TV or Not TV?

It's 2 a.m. and I'm sitting on the couch, laptop on my knees, with a cup of tea balanced precariously on the armrest. I've three tables open at the moment. I'm down a few blinds in cash but I've finished third in four sit-and-gos on the trot, so it can't be too long until I'm up enough for the night to pay for the electricity I've used.

The TV is on in the background. It's some heavily branded show with some American celebrities I don't recognise, each saying his one-liners before mucking … mucking … mucking … hey, has Clonie Gowen dyed her hair?

I zone out again, just long enough to lose heads up in the last sit-and-go and do the whole tank in cash - set over set. I'm off to bed. No, wait. There's more poker on! The presenters are wearing tuxedos on this one, and they're commentating on online poker. This must be good - it's online poker.

Oh. I'm off to bed.

I get a flashback to 2001. The contrast is absolute. For starters, there's no tea on the armrest of the couch; in fact, there's no couch. I'm sitting on a cushion on the floor so that I can't possibly fall any farther. My jeans are more kebab than denim, but Late Night Poker is on, so nothing else matters. These people are so f------ cool. Some are dressed like it's a business meeting; some are dressed like it's a circus. I can't take my eyes off Liam Flood's tie. These genuinely witty, genuinely interesting people are playing poker. Vicky Coren just raised and I don't know what she has. Imagine that - I don't know what hand she has! This is just like playing poker. Wait, a girl playing poker?

The guys in the tuxedos are shouting again. "Pok3rprawn" has just pushed for his last four big blinds with aces and has three callers. I'm definitely off to bed.

The Pioneers
Televised poker has certainly gone through a massive transformation in its relatively short life. Although my first encounter, along with a lot of the "poker boomers," was Late Night Poker on Channel 4, it's history stretches way back to the 1970s one-hour documentaries on the World Series of Poker. Back then, nobody wanted to spend money on televised poker, let alone watch it. Looking at downloads of the old shows, it's hard to believe that a multibillion dollar industry and worldwide entertainment phenomenon would come of this - making sports personalities of its players and fans of its audience.

There were no on-screen graphics, no pocket cameras, no witty commentary, no close-ups, no heart monitors, not a KFC Snacker Cam or Degree All-In Moment in sight. This was a very raw look at a little known subculture - a small peek into a world of eccentric characters, road gamblers, cowboys, and the now veterans who have become household names. The focus was on the spectacle, as the idea that someone would sit down to play a game of cards for $10,000 was entertaining enough. How they achieved the win was almost an afterthought.

This documentary look at poker continued through the '80s and '90s without any real insight into how hands were played, no story told, or tension built. Initially airing on CBS and later on ESPN, extra camera angles were added in the WSOP shows, but commentators still speculated on players' holdings. Viewers were forced to piece the action together with no on-screen graphics, let alone knowledge of a player's hand. This led to some truly surreal moments, like the 1997 return of Stu Ungar to the World Series of Poker main event. If not strange enough that the final table was played outdoors in the baking desert heat, commentators constantly struggled, like most of the players, to put Ungar on a hand. Hand after hand, Gabe Kaplan called the action to no avail. This was not good TV. Cheesy theme tunes and bizarre celebrity tie-ins were the flavour of the day. Event sponsorship stretched to some small advertising hoardings around the final table - mostly for the benefit of the spectators in attendance.

The Revolutionaries
By 1999, little had changed with televised poker in the U.S. One-hour, cheaply produced shows were still the only connection between poker and TV. Thankfully, on this side of the water, a revolution was about to take place in a small television studio in Cardiff, Wales. Poker was to be the subject of a brand-new format, and thanks to one man, Rob Gardner, the viewer was now at the heart of the action. Late Night Poker was born.

Under-the-table cameras told a whole story to (mostly drunk) viewers across the UK and Ireland. A player's holdings were revealed to a yelp of excitement from the knowledgeable commentators at just the right moment. We were left guessing along with the player - looking for tells, studying betting patterns, eating kebabs. The format was simple but perfect. It had all the excitement without all the fireworks of TV poker today. It had all the personalities without all the superstars. It was subtle, golden TV for poker enthusiasts and casual observers alike. It introduced a whole generation to the game and spawned a whole genre of sports programming. Poker was now a spectator sport.

The show originally aired over six seasons between 1999 and 2002, and made stars of its participants long before the online poker boom and while the WSOP was still being presented as a one-hour documentary. Jesse May, Late Night Poker's primary commentator, puts the show's success down to more than just innovation.

"What LNP got right, and what makes it still compelling viewing, was its execution," he explained. "Audiences looked at something that could have easily been boring and they saw the drama. Late Night Poker got the presentation and execution of telling a compelling story, with interesting characters, right in a way that has seldom been repeated in the eight years since."

In the years that followed the initial cancellation of Late Night Poker, the stage was set for poker to hit it big, and the show would prove to have been truly ahead of its time. We all know the story from here - The World Poker Tour, Chris Moneymaker, online explosion, the European Poker Tour, the Professional Poker Tour, the Poker Dome, Celebrity Poker Showdown, High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, live poker online, and online poker live on TV.

