Latest WSOP Changes

Caesars Interactive Entertainment, owner of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), announced this weekend that it has tweaked the schedule for the upcoming November Nine slightly in order to improve its television coverage.

The original schedule for the Main Event, which is still displayed on the WSOP’s official structure sheet, was for the final table to run from November 5th through November 7th. Now, everything has been moved back one day, with the final table starting on Sunday, November 6th at 11:30am PDT. Then, instead of taking a day off and bringing back the two finalists, they will take a day off and resume the final table at 5:00pm with the final three players.

All of this is being done so that ESPN can better cover the event. The entire final table will be broadcast virtually live, with just a 15-minute delay. The action will be shown, complete with hole cards and commentary, on both ESPN and ESPN2, as well as online at ESPN3.com. This is very similar to how ESPN covered the rest of the Main Event, the main difference being that the previous days of the tournament were shown with a 30-minute delay. The coverage generally received very positive reviews from the poker community, with people enjoying the commentary of Lon McEachern, David Tuckman, Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari, and Olivier Busquet. It is unknown at this time who will be announcing the final table, but it would not be surprising if it was this same group, or at least a subset of it, along with special guest commentators.

I will be there then so might run by and catch some of it if I have time.

I'll be arriving in Las Vegas on Nov 8 around 1pm. was thinking of going by the Rio to check it out, but was thinking it probably would not be very interesting sitting in the audience.

I'm guessing most poker rooms will have the 15 min delayed on their TVs, and I'll probably just play poker and watch that.

Wish I was there - - pretty sure I'd be watching every minute of it.

Going to fire up an older puter now so I'll have it up-to-date & ready to watch the WSOP ME final table (might have too many tables running on other puter... unless I go out early?... at least I'll get to watch the final table if I do).

Who are you picking for final 3?