Is it bad etiquette and bad behaviour at the table? Is it collusion online or live? Is it suffering from tilt and blowing your bankroll? Well it could of course be any or all of these things but watching TV poker recently I have found something that strikes me, in its own way, as just as bad. It’s a relatively recent invention too.
The worst poker invention ever is the use of the rabbit cam or the wonder cam. (In the World Series of Poker programmes it's referred to as the former and on the WPT it's the latter, but in both cases it is a horrendous concept.)
In your game, do you really want people to think they have to stay in the pot with what they've already determined to be a precarious hand just because they saw what happened on TV when someone didn't stay? Not me! I want him out after he's contributed. If the holder of the two pair folds on the turn and the cam shows the river would have filled his hand, is that good? I don't think so, not because it will later rub salt in the losing wound of the player who folded the two pair but also because it shows the viewer that maybe he should not fold. After all, the next card could help him win the tournament, couldn't it?
In some respects poker is a game of guesses, estimates of the future based on past results. If you know, for instance, that Player A will make a weak bet when he has a strong hand, you can determine how you will handle your own cards. If you know that Player B will bet like a millionaire with money to burn when he has a great hand, again, you'll know how to proceed. So all in all, folding your hand should end your participation in any way, shape or form because you've made your guess. Revealing what the next card would have been does nothing for you, nothing for your opponent and nothing for the game. In fact, the only thing it does is give the commentator something to get excited about. The television production should be about the tournament, not gimmicky ideas for the viewer.
I brought the subject up before a live competition the other day and had only one dissenting opinion. "Well, sometimes I want to know what would have happened if a player had stayed in," one of the players said.
My response? "You put up the money, you hold the cards, you make the decision. You folded and you lost the pot. There is no 'what would have happened?' There are no more cards!"
Other responses included: "Nope. It can make someone look stupid" and "It doesn't add anything to 
the game" and "I guess they have to make it more exciting" and "It's not like you can learn anything from it" and "I've never been in a casino card room that allowed rabbit hunting."
It's patently silly but I guess perhaps poker is the only game where you can do this. But what purpose does it serve? You can't turn the clock back and let someone replay a hand. In fact, he won't even know the outcome until he watches it himself weeks later. Since there are too few innovations or bells and whistles to add to televised poker anymore this is something that's going to stay whether I like it or not.
So instead of relaxing late at night in front of Challenge TV and tutting to myself at more crapshoot TV poker, or daft ESPN commentaries, or Z list celebrities pondering an all in with bottom pair, I think I’ll stick to High Stakes Poker. No gimmicks there. At least when they have double flops and they run it twice you know it happens in their 'real world' big game too.