The nationally televised 2003 World Series of Poker victory by everyman Chris Moneymaker inspired a boom in poker that produced impressive results: everyone from Don Cheadle to George Constanza was lining up to register for exponentially growing tournament fields.
Seven years later, the honeymoon is over. The dwindling fields at nearly every major poker circuit are evidence that dead money dreamers are no longer willing to take blind shots at being the next Mikey McDermott. Rich flounders once willing to plop down 10K for a casual afternoon of degeneracy suddenly find themselves pinching pennies at the Circus Circus buffet line. The donkeys are officially dead.
On the surface, the 2010 Heads Up Poker championship provides the perfect remedy: the opportunity to market poker's brightest stars in a 64-player free for all on national television. What better event to revive the dormant mainstream interest in poker than watching Cheadle's gutshot take down an irate Phil Hellmuth's pocket aces?
The problem is no one's watching. Ratings for the star-studded event (by poker standards) have dropped over 54% since it's inaugural 2006 season. Both the WPT and High Stakes Poker (a favorite in the poker community) were dropped by their respective networks for the second straight season. The quick hook NBC gave poorly produced Face the Ace after just two episodes is further proof that poker's biggest names aren't appealing to audiences outside of die-hard poker fans.
The 2010 heads up championship provided its usual array of bracket busting upsets: Annette Obrestad took down Hellmuth in the first round, Monkeymaker toppled Patrick Antonius and Leo Wolpert to fight his way into the sweet sixteen. How about Jerry Yang deposing of Mike Matusow, Jennifer Harman, and Barry Greenstein? Such earth shattering upsets have to help spike the ratings when the event airs in mid-April, right?
Expect the heads up championship to be dealt in last regardless. Here's why:
1. The spoiler effect: Joe public already knows who won. While the diehards will watch anyways, the casual fans televised poker needs lose interest because they already know the outcome. This is a problem poker producers have been trying to solve by shortening the gap between the actual event and airdates but the necessity of editing holecam footage make delays unavoidable. Imagine the dip in NFL ratings if fans already had access to final boxscores or the difference in box office returns for a movie if the audience already knew the final twist when deciding to watch the film?
2. The underdog factor just isn't the same. In the poker world, Jerry Yang beating Barry Greenstein in a best of three heads up match is the equivalent of your local community college beating UNC in the first round of the NCAA tourney. The rub here is that David beating Goliath in a couple hands of tournament poker doesn't generate buzz because upsets are more the norm than exception in poker. Post Moneymaker, we've seen an abundance of questionable poker talents win bracelet after bracelet and the public has grown immune to their rags to riches stories. When a recognizable pro manages to navigate a minefield of amateurs and win it's great for poker but when an anonymous logger from West Virginia wins it's no longer newsworthy. Guess which happens more often?
3. Poker remains taboo. The UIGEA continues to wreak havoc on the bread and butter of the game, online poker. A 2009 episode where the US government unexpectedly seized $34 million in online player's funds certainly stunted the online growth poker desperately relies on. Poker-related programming is blacked out in certain areas (Utah, of course) of the country due to local gaming laws. The bottom line is that for every Hellmuth Milwaukee's Best advertisement you see on TV there are five networks who turned down sponsorship in fear of reprisal from anti-poker conservatives. Last week's brazen armed robbery of the $1.1 million cash prize during a televised European Poker Tour event doesn't help either.
While it's obvious poker will never take over primetime TV, it still has a few rebuys left. Producers for the World Series of Poker show a willingness to tweak their presentation with innovative ideas such as creating the marketing friendly November Nine concept or switching the final table of the 50K H.O.R.S.E event into an viewer friendly format of no-limit hold 'em shootout.
While adjustments such as these dilute the purity of poker, the game is entering an era where everyone needs to make concessions to keep poker on TV. Producers and tournament directors need to lower expectations of monolithic televised events bringing in American Idol worthy numbers and create a more realistic and sustainable model that can keep networks happy. If they continue to push gimmicky shows featuring an overweight plumber going heads up with Phil Ivey, poker fans can expect to be playing an excruciatingly long game of 52-card pick up in the future. Well at least we have baseball handicapping now!
Well I guess everything really is bigger in Texas. Including spring training signing. Only thing is it happened in Arizona. So the Arlington, Texas baseball team now has 14 new players for 2010.
The players that they signed were SS Elvis Andrus, infielder Joaquin Arias, OF Nelson Cruz, 1st baseman Chris Davis, pitchers Matt Harrison, Eric Hurley, Warner Madrigal, Guillermo Moscoso, Darren O'Day, Alexi Ogando and Pedro Strop and catchers Max Ramirez, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Taylor Teagarden.
