Know when to fold ‘em.

Today not only marks my return to the blog but also the return of Celebrity Poker Showdown (CPS). Tonight the Bravo show starts a new season with mostly b-list celebrities playing Texas Hold ‘Em for their favorite charities. Like all poker shows in the last few years CPS started out with huge ratings. Poker was our new national pastime and we couldn’t get enough of it no matter who was playing.
As someone who considered himself a poker fan/player prior to Chris Moneymaker’s trend setting win at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), I was cold at first to the celebs. Why would I want to watch a bunch of no nothings make bonehead bets and calls? The answers came back in spades; it was funny, it was quick in that each round of the tourney ends each episode, and best of all it usually made me feel good about my own poker prowess.

Now we’re starting up another tournament and I’m not feeling the magic. I could blame Bravo for scrapping the bottom of the celeb barrel but they’ve still got too much goodwill from me in escrow, for shelving Kevin Pollock for Dave Foley a few years back. No, I think the blame goes to the poker movement in general.

A quick search of poker on my DVR brings back 72 results in the span of 10 days. With the different lengths of the various programs it broke down to about 8 hours a day of poker programming. That my friends, is what you call overkill. Back in the day the televised poker tourneys meant something, with events like the WSOP and the US Poker Open. When the Travel Channel started their series of shows called the World Poker Tour it often included many international players and often filled the gaps between the major televised events. CSP filled the celebrity niche and it seemed like we had achieved poker nirvana. Of course when there’s a buck to be made, TV executives never shy away. Now we’ve got more manufactured all star tournaments then you can shake a stick at. We’ve got pros on a battle of the sexes show. We’ve even got WSOP satellite tourneys. Plus there’s the teaching shows, the infomercials, and the CSP knockoffs. It’s all too much and me thinks the public might be rebelling. The buzz on poker seems to be down and given our country’s short attention span that might be a natural progression. However I’d argue that when you saturate the airwaves you take away the uniqueness of the experience. It’s a lesson Regis Philbin learned, and one poker and Howie Mandel will soon.