Boy, are we lucky! CP WPT Coverage

[BJ Nemeth]

J.C. Gloves -- I never take the criticisms personally. Like I said, I think your comments are fair for these first few days. There are going to be some growing pains during this first tournament under the WPT/Card Player deal as we reporters deal with new admin systems and the hardworking tech guys in the background try to get everything to communicate properly.

Actually, there is one specific criticism I should address. When a post is sent to WorldPokerTour.com, it is automatically transferred to CardPlayer.com. Unfortunately, if we go back in to change a post (to fix an error, add more information, etc.), the change does NOT update to CardPlayer.com. Unless you're constantly hitting refresh, you never realize how often us field reporters go back and fix our mistakes in the first minute or so. Those corrections haven't made it to CardPlayer.com, but the computer programmers will hopefully have a fix for that soon.

I am very optimistic that the coverage will continually improve. The WPT staff is very committed to creating the best tournament reporting software possible, which is one of the reasons why I signed a season-long contract as their lead tournament reporter.

I don't want to get involved in the philosophical arguments about the various exclusive media deals in poker right now (WSOP/CardPlayer '06, WSOP/Bluff/PokerNews '05, WPT/CardPlayer '07), but my goal is, and always has been, to provide the best possible coverage I can, given the limitations of the medium. (And there are quite a few.)

Suggestions and constructive criticisms are always welcome. I'm planning to set up a dedicated email address (probably after this tourney) where people can send errors during the tournaments, so they can be corrected quickly. Stay tuned, and I promise it will get better.

[jsmith5]

BJ is the best in the biz. Without him, this marriage would be doomed to fail.

I haven't chimed in on any of the posts yet simply because the deal is done and it's not going to change. Period. This was a great move by CardPlayer and the WPT needs the money (they're on GSN...think about it).

It sucks that PokerWire is busto since we put together an incredible team that never quite made it onto the circuit (when I came on board there were 2 employees, just before this announcement we were up to 9 including the radio show).

I know all of the people on the floor for the combined team and I think it's only a matter of time before things get better. As long as none of the CP brass pisses off BJ too much, he'll make this as good as it can be.

That being said, there are two primary factors that make this whole deal suck:

1. Lack of complete coverage. I'm sorry but nobody can tell me that having one team of reporters on the floor for one website is better than having 5-10 teams, at least on the first three days. There's simply too much going on to get everything you need to know from six people.

2. The lack of "competition" will reduce the quality of overal coverage. While there has never been a sense of one-upmanship between all of us on the ground level (we left that to the execs at CP and Bluff), there was always a need to give it your best effort with all of the other sites trying to cover the same event.

[jogsxyz]

You need a standard form for data entry.
Minimize the key strokes for the reporters.

Table # _____________
button ______________
flop ________________
turn,river __________

summary .................
..........................
...........................

Use seat numbers to designate the players. A
legend with the seating should be in a computer
file. This file must be updated with every
seat change. The computer will know the player
by his seat #.
On the final day the top line would be the hand #
instead of table #.

[J.C. Gloves]

BJ,

I'll stay optimistic. Again, thx for all of you're hard work. One suggestion: If ever possible, could you guys include stack sizes of the players involved in a particular post b4 any of their action(s) occurs? Would make for a much clearer picture of the gravity of certain bets/calls ppl make relating to their stack ATM. I'm aware that this is probably one of the most difficult stats to acquire on the spot and can understand if it just won't be possible, but wherever it is possible...? Much appreciated [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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Jeremiah,

Sux about what happened to pokerwire and the like. I also agree w/ your two points. At the beginning of a big tourney there is really nothing of note except who is there and where they are. I do wish there was more "meat" in some spots, but this doesn't take away from the detailed coverage that takes place near the ends of these majors.

The competition side of the reporting would make for BETTER coverage, I totally agree. Everyone would want ppl to read their site for accuracy and keep coming back to them. This would continue to improve all coverage and get sites to try new avenues (i.e. the pro blogs during the event addition @ some sites). All for the growth of the message that is tournament poker, bit of a setback now tho.

[sketchy1]

BJ, I've always thought you were one of the best in the biz. Plz hire Jeremiah, as just adding one more smart head to the mix will fix a lot of these errors. The more intelligent eyes reading your updates, the more often errors will be fixed before they are published.

[jogsxyz]

Buy RFID chips as suggested by Andy Bloch. Every
final table could use the same chips. Regular
viewers would easily see the size of player's
chip stacks. No need to waste time counting the
all-in player's stack.

[jsmith5]

[ QUOTE ]
BJ, I've always thought you were one of the best in the biz. Plz hire Jeremiah, as just adding one more smart head to the mix will fix a lot of these errors. The more intelligent eyes reading your updates, the more often errors will be fixed before they are published.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sketchy1, I appreciate the thought but I am moving on to a really cool project (along with a few pokerwire peeps...more details soon). Also, I worked for CardPlayer once and there's not a chance I would ever do it again.

[hime]

So this means Pokerwire Radio is dead?

[stephenNUTS]

[ QUOTE ]
BJ,

I'll stay optimistic. Again, thx for all of you're hard work. One suggestion: If ever possible, could you guys include stack sizes of the players involved in a particular post b4 any of their action(s) occurs? Would make for a much clearer picture of the gravity of certain bets/calls ppl make relating to their stack ATM. I'm aware that this is probably one of the most difficult stats to acquire on the spot and can understand if it just won't be possible, but wherever it is possible...? Much appreciated [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jeremiah,

Sux about what happened to pokerwire and the like. I also agree w/ your two points. At the beginning of a big tourney there is really nothing of note except who is there and where they are. I do wish there was more "meat" in some spots, but this doesn't take away from the detailed coverage that takes place near the ends of these majors.

The competition side of the reporting would make for BETTER coverage, I totally agree. Everyone would want ppl to read their site for accuracy and keep coming back to them. This would continue to improve all coverage and get sites to try new avenues (i.e. the pro blogs during the event addition @ some sites). All for the growth of the message that is tournament poker, bit of a setback now tho.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice Post JC!
Ditto

~stephen feraca [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[BenTurpen]

[ QUOTE ]
BJ, I've always thought you were one of the best in the biz. Plz hire Jeremiah, as just adding one more smart head to the mix will fix a lot of these errors. The more intelligent eyes reading your updates, the more often errors will be fixed before they are published.

[/ QUOTE ]