fact, memo to directors of poker programming: Carry on. As you were. What the heck does a writer know about directing?