Tuning In To the Human Race

Yesterday afternoon I joined most of the world in watching the men’s 100-meter final from the 2012 London Olympics. Apparently something like 2 billion people were watching the race as it happened. Kind of incredible to imagine, really.

Was absolutely thrilling to watch, with Usain Bolt once again prevailing over what had to be the strongest ever field of sprinters. Bolt finished the race in 9.63 seconds -- the second-best ever time (after his own 9.58) -- with seven of the eight finalists finishing in less than 10 seconds. There were three Americans among the field, too, with Justin Gatlin of New York earning the bronze. Bolt’s fellow countryman from Jamaica, Yohan Blake, took the silver.

Like many here in the U.S., I didn’t bother waiting around the six-plus hours until 11:15 p.m. Eastern time to watch the delayed coverage on NBC, but rather viewed the race live online. Luckily I was watching the BBC 1 feed, as the online stream NBC was delivering apparently failed for just about everyone who tried to view it that way.

On the teevee, NBC was in fact showing an event live yesterday afternoon when the 100 meter race was happening, only it was in beach volleyball, a quarterfinal match involving one of the U.S. teams (April Ross and Jennifer Kessy) and a team from the Czech Republic (Marketa Slukova and Kristyna Kolocova). Actually that match had not even started, but NBC was offering some pre-match commentary while the sprinters were running over at the Olympic Stadium.

Like many, I found myself scratching my head over NBC’s decision to withhold live coverage of the race. I understand ratings for the prime time hours have been good (as in up from previous Olympics) which I suppose means the strategy of showing events delayed and edited is working for the network. This despite the fact that NBC shows 20 full minutes’ worth of commercials during each hour of prime time (no shinola).

But this was a weekend afternoon, a popular time for Americans to watch live sports on television. And something more than a quarter of the world’s population was watching the event as it happened.

Sure, I get that this is all business and someone somewhere pulling the strings at NBC has calculated that if the network aired the 100-meter final live late Sunday afternoon that would affect the viewership six-plus hours later significantly enough to warrant suppressing the live coverage. That said, I’m one of those who sometimes likes to pretend the Olympics are about something other than money -- say, the intangible value that might come from sharing the experience of witnessing some positive form of human achievement along with 2 billion other people.

But I’m also cynical enough to know that in reality that’s probably just happy-hippy-talk.

It’s tempting to draw some sort of connection between what NBC is doing with the Olympics and ESPN’s coverage of the WSOP this year (this is a poker blog, after all). Recall last year’s experiment with the “almost live” coverage of Days 3-8 of the Main Event. Those shows in July were well received and drew relatively large audiences, but the later edited shows saw a precipitous drop in ratings.

Some later attributed lower ratings for the “highlight” shows as having been caused in part by the earlier live coverage -- that is, viewers who watched in July didn’t bother to watch again later on. So this year there was no “almost live” coverage of the Main Event. (The edited shows from this year’s ME begin on ESPN next week.)

Of course, comparing a poker tournament to an event like the one that happened yesterday is perhaps not quite fair. As fun as the “almost live” WSOP coverage could be for some of us to watch, one could reasonably argue an event like a lengthy poker tournament is in fact better presented in highlight form or at least edited in some fashion. And while any delay necessarily affects the suspense inherently created by a live competition, it isn’t as vital a concern with poker as with sporting events such as the 100-meter dash.

That’s not even mentioning how nothing will ever happen in poker that could possibly attract the attention of 2 billion people. Heck, I don’t believe ESPN has ever even gotten 2 million people to watch the WSOP.

There are still plenty of other live events being carried on NBC’s several affiliated networks for Americans to enjoy, including the basketball and soccer (both of which have dedicated channels showing all games/matches live).

Still feels like NBC stumbled significantly yesterday, though, in its chase for ratings. There was something bigger going on. More human.

“It’s no fun when Scotty got the gun”

Like most of you, I took a break from the Olympics this week to watch ESPN’s coverage of the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. final table from the 2008 World Series of Poker (Event No. 45). As I wrote back in late June, I saw exactly zero hands of this heralded event when it happened. I was off at the beginning of it (Vera was in for her visit), then was live blogging other events for PokerNews during the remainder of its five-day run.

I do remember the night of the H.O.R.S.E. final table. Pojo and I were over in the Brasilia Room covering the long, long Day 2 of Event No. 49 (another one of the $1,500 no-limit hold’em events). It was getting close to dawn by the time we finally left, although we knew as we were heading out into the Rio parking lot that the H.O.R.S.E. was still going on. Too whipped to go check it out, though. (It would be another hour or so before it finally concluded.)

Every now and then during the night we’d click over to see what Mean Gene and Change100 were reporting and check those chip counts, just like everyone else. We also heard some stories during the night from those who’d been over there about how raucous a scene it was, and how Scotty Nguyen, the eventual champ, was pretty much blotto. “How is ESPN gonna edit this?” was a commonly heard question for the next day or two, with most agreeing it was going to be difficult to preserve the good reputation of the “Prince of Poker” given the extreme nature of his behavior.

The show was compelling, all right. And a bit jaw-dropping at times. Definitely not one I’d choose as a way of introducing poker to someone unfamiliar with the game.

Mean Gene says the night was “filled with bad energy,” and one definitely picks up on that atmosphere from the telecast. Gene also mentions that while he knew a lot about what went on that night, he “really had no idea that Michael DeMichele and Scotty had locked horns as they did.” I can definitely understand how some of what went on happened without our guys seeing or hearing it. When we reported on those final tables, we were stationed a good 12 feet away, too far to hear most table talk. (That wasn’t the case at other final tables, or on earlier days of tourneys, when we could get much closer and hear and see much more.)

Watching Nguyen’s drunken descent from jovial to disagreeable to tactless to wretched (made to seem more rapid thanks to the necessarily condensed coverage) brought a few different memories and/or ideas to mind.

One was that experience we’ve all had at some point or another, being around someone whose state of drunkenness has removed him or her from the realm of communicativeness but not consciousness, and suddenly realizing the “nasty” has come out. Now your friend has suddenly become dangerous. “It’s no fun when Scotty got the gun, baby” was the line that most evoked that unpleasant feeling for me. Uhhh... somebody... make sure to get his keys, okay?

The show also reminded me of a couple of moments from the 2007 WSOP. One was early in the series, Event No. 24, the $3,000 Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo event won by Eli Elezra. Once Elezra and Scotty Nguyen had made it to heads up, the drinks began to flow. B.J. Nemeth described it as a “carnival atmosphere” in his reporting. That sounded like a mostly harmless, fun time in which two pros with a friendship and history (and a ton of side bets that dwarfed the prize pool) weren’t terribly concerned with who came out on top. I was also reminded of Scotty Nguyen’s disappointing blow up in the Main Event from last year in which some of that mean-spiritedness we saw more extensively displayed this week was captured and shown in ESPN’s coverage.

Finally, I found myself involuntarily comparing Nguyen’s behavior to other examples of what might be deemed poor sportsmanship. Perhaps not really a valid comparison, but I couldn’t help thinking along those lines, anyway.

This week the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, strongly criticized Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt for his behavior at the conclusion of the men’s 100-meter final, won by Bolt (who broke a world record in doing so). Well ahead of the field with twenty meters remaining, Bolt actually slowed his pace, looked to the crowd, and held his hands out to each side -- a bit of early celebrating. “That’s not the way we perceive being a champion,” said Rogge, adding that in his opinion Bolt “should show more respect for his competitors and... not make gestures like the one he made in the 100 meters.”

Unsurprisingly, Rogge’s comments have provoked a lot of debate. I’m frankly not too interested in judging either Nguyen or Bolt. I agree that good sportsmanship -- even in poker -- is a trait to be valued. I think also that highly-competitive endeavors like Olympic track and field or poker introduce inordinate stressors upon those who participate in them. And those participants, being human, necessarily react with wildly varying degrees of skill, judgment, and/or tact.

If you haven’t heard Tommy Angelo on this week’s Two Plus Two Pokercast, I highly recommend the interview. As Angelo does in his book Elements of Poker, in the interview he points out numerous truths (or “elements”) of poker a lot of us probably recognize but do not necessarily appreciate very much.

At one point in the discussion he characterizes the stressfulness of poker in a particularly accurate way. “Poker really tests us,” Angelo says. “We have a lot of hardship. We have not just the bad beats [to endure], but there’s money involved. And then there’s the boredom factor, and then you’ve got people there agitating you.... [E]very single possible problem that we encounter in our regular lives is... brought to bear in this little microcosm of the poker table.”

Angelo goes on to say how that makes poker an “opportunity to practice dealing with all that stuff” and thus be able to handle those challenges when they come up away from the poker table. But I think some folks -- including those who play at the highest levels and for the highest stakes -- don’t react that way. Rather, when presented with these immense stressors, they react erratically, perhaps in ways deemed inappropriate to others.

Or they react by trying to avoid ’em. Thus comes the cry, “Cocktails!” Or, in Nguyen’s case: “Where’re the f*cking cocktails, man? What’s up with this, man? We play this way forever?”

Not apologizing for anybody here. (Looks like Nguyen has done some of that.) Just sorting through some of the reasons why, perhaps, people act the way they do in these situations.