Unprecedented:
Sometimes American culture drops a present into our laps that’s just so damn good, we not only can’t ignore it, but somehow it inherently changes who we are and how we live our lives.
Chances are, no matter why you’re reading this, discovering poker was yours. I, like many of you, became obsessed, infatuated, even addicted to the game sometime around 2003. Coincidentally, this is the same year we were all introduced to a new reality show from ESPN unlike any before it: the World Series of Poker.
And while seeing the game on ESPN was familiar, the characters, the commentary, and the backdrop – as well as the tales of riches and woes and highs and lows – was anything but.
Granted, grainy productions of old tournaments that hardly featured anyone under forty years old had peppered the network’s late-night time slots for years before 2003. But watching that 2003 broadcast, it was clear that those days were long gone. Hole-card cams? Player profi les? Commentators who kept us awake... and laughing?
“(The network) took a pretty big shot with this at the time,” said Jamie Horowitz, executive producer in charge of ESPN’s poker programming, a job he took in 2006 after successfully launching the National Heads-Up Poker Championship on NBC. “I don’t think there were many out there willing to wager their career that this would work. I mean, no one knew if it would resonate.” Turns out, it was a lock. And, of course, wherever there’s a lock, there’s always a key.
For the last fi ve years, the method behind ESPN’s ability to reinvent poker on television – as well as those who are responsible for making it happen – has been under a proverbial lock and key; a well-kept industry secret that, should its blueprint for success get out, could spawn competitors and copycats left and right.
Of course, now that fi ve years have passed – with plenty of shows having come and gone, and still none even comparable – the network was willing to give BLUFF an unprecedented peek behind the scenes during the 2008 WSOP.
So while most came to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino the week of the Main Event in hopes of capturing the $9 million fi rst prize, there I was – as both a journalist and a fan who’s wondered for years how it all goes down behind ESPN’s bright lights – hoping to fi nd the $10 million story.
A story that began with two guys, Matt Maranz and Dave Swartz, who knew nothing about poker but somehow took an idea and formed an amazing collaborative relationship with a network giant that – in all its years and all its glory – had never seen anything like it.
A story that’s one of the most interesting in a game chock full of them, though somehow has never been told. Until now.
‘THEY’RE HERE, THEY’RE THERE... THEY’RE EVERYWHERE’
For those who’ve never been to the Rio’s Amazon room it’s a scene unlike any other. No matter which one of the many doors you walk in, your ears immediately dance with the sounds of riffl ing chips and the seemingly endless table chit-chat. Huge lights hover down low above every table – illuminating even more of an already spectacular scene – while above them sit what seems to be miles of catwalk-like rafters holding everything from soft, fl owing banner ads to security cameras watching every move. And of course, tucked away in the corner is the famous ESPN feature table stage – this year called the Milwaukee’s Best Light Lounge – where pretty much anyone can come and have a beer, grab a seat, and watch a fi nal table. While the feature table looks scorching under the hot lights, the stage area itself is dimly lit, with rows of chairs and bleachers surrounding it. There are cameras everywhere and a mini-jumbotron of sorts with plasma TVs displaying the live action directly above the table. It’s all backdropped by a long, fl owing, purple velvet curtain broken up only by a bookcase-like structure displaying the Corum WSOP bracelets – one per shelf – and bundles of prize money stacked neatly into a pyramid. (What many don’t know, however, is that the stacks of cash are nothing more than a prop used over and over again, year after year. In fact, each one contains just two $100 bills around the outside of every bundle, while $1 bills fi ll the void in between. And while it’s certainly real money – somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 – it’s nowhere close to the real amount a player takes home for any non-Main Event WSOP win. The only time the real denomination of cash is brought out is for the Main Event champion.)
It was July 1, two days before the start of the Main Event. Within minutes after entering the Rio, I found Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi going for his fi rst bracelet at the ESPN feature table in the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha Championship, while Phil Hellmuth was at the fi nal table of the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. event – going for historic bracelet number twelve – on ESPN’s secondary feature table just outside the main stage.
But I wasn’t looking for players, I was looking for the two men behind the WSOP’s success on television. Matt Maranz and Dave Swartz fi rst met in 1998 while both working for different companies during the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, then worked together the following year at the World Track & Field Championships in Spain. Both were already revered as heavyweights in the television fi eld at the time – Matt has won nine Emmys, while Dave has fi ve – and when they were paired up again in 2000 at the Summer Olympics in Sydney with NBC, their compatibility was clear. Matt formed 441 Productions shortly after the turn of the millennium, put together a proposal for