The list streams on and on, viewers drowning in a sea of acronyms, miscellaneous hands, mediocre players, and sponsors' logos. Although there is now more poker on television than anyone could have predicted, something major is missing. Where's the drama? Where's the battle of minds? Where's Mike Magee?

The Reactionaries
Since being smacked in the head by an ESPN camera while roaming the poker room at the Rio a couple of years ago, I'll admit that I hold some resentment toward the American take on the beautiful game. Under-the-table cameras eventually made it across the pond in time for the World Poker Tour to air its first episode in 2003. That same year, ESPN truly sprinted with the idea to turn the World Series of Poker into an all singing, all dancing, all fist-pumping poker spectacle. They descended on the biggest game on the planet and commercialised it within an inch of its life. The World Series of Poker coverage has become everything that makes me go "meh" about watching the game on television.

If you've seen one online-qualifying, fist-pumping jock, you've seen them all. The commentary is funny, I'll give them that. The back-stories of the down-and-out/terminally ill participants are heart-warming, but it has very little to do with the game I remember seeing at 2 a.m. after a college night out. There's no tension, no drama, and, despite millions of dollars being at stake, no real sense of importance. Beyond some exceptions, the average poker show today seems to have very little to do with actually playing poker. Hands are revealed in sequence, one after another, to table upon table of faceless online qualifiers. They play them hopelessly while the commentators struggle to remember anecdotes to liven up the action.

Unfortunately, most shows seem to have followed this path - an ESPN-ised, over-the-top, and entirely unrelated take on a televised game that was once so intellectually engaging. Even more unfortunately, there's a whole new generation of player who thinks fist-pumping is as big a part of the game as having the best hand, draining most of the class from a pursuit that once had it in spades. I'm starting to believe that there is actually someone out there who enjoys listening to Caprice telling us how she feels when she is all in, or who want to watch tuxedoed commentators shouting over eight big blind online poker. I've either missed a meeting or TV poker has lost its way.

The Rebels
Luckily for the poker purists, some shows are heading in the right direction. The aforementioned High Stakes Poker has boiled the game back down to its basics - showing top players, at close quarters, playing for massive money. The action does play a little too much like a chat show at times, with the endless chatter from the handpicked "superstar" players, but the contrasting qualities of the participants, informed commentary, and sheer size of the game make it far more compelling than "WSOP Bracelet Bingo."

The European Poker Tour has certainly played its part, going to great lengths to position poker as a TV sport with an albeit slightly sanitised production. The EPT put the emphasis back on the game being played rather than silly subplots. A wide range of hands make the final edit, not just the bad beats and drawouts of lesser productions.

The future of our game on TV is uncertain amid the boom that carries on unabated. The audience is there but they are getting bored. Poker players tend to be quite smart, and some of the programming being produced is insulting their intelligence. Comparisons are already being made to the dwindling appeal of snooker, whose once massive audiences made it the TV sports phenomenon - in the UK and Ireland, at least - of the 1980s.

There is still time to stem the tide of low-quality, unrelenting, unrelated filler, however. The very welcome, long overdue return of Late Night Poker should help show how the format has lost its way. Jesse May contends that what made the original show great is still as relevant today as ever.

"Although it's important to remember that the average sophistication of the viewer has advanced considerably, and he demands different things now than previously," he said, "the elements of great poker TV remain the same. The participants must be under pressure, they must care if they win or lose. Too many times these days, players seem to be playing just another tournament, and they don't really care if they bust out quickly. There must be a story being told, and the format must allow for good poker to be played. The age when you could just throw any game or tournament up on TV and have people watch it is gone. Viewers need to understand what the story is and what's at stake. If these elements are dealt with correctly, there's plenty of life left in the old dog."

Thankfully, poker-savvy producers are also taking the opportunity to bring the televised game back to its core virtues with some promising shows in the works. Ian Langstaff is the owner of the production company Winmedia, whose past work includes the Irish Open and the European Ladies Championship. Ian knows what makes good poker television, and is looking to advance the genre rather than just add to the noise.

"Poker needs to be televised as an event rather than a studio show," he enthused. "Once the studio-style show becomes obsolete, poker will join the likes of snooker and golf, with coverage spanning the length of the tournament and not just a final table with no buildup. We have tried live production, but there can be long periods of inactivity, especially with deep-stack poker. When producing the Irish Open last year, we recorded during the day of the tournament and transmitted the same evening for three consecutive nights. This enabled us to take out the "boring bits" and play out live from the venue the highlights of the day, interviews, and music montages. Players actually watched themselves play from the bar the same evening. Ratings for the broadcasts quadrupled and the players enjoyed the instant production. This type of production is not new; it happens in all sports. We simply treated poker as a sport and showed the plays and highlights that night. This is the future of the game on television."

Quality coverage of stand-alone events such as the Irish Open is a step in the right direction. Give me that over the World Series of Poker any day. But for every one of them there are countless made-for-TV events going the way of the WSOP. They offer merely over-branded, superficial coverage of what is a wonderfully complex game. Legions of poker fans, knowledgeable and hungry, are waiting for more. Sponsorship and advertising are facts of modern television, and it is naïve to imagine a time when a simple late-night poker show, low on glitz and high on content, will cross our screens again. I for one will hold the original late-night poker show as not just the starting point but the high point, a yardstick by which all else should be measured.