How to watch the World Series of Poker online live In Australia, you can watch the World Series of Poker on ESPN. The 2019 WSOP Main Event kicked off on 8 July and will continue until 16 July. Poker on TV schedule for poker shows with episodes on Dec 28, '20 - Jan 04, '21. Poker on TV listings for your favorite poker shows, including High Stakes Poker, the World Series of Poker, Poker.

If you’ve been battling with ESPN and PokerGo’s search function’s trying to get details on the 2020 WSOP Main Event Final Table Live Streams, you can hang up your keyboards now. It won’t be happening. Neither PokerGO nor ESPN will be showing live footage from this year’s Main Event(s).

There are several reasons for this and at least some of them are sensible.

One of the reasons is flexibility. Ty Stewart, the WSOP’s executive director, explained to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that it is “hard to plan for live, given all the players will need to be tested [for COVID] morning of. Our international champion needs to get through all the hoops of travel, etc… We are hopeful we can plan for the full experience of nine players, but some luck will be required. So edited programs are the way.”

Live streams are less flexible than edited broadcasts. Try scheduling one of those when half your stars might not turn up, and the other half might call in sick.

There’s also the fact that live streams require more people to be on site than edited streams. The producers, editors, commentators and sound mixers all have to be on-site or else remote co-ordinated. If you reschedule, those people all get paid for showing up.

This sort of thing gives TV types heart palpitations.

So it’s good business sense to just point your cameras at the players. Then collect what you need and send it off to some guy with an Avid suite.

Safety First

There’s also the issue of safety. With the brutal combination of COVID, the regular flu season, and people ignoring advice about Christmas gatherings, now is a good time to minimise your on-set staff requirements.

“We are kicking it old school with the 2020 Main Event,” Stewart said. “All the programs are edited. Partly so we can properly explain the unique format which came about on two continents, and partly because COVID has created so much uncertainty.”

Having additional people on set to make a live stream work isn’t just expensive if the whole thing gets canned. It also adds dozens of disease vectors to your workplace.

The WSOP is going small in your TV Guide because it needs to go small on set. Social distance saves lives.

A potted history of big pots

While the lack of live stream is a big break from recent tradition, it’s not wildly out of character for the show overall.

Since the 90s, ESPN has broadcast at least an episode or two of the WSOP final table. Things changed after 2003, when Chris Moneymaker had his epoch-defining win. After that, the Main Event coverage became a series. Multiple episodes charted the tale from Day 1a to heads up play.

Hungry for more content, ESPN started filming other final tables too. These were mostly hold’em events, and mostly when they were sure there’d be some big names at the table.

Then GSN brought out High Stakes Poker and proved that people would sit and watch every hand played for hour after hour, and the schedule swelled. They added more events, and longer coverage of the Main.

Hold’em exhaustion began to set in in the mid-2010s. So they tried the odd PLO table at first, then a couple of stud and draw tables too.

But the WSOP hit its peak in 2017 with the deal between PokerGO and ESPN. ESPN continued with a (mostly) edited schedule. PokerGO provided a (mostly) live schedule.

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And what a schedule. Dozens of final tables went out in their entirety. At least half a dozen different poker variants. It was poker Nirvana. 2018 and 2019 weren’t quite the same scale but still dwarfed the pre-PokerGO output. PokerGO continued to provide live coverage of the WSOP final tables, and the entire Main Event. ESPN did a mixed live and edited broadcast.

The edited programs went out over the course of weeks but peaked in a live Final Table coordinated both online and on ESPN. To make this work, the so-called November Nine would go home for a couple of months after the summer’s WSOP.

Then they’d reconvene in the studio the week after the last of the tape ran out at ESPN.

2020 changed everything

Now here we are.

Crowding 7,000 people into the recycled air of the Amazon Room seemed like buying your manslaughter in bulk. So the PokerGO-WSOP-ESPN-GGPoker pact has been lumped with this weird hybrid online-offline event. That’s a format that satisfies, pretty much, no one.

This year the November Nine are a little late. And there are eighteen or sixteen of them depending on how accepting you are of GGPoker’s disqualification rules. “The December Sixteen” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, though.

The international table has played out, and the U.S. leg is about to begin. And after that there will still be a heads up game between the winners of what were pretty much the world’s two biggest satellites.

With one of the International players boycotting the final table, Upeshka Da Silva on the sidelines for a positive COVID assay, and one of the heads up players stuck outside the U.S., the decision to go flexible seems to be paying off for Ty Stewart.

For the viewing public, it looks like we’ve got a long wait before we get to see the action. And even then we’ll get just six hours (minus ad time) of a WSOP Main Event that many people view as being not entirely real.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Featured image: Flickr

For the third consecutive year, the World Series of Poker Main Event final table is broadcasted live on ESPN. The 2019 WSOP Main Event is going full speed to the final table in an attempt to follow in the footsteps of defending champion John Cynn who took home $8,000,000 after defeating a field of 7,874 players. This year, 8,569 players signed up for the $10,000 poker tournament and the eventual winner goes home with a $10,000,000 payday.

Watch the final table on ESPN or your local ESPN affiliate. Viewers in non-ESPN or non-ESPN affiliated regions can watch the WSOP Main Event final table on PokerGO.

United States: ESPN’s family of networks is your home to the World Series of Poker Main Event final table. The live broadcast will begin on Sunday, July 14 at 10 pm E.T. on ESPN2. The final six players return the following day at 10 pm E.T. and a winner is crowned starting at 9 pm E.T. on Tuesday, July 16. Check your local listings.

Canada: The Sports Network, TSN, will provide live coverage of the WSOP Main Event final table throughout Canada. TSN GO will broadcast the final table via TV network simulcasts. Check your local listings.

Brazil: ESPN Brazil will provide live coverage of the WSOP Main Event final table. Check your local listings.

South America: ESPN Latin America provides live coverage in Antartica, Argentina, Aruba, Ascension Island, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Falkland Islands, Guatamala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela. Check your local listings.

Caribbean:ESPN and ESPN2 Caribbean will provide live coverage of the WSOP Main Event to Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Bonaire, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Dominica, Falkland Islands, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lucia, St Maarten, St Vincent/Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos and Cruise Ships. Check your local listings.

Australia and Oceania: ESPN and ESPN2 Pacific Rim will provide live coverage of the WSOP Main Event to Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Samoa, Tahiti, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Western Samoa. Check your local listings.

Israel: One Sport & Ananey will broadcast the WSOP Main Event final table for Israeli viewers. Check your local listings.

Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein: Sport 1 will broadcast the WSOP Main Event final table for viewers in these regions. Check your local listings.

Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania: Viasat will broadcast the WSOP Main Event final table for viewers in these regions. Check your local listings.

Spain: Telefonica will broadcast the WSOP Main Event final table. Check your local listings.

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United Kingdom and Ireland: BT Sport will provide live coverage of the WSOP Main Event final table throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. Check your local listings.

Rest of World: PokerGO will provide live coverage of the WSOP Main Event final table throughout the rest of the world. Countries with access to PokerGO’s live stream include France, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Czech Republic, Japan and more. Subscribe now.

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For additional information on how you can access WSOP Main Event Final Table coverage, check your local listings. You can also contact PokerGO customer support by emailing customerservice@pokergo.com or by calling 866-4-POKERGO (1-866-476-5374).