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Challenge TV launches two new poker TV shows sponsored by 888 casino
Published: 2006-04-03
 The World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker have two new contenders to compete against for TV airtime: Women's Poker and Showbiz Poker, two new TV shows about to launch on the UK's Challenge TV channel. Both TV shows will introduce and broadcast themed poker games (unlike the generic poker tournament play in WPT and WSOP) and are sponsored by 888.com's Pacific Poker. Very soon there won't be a single night of the week where you can't catch a game. And won't that be fantastic!
Pull out your TV guides, PDA's and fridge magnets - grab every PostIt you can find - do whatever you have to to be glued to the small screen, starting tonight! Women's Poker will air at 10pm tonight and will run every night of the week for two weeks. Showbiz Poker kicks off on 17 April 2006 and will flight every week night at 10.30pm. A DVD recorder or TiVo might come in handy if you want to start your own poker championship library at home! Watch play after play of professional and celebrity poker like you've never seen before. Tension, drama and high stakes are guaranteed!
Women's Poker will showcase some of the best female card players on the planet. Professional players will ante up side-by-side with celeb card sharks and viewers at home. Showbiz Poker will put the 888 poker room's money where their mouth is, with a prize pot of 25,000 Pounds Sterling and celebrity tournament action to the max.
The female of the poker species has been slowly creeping their way into tournament and championship seats of all the major poker playoffs. It was only a matter of time until there were enough top-skill poker ladies to face off in a women-only competition. Challenge TV spokesperson Celia Taylor had this to say, "We're always ahead of the game in poker programming and women are about to clean up in the male dominated poker world!"
Challenge TV has long been a favorite of UK poker enthusiasts, with other popular shows that include the World Poker Tour, Ultimate Poker Challenge, World Series of Poker and Celebrity Poker Showdown.
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Vegas Neonopolis to host Fox Sports / Mansionpoker Poker Dome
Published: 2006-04-03
 by Joseph Smith
MANSIONpoker.net and FOX Sports have partnered to bring to television the most ambitious poker project to date. MANSIONpoker.net Poker Dome Series has finally found a home in downtown Las Vegas at the Neonopolis mall located a block south of the end of the light canopy over Fremont Street. Three of the theatres at Neonopolis are being transformed into the Poker Dome. The Poker Dome is the world's first custom designed poker arena that will accommodate an audience of 200 around a final poker table enclosed in a glass dome of silence, ala the old TV series, Get Smart. Fans sitting in stadium style seating around the ultra-tech poker table will have considerable inside information displayed real time on plasma monitors. FOX says this new venue promises to be "NASCAR for Poker."
Players will be enclosed in close, full view from a sound proofed one way glass dome that prevents them from seeing or hearing anything from the audience. The latest in high tech poker tables will have the usual hole card cameras and rabbit hunting cameras plus close-ups of all the action on the felt, discarded cards, even burn cards will all be fed to the plasma displays for the audience. Table size close-ups of the players allows for scrutiny that's better than real. All of the players will be miked-up so the audience can hear all of the table talk. Another novel addition is the player's heart rates are displayed real time from a telemetry link to vital sign monitors wired to each player. What's the probability of getting your poker opponents to wear one of these devices? Will this be another television first when we get to see and hear a player having a heart attack?
The Poker Dome is being built in the space currently occupied by three of the movie theaters. Hopefully, live tournament poker will prove to be a better drawing card than Mary Poppins was for Neonopolis, downtown's biggest public funded white elephant. Apparently, not as many people as originally estimated wanted to bring the kids to seedy downtown to see a movie. Maybe poker will be the attraction that does the trick for the neon loser. Neonopolis has had a difficult time attracting and holding onto tenants for the city financed mall boondoggle. I was there when it opened with much fanfare and posturing by local politicians busy patting themselves on the back for having wisely spent millions of taxpayer's dollars on this miraculous 'genesis' machine for downtrodden downtown Las Vegas.
The country's happiest mayor, Oscar Goodman, said this is another step towards making the neon project a success along with today's opening today of two new restaurants, Hennessey's Irish Pub and Mickey Finnz Fish House & Bar just across Fremont Neonopolis. FOX Sports executive vice president of programming and production, George Greenberg, said the Poker Dome will offer free admission and no alcohol (guess we won't be seeing much of Hiszonner Oscar Goodman). Another innovation is something that MansionPoker.net has added called "Speed Poker." Instead of playing 15-20 hands per hour speed poker kicks it up to 80-100 hands per hour by setting a fifteen second time limit on each player. This might prove to be a detriment to the fickle public's acceptance of this new brand of poker show. On the other hand, it may be a stroke of genius with the TV viewers, most of whom have very little actual tournament poker experience, but are TV viewing experts. They get to see many more hands and playing situations and this could prove to be a big plus in the market that counts, the big dollar TV market.
This venue certainly has a shot at being a success. I didn't care for the time clock on a previous TV poker show experiment and will approach this one with the open mind of a TV viewer instead of a poker purist. The FOX people have sprung for a three year lease so they have confidence in the Poker Dome concept and production project. They certainly have pockets deep enough for the project, plenty of big-time sports broadcast experience and don't forget about that built-in backbone-size bandwidth to the general viewing public. Partnered with their online qualifying poker room, MANSIONpoker.net they should have no trouble producing nine players each week for the inaugural season. I expect they will salt the table with various qualified well known professional poker players, at least I hope so. Convincing the public to tune in for another poker show regardless of the bells and whistles will be a hard sell without some of the stars of the sport at each week's game. The FOX Sports people are smart as a fox and just as quick so they will alter the production as required for success.
The first of the weekly tournaments is scheduled for May 20 with players qualifying for the final table at MANSIONpoker.net. The tournaments will continue for 43 weeks through the $1 million season finale. On a related note a Mega Event is scheduled for six players that plunk down $10 million each in a winner take the whole $60 million, to be held at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia in July, 2006. They already have one sign-up, Phil Ivey. Mr. Poker himself has plunked down his 10 mil and waits for the other five players. I've decided to make Phil the favorite to win this one without even knowing the other five. Surely, one of the will be heads-up ace, all American billionaire and hailing from Texas, Andy Beal. If you can't make this one there will be another next year with the take-all purse climbing to $75 million, then in 2008 it moves up to $100 million. Don't them downunders have any respect for money? Just how bold or utterly stupid do you have to be to risk $100 million on the turn of a card?
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