Poker Commentary - time to mix it up?

[Rexas]

Think there's a few problems with trying to get too technical in that it's not that hard to get it wrong/say something stupid along with going to deep and losing your audience, but think with commentary it always comes down to what your audience is and what you're trying to achieve.

If your audience is mostly recreational players and "rando morons" (sorry, couldn't help it), then you'll do much better by just having fun and talking strategy on a more basic level by pointing stuff out that they may not notice.

If your audience is mostly pros or people who consider themselves/aspire to be pros, then the more technical stuff is going to be much better.

So, ESPN coverage for me seems to be aimed at a very wide audience, and as such needs to appeal to people who know little more about poker than the rules. Obviously it also needs to appeal to people that play more etc, but I think that the "pro" part of their viewership a) is smaller than everyone else watching and b) won't actually mind that much if commentary is more fun and less technical.

[POWWWWWWWW]

I think it works best when they have a mix of commentators, one who ask the questions (knows little about poker) and a pro who answers them, giving some kind of mild in depth strat. This way the some viewers doesn't feel alienated as they have someone to relate to (the guy asking the questions) and some viewers get the more complex stuff. Someone mentioned Nick Schulman earlier, his live stream commentary of the PPC at WSOP was prob the best poker content I've seen. You had David Tuckman? (I think his name is) who knew very little about a lot of the games in the 10 game mix asking the right questions and Schulman giving some great (not too in depth) strat advice about the games work. AJ Benza and Gabe Kaplan were great at this. One knew very little of poker and the other gave quick simple analysis and both were very entertaining.  You see this same thing in football. You get the presenter asking the questions the general football fan wants to know, and some old ex pro's answering the questions. Nothing too in depth and entertaining at the same time. There isn't enough time in either format for the real meaty in depth stuff to be presented anyway. Like Alex said, poker is so complex, you can go from analysing a hand for the 2-5 mins it's played like at LATB, have a 15-20 min breakdown in a youtube vid like WCG does, or you can do an hour+ (up to 3 hours maybe) proper solver type that you get in RIO vids. Only one of these works well for TV and people who really want to go more in depth can find it elsewhere or do it themselves. The pro's commentating aren't actual giving away any real hidden info anyway and it's much better presented in other ways.
Same in football. That's why you have the dumbed down ex pro's analysing, giving cliche answers in the 15 mins at half time and the 30 mins after. Then if people want they watch extra stuff like at the end of Monday Night Football, or even more in depth they go get the data and do the analysis themselves. Football data analysis guys would be soooooo much better at discussing football but just wouldn't work in the 15/30 mins you get, it would put off a lot of casual football fans as well.

[SuuPRlim]

wanna engage people then you need fresh new TV poker ideas - Pokerstars Big Game was one of the best innovations imo, and commentate on it properly.

I think the difference between NFL style geeky punditry and Poker geeky stuff is that people sort of understand the basics of the NFL before they hear it, and whereas it's a decent way above them they can sort of follow along and almost certainly pick up a little extra knowledge on the way. I don't think this is the same for poker, the words/phrases/concepts that top technical poker analysis involves is alien to most recreational players, and actually to a fair chunk of pros

I think an understanding of the audience (from the commentators) and a good TV concept and it'll be fine.

[strak33]

Nick Schulman is perfect. Very technical but in a really good way. Best commentator by far.

Really agree with this , WSOP commentary is a joy with nick shulman.