State of the Felt -- Mori EskandaniEskandani Talks About the Field of 64 in the NBC Heads-Up Event and Poker on Television |
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In State of the Felt, Card Player will periodically bring you insights and opinions from some of the most important players, tournament and poker organization directors, and other people that influence the poker industry. This is a place where the broad trends and forces that continue to shape the game will have space to live and breathe in open discussion.
This week, the producer of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Mori Eskandani, talks about what decisions go into inviting the field of 64 players and the challenge of producing poker on television. Eskandani runs POKER-PROductions, which also brings Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker to television audiences.
Ryan Lucchesi: What led you to include 19 automatic bids in the NBC Heads-Up field for achieving specific honors in the poker world this year?
Mori Eskandani: There never really is an exact science when you have an invitational event like this, but we also want to include the players who are out there and are hot. Instead of going in and trying to research everybody, there are certain things that if you do them, you’re running hot. If you won a couple of bracelets at the World Series of Poker, you’re running hot, if you won the world championship, you’re running hot. And hopefully we’ll add some more automatic qualifiers, but right now I think the mixture, especially this year…I’m very happy with it.
RL: You included a lot more European players this year. Is that a sign of the growth in European poker?
ME: Again, some of the European players are here because they were automatic qualifiers, and some others have made a lot of noise in tournament circuits in the U.S. and Europe. This program is now on in six countries, and it will stretch to 18. It will be in millions of homes outside of the United States, so if there are European players doing well, we would like to get them over here.
RL: Do you think you would ever seed the NBC Heads-Up event?
ME: There’s never going to be seeding in poker; it’s just such a mistake. Not only is the level of players’ skills too close, there’s also an ego involved there with the best player and the second-best player. It’s not going to sit well with any of the poker players.
RL: The number of online qualifiers is up from last year to six now. Is the reason behind that, building the possibility of an amateur winner into this event, the same way it exists in open buy-in tournaments?
ME: This is a fun invitational tournament, and when you add different elements, like the online qualifiers, the unknowns who overcome really unbelievable odds to be here by playing on the Internet or here at Caesars Palace in the live events, it adds a spice to the game. You have your well-known superstar poker players, and you have your celebrities who have a passion for poker, and add to them people who are clearly underdogs, and they’re somebody who you root for.
RL: The show is in its fifth year now. How do you keep it fresh for viewers, and, in a larger context, how do you keep viewers interested in poker?
ME: You’re not really mixing up poker the game. That would be a mistake. If you go back to games like golf or basketball, they don’t change the game, and it’s stayed fresh for 50, 60, and 100 years. You keep poker, poker, and you bring in characters who are out there doing well, and it’s always going to stay fresh. The faces of the players are automatically going to change every two to three years, and there are some players who have stood the test of time, and they’re going to be here as the foundation of every tournament.
RL: You work on a lot of different poker shows between NBC Heads-Up and Poker After Dark, among others. What are the different challenges that arise within the different formats when you’re filming and making these shows for a television audience?
ME: With heads up, obviously the challenge is having 64 players. The format of the show and where it airs and the popularity of it is such that so many qualified players out there would like to participate, and there’s just not enough seats in the tournament. We only take 64, and that’s the biggest challenge. As far as running the event, a March Madness-type single-elimination field of 64, it’s just a fun event; it’s not that challenging. A challenge obviously comes with the World Series of Poker Europe, where we tried to cover the entire floor and follow the chip leaders, and that was very challenging. We had portable holecard cameras that we would move to outer tables if somebody was leading, and we had a wider separation of the players. We couldn’t control it, so we basically tried to swarm those tables and tried to bring the story, and I think we did a pretty good job.
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