After many months of effort by a group of great people, Poker Night in America finally made it’s national TV debut on Sunday June 29th. Unfortunately I was in a taxi in Queens N.Y. and missed it but I know it happened. Yes, I was monitoring Twitter.
The reaction from people that watched has been almost entirely positive. I think all would agree that it is a departure from what you’d expect with TV poker. The intention for the show is pretty simple: keep it fun, emphasize the personalities, tell some stories, and inject some lifestyle and reality aspects to the game, it’s players and the behind the scenes stuff (which is usually the most interesting).
Besides bringing some of the best poker personalities and pros to our cash game table, we’ll also be giving amateurs, celebs and civilians a chance to play. Lots of interesting possibilities lie ahead.
We’ll be delivering 29 episodes to CBS Sports Network this year and plan to produce many more episodes in 2015. That means fresh content almost every single week! We will work hard to keep making the show as good as it can be. All of us are excited about having this chance to create something new in poker TV and hope it can generate even more excitement and interest in poker.
Starting next week you’ll be able to watch the show on more then just CBS Sports Network. We are thrilled to be announcing more TV partners like Comcast Sports Network stations in Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore and Washington D.C. For those of you in the mountain states look for it next week on Altitude Sports Network out of Denver. Expect more RSN’s (regional sports nets) very soon.
Later this month we’ll start shooting Season 2 episodes at Maryland LIVE casino in Baltimore. Looking forward to catching up with some old friends and making some new ones. Two weeks later we head to Turning Stone casino for the Empire State Poker Classic, where we’ll film the final table of the tournament as well as two days of cash games.
I’d like to personally thank just a few folks for getting us to this point.
• Neil, Greg, David and Richard at Rush Street Gaming for having the faith and patience to finance and support this project.
• The great team at 888poker.com for jumping on board as our amazing title sponsor.
• The “crew” at Rush Street Productions in Fargo ND (and a few in Vegas).
• Our casino partners: Turning Stone Casino, Maryland LIVE, Rivers Pittsburgh and the Peppermill in Reno NV.