ESPN Begins 2008 WSOP Coverage Tonight

ESPN’s tagline for its poker coverage is “Tuesday Night is Poker Night on ESPN.”  Tonight is a poker night fans have been waiting for, as the network’s coverage of the 2008 World Series of Poker begins at 8:00pm ET.   

Event #1, the $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em World Championship, will kick off the festivities, just as it kicked off this summer’s WSOP.  Tonight’s episode, as well as the following six Tuesday night shows, will run for two hours. 

From September 9 through October 28, the episodes will continue to be two hours, although they will start one hour later, at 9:00pm.  These shows will feature the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event.  Air time will move back to 8:00pm on November 4 for the WSOP Main Event final table preview show. 

And, of course, the big change this year is the delayed Main Event final table.  The final nine players in the Main Event were determined last week, but rather than continuing to play down to a winner, as has been the norm in previous years, WSOP organizers decided to move the final table to November 9-10.  This will not only (hopefully) give the WSOP and ESPN a chance to increase public interest in the players and the competition through various human interest pieces and other marketing efforts, but will also allow ESPN to air the final table episode on November 11, just hours after the winner is determined.  This “pseudo-live” broadcast will make it easier for poker fans to avoid hearing the results of the tournament before seeing it on television.