For those hoping to appear on TV in a tournament that's not the Main Event or the 40th anniversary $40,000 NL tournament, you're pretty much out of luck*.


July 28 8:00 PM ET Special 40th Annual $40,000 No Limit Hold’em 1
July 28 9:00 PM ET Special 40th Annual $40,000 No Limit Hold’em 2
August 4 8:00 PM ET WSOP Champions Invitational 3
August 4 9:00 PM ET WSOP Champions Invitational 4
August 11 8:00 PM ET Ante Up For Africa Celebrity-Charity Event 5
August 11 9:00 PM ET Ante Up For Africa Celebrity-Charity Event 6
August 18 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1A 7
August 18 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1A 8
August 25 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1B 9
August 25 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1B 10
September 1 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1C 11
September 1 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1C 12
September 8 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1D 13
September 8 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 1D 14
September 15 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 2A 15
September 15 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 2A 16
September 22 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 2B 17
September 22 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 2B 18
September 29 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 3 19
September 29 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 3 20
October 6 8:00 PM ET Main Event Day 4 21
October 6 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 4 22
October 13 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 5 23
October 13 10:00 PM ET Main Event Day 5 24
October 20 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 6 25
October 20 10:00 PM ET Main Event Day 6 26
October 27 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 7 27
October 27 10:00 PM ET Main Event Day 7 28
November 3 9:00 PM ET Main Event Day 8 29
November 3 10:00 PM ET Main Event Day 8 30
November 10 8:00PM ET Final Table Preview Show
November 10 9-11:00 PM ET Main Event Final Table 31

*TV Schedule is subject to change

Also this year, the final table will be on November 7, when it gets to heads-up, they'll return at midnight on Nov. 10 to finish the tournament, so those hoping to avoid spoilers will have the entire weekend to attempt to avoid spoilers.

Wow not showing the horse event and who cares about watching a charity tournament.

Can this possibly be correct? Eight hours just for day one and nothing at all for HORSE?

I assume they decided that HORSE was too complicated to explain, and they prefer NL anyways, so here's a whole bunch of it.

or Scotty Nguyen killed it;-)

I wonder what this will do to turn out for the smaller events.

wow, thats a radical departure from the last couple of years. 3 prelim (all 3 NLHE) events and straight to ME.

I loved the 2007 pre-ME schedule: Mixed HE, Stud hi, HORSE, PLO, etc.

what a disappointment

Scotty's behavior may have played a small part in helping get it killed.

I assume the other tournaments that are holdem or PLO will still get live streaming thru ESPN360.com or bwin or a similar site(for those outside the US/no access to ESPN360).

But I thought what ESPN wants is a lot of big-name players?
You are guaranteed to get this with the HORSE, and it was fantastic TV last year.

Does anyone really enjoy watching Day 1 coverage? I always thought the 4 hours they've given it in the past was too much. The featured table is usually just one celebrity player and a bunch of random people, and they money isn't big enough yet for it to be really exciting.

I would love to see much less day one and day two, and 4 hours devoted to the final table instead. The final-table delay idea was great, but the presentation was way to rushed, which is ridiculous considering how their early Main Event coverage drags.

That's why they're doing the 40k event, the ME winners event, and for the casual fan, hopefully some celebrities make the Ante Up for Africa final table.

Showing only two events, both NLHE? Wow, that's a big change. A lot less chances for people to get on TV.

And what's up with showing an invitational and a charity event? Every year it's less of a championship and more of a TV show.

Showing the charity event (and for two hours) seems really silly to me as well, why not just combine that and the Invitational for their own 2 hour block.

no non holdem events shown...so gay

conversely i would think that scotty's behaviour would infact be good for hype/ratings, as disgraceful as it was. i think the bottom line is money and televised poker is just not as popular or profitable anymore. look how they trimmed aussie millions down to a mere 4 eps.. wpt is godawful boring now with nobody watching etc

I don't mind this so much.

They are only doing The 40K NoLimit; the Ante for Africa Charity event, and the WSOP Legends tourney along with the main event.

Why the big cutback? I thought the telecasts did well?

Where's my drink, baby?

Allen,

They're just delivering what the people want, NL holdem and the Main Event.

Bah, nevermind. Mis-read. Midnight of 9th>>10th, airing that night, OK.

I haven't seen the numbers myself but I thought I heard the ratings were getting worse each year pretty much. This doesn't really surprise me. After the initial novelty of how cool it was to see the hole-cards and the underdog Moneymaker making his way through the whole thing it's pretty clear that televised poker has lost its luster.

People don't watch the WSOP as much and they certainly don't watch the WPT as much either.

Like someone else pointed out before, I think the ESPN360 coverage of the prelim events partly changes some of this stuff around. They didn't have that before. I don't get ESPN360 though.

They were down from the peak of the poker boom to 2007, but ratings were up for the 2008 WSOP broadcasts, especially for those episodes involving the Main Event.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...eries-of-poker

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...-up-46-percent

WTF is the point of waiting till November for the final table then? They moved it to November so they could show all the preliminary events; so they could play the ME final table with no spoilers. Now wtf is the point if they aren't going to show and preliminary events. They just going to show the donkament days of the ME?? That is the whole point of November now? OMG i feel like GATCHALIAN already BRUH

Would of wanted the horse event switched with the ante up for africa, but obviously the producers are still clueless. There was alot of mistakes with last years series. They snubbed david singer win and decided not to broadcast the final table that galfond won which was completely stacked with big names. Lindgren winning his first was the only bright spot of that whole series.

IIRC, it was mostly the final table that got really good ratings last year.
In that case, why are they expanding day 1 coverage but keeping the final table to 2 hours. Since they are playing the final table over two days, why not show it over two days as well?

Who cares anyway, i personally stopped watching glorified flipping last year.
Give me cash games shows, not "i am allin", "i call" and "off to the races", donkeys pacing around the room to see which side the coin falls on this time.

"He needs a jack and a jack only, or he is wamboozled" as opposed to 200-500bb deep games on HSP.

Wow Really? How in the world can they not televise the 50k HORSE? Gotta say this list is hugely disappointing. It is a joke that they are televising Ante up for Africa before so much other deserving stuff.