Andrus played his rookie campaign in 2009 and batted .267 with six homers and 40 RBI in 145 games.
Outfielder Nelson Cruz has played 5 seasons as of last year and has a career-high 128 games batted .260 with 33 home runs and 76 RBI.
Davis took over the starting role at first base last season for Texas and over 113 games batted .238 with 21 homers and 59 RBI.
Harrison started 11 games and went 4-5 with a 6.11 earned run average in 2009.
Saltalamacchia played in 84 games last year, his 3rd in MLB, and had a batting average of .233 with nine homers and 34 RBI, while Teagarden played 60 games and had a .217 average with 6 home runs & 24 runs batted in for his 2nd season in the majors.
Our good friends over at Around the Horn have just made the iPhone world that much greater of a place in the world. They have just released their brand new iPhone application.
So if you have an iphone application please feel free to check it out and you can see their website as well below:
While we wait for Baseball to start up again we are going to keep you in the loop in whats going on in our world thanks to our friends over at the APCW.
The all time Chicago White sox great who had one of the greatest eyes in the game known as the Big Hurt calls it quits. Sox to retire uniform number
Two-time American League MVP Frank Thomas, one of the most feared hitters of his generation, has announced his retirement after playing 19 seasons in the majors.
Thomas made the announcement Thursday at a function in Chicago and the White Sox, the team for which he spent the majority of his career, said Friday they would honor him with a special day next August and retire his uniform number.
"I am officially retired. It's time. It's in my heart and it's time to move on," Thomas told Chicago's Comcast SportsNet Thursday night. "I'm proud to say I'm ready to retire. I enjoyed a wonderful career and have nothing left to prove. It's a young man's game now."
A five-time All-Star and four-time Silver Slugger Award winner, Thomas spent 16 seasons with the Chicago White Sox (1990-2005) before finishing up in Toronto and Oakland. He hit a combined eight homers with 30 RBI in 71 games in 2008 and failed to land a team last season.
The burly 6-foot-5 Thomas, who played first base when he wasn't penciled in as a designated hitter, compiled a lifetime .301 batting average with 521 home runs and 1,704 RBI.
He won back-to-back AL MVP honors in 1993 and '94 with Chicago, which will officially retire his No. 35 on August 29. In those award-winning seasons, he cranked out a combined 79 homers with 229 RBI and hit a career-high .353 in 1994. His last year with the White Sox ended with a World Series championship, the first for the franchise since 1917.
"Everyone who enjoyed watching Frank Thomas perform during his outstanding career with the White Sox quickly realized we were watching one of the greatest offensive players of all-time, a player destined to re-write our club's record books," said Jerry Reinsdorf, chairman of the White Sox. "When your career comes to an end and your body of work is compared to Hall of Famers like Mel Ott, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, you truly rank among baseball royalty. I believe it is only a matter of time until Frank receives the game's greatest honor in Cooperstown and he unquestionably deserves the honor of being recognized among the elite White Sox players in this franchise's history by having his No. 35 retired."
Thomas, now 41, wound up with 2,468 hits and 1,667 walks and a robust .419 on- base percentage, good for 21st all-time.
He'll become eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.
This post was made possible by our fellow friends at ZonQ Sports
Dodgers avoid arbitration with Billingsley and Kemp
Los Angeles, CA (Sports Network) - The Los Angeles Dodgers have avoided arbitration with two of their young stars, as they signed right-hander Chad Billingsley to a one-year deal and outfielder Matt Kemp to two-year pact.
Financial details were not known.
Billingsley, whose offseason a year ago was marred by a broken tibia suffered from a fall on the ice, posted a 9-4 mark with a 3.38 earned run average over the first half of last season, earning him a spot on the National League All- Star team. However, he struggled after the break, going 3-7 with a 5.20 ERA and was winless in his final seven starts of the year.
The 25-year-old hurler, who was a first round pick of the Dodgers in 2003, is 47-30 lifetime with a 3.55 ERA in 129 games, 100 of which have been starts.
Kemp, meanwhile, becomes the first arbitration-eligible Dodger to receive a multi-year contract since 2005. He is coming off his best full year as a pro, as he posted career bests with 26 home runs and 101 RBI, while hitting .297.
For his career, the 25-year-old Kemp is a .299 hitter with a 61 home runs and 242 RBI in 464 games.
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