For those of you who have been following the 2013 World Series of Poker and have been eager to view it on television, your time has come. Tonight marks the first of this year’s WSOP broadcasts on ESPN, the revival of “Tuesday is Poker Night” on the Worldwide Leader.
Kicking off the schedule is the final table of the 2013 World Series of Poker Asia Pacific (WSOP APAC) Main Event, which took place in April at the famous Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. The telecast will be divided into two hour-long segments, running consecutively starting at 9:00pm ET.
ESPN will likely focus the majority of its attention on Daniel Negreanu for two main reasons: a) he was by far the most recognizable player at the table, especially considering the casual poker fans that will be tuning into the program, and b) he won the tournament. Negreanu held the second largest stack entering the eight-handed final table and did nothing to make anyone doubt that he was the favorite to win. By the time he got to heads-up play against Daniel Marton, he had an immense 11.01 million to 1.15 million chip lead, so barring anything crazy, the championship was all but his. Marton hung strong for a little while, managing to double-up a couple times, but he just couldn’t make up such a large deficit, eventually seeing his A-7 fall to Negreanu’s pocket deuces on the final hand.
The WSOP APAC Main Event kicked off one of the best runs of Negreanu’s live tournament career. After that million dollar win, he went on to finish fourth in the European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final in May ($420,912) and then seventh in the World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championship ($137,085). As an added bonus, Negreanu also finished fourth in a preliminary event at the WSOP APAC before the Main Event.
Daniel Negreanu added six cashes at the traditional World Series of Poker this summer, including a runner-up finish in the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball Event, to grab the second spot in the WSOP Player of the Year standings. With the WSOP Europe still to go, Negreanu has time to climb to number one.
Next Tuesday, ESPN will broadcast the WSOP National Championship final table, the end of an invitation-only tournament for the top performers on this past season’s WSOP Circuit. From then on, ESPN will air two hours of the WSOP Main Event every Tuesday night through October 29th, starting at 9:00pm ET. The only break in the schedule will come on September 3rd and September 10th.
The Main Event final table will be broadcast “virtually live” on a 15-minute delay on November 4th and November 5th.
