Break in Poker for the Best

January 29, 2009

Last year the organizers for the World Series of Poker tried something they hadn’t done before and were very pleased with the results. The poker association added a four month break between the main event and the final table. They had the poker tournament end in July and then they had the final table of poker players come back in October for the finishing round.

In doing this they established quite a build up for the final poker game and saw as a result many more people tuning in to watch than they had ever had before. Their no limit Texas Hold’em poker tournament will go on break again this year due to the popularity of last year’s decision.

This also let EPSN broadcast the game without people already knowing the winner, as they have seen in previous years. The poker tournament started with 6,844 players and by July there were only nine – and those nine came back to play in October. It was at that time that Peter Eastgate took the top prize of $9.15 million and became the poker tournament’s youngest winner ever.

The poker association and cable network officials were thrilled as the numbers went much higher than they had initially counted on them going. They said that ratings went up more than 50% for the final poker table over the previous year’s ratings. This told them that not only was it a good move, but that they needed to do the same thing this year.