Joe Sebok entrepreneur owner of Pokeroad.com, son of Barry Greenstein, one-time wunderkind multi-table tournament player, main event casher (this year), and possible burgeoning multi-media darling of poker now has a TV Show. Sebok will be hosting Poker2Nite which will bring a half-hour televised look to the ins and outs of tournament poker, poker on tv, online poker, and all things poker. His co-host on the broadcast will be fellow iPodcaster Scott Huff who has hosted many different Pokerroad programs.
Sebok has loaded up the program with poker media A-Listers. Not to be confused with Hollywood A-Listers (Ben Affleck or Eva Longoria) or media A-Listers (Barbara Walters) or sports media A-Listers (Bill Simmons of ESPN.com) with connections to poker, but definitely poker media A-Listers, such as Lacey Jones and Dana Workman. Jones, who is a beautiful as she is capable, has been a tournament player and reporter for years now.
Seebok recently was in some hot water from the online poker community for accepting a sponsorship and a p.r. role in an online poker site that has had its fair share of scandals recently, but this show is perhaps an example of why he took on such a role. Online poker sites have sponsored shows like Face the Ace and a Million Dollar Challenge, involving Daniel Negreanu, to poor reviews and have failed to merge entertainment with poker.
Seebok’s show does what he knows but on a grander scale. It doesn’t try to take stuffy live pro poker players and make their dialouge with contestants carry a show. It avoids the game show format where escalating blinds make it more a crap-shoot than a poker match. Rather Poker2Nite caters to people who have been exposed to poker and might like to learn more but have never had a steady media outlet to cater to them. Now they do.
It’s a smart move by the producers and Joe Sebok. They bring a light and lively attitude to their podcasts and will do the same to a TV format. Like many successful studio shows, the band of friends will make the viewer feel like one of the guys and instead of watching a presentation feel like they are sitting amongst friends talking about poker. The View did it for women, the pregame Fox football show did it for football players, and now Poker2Nite will do it for poker fans.
Some of the segments will be “Classic Hands”, “Talk Soup,” “Check, Raise, Fold?” and hopefully the PokerRoad team will bring in some of their games and lively talking points from the Radio show. Joe Stapleton is a writer on both so there should be a healthy carry over of content.
Granted, many of the PokerRoad bits lean to a bit of an insider-esque knowledge and that may not translate to the casual fan or a new viewer, however it’s nice to see an attempt at least to to educate new viewers and players. Clearly Fox Sports Net has also shown a willingness to promote poker. Like ESPN and NBC this is just one of a continuing line of poker programming. Unfortunately, most of that programming outside of event coverage has been, to put it mildly, bad.
Let’s hope Poker2Nite gets enough of an opportunity to carve out an audience and is successful in bringing new players to the game. Sebok may be the just the guy for the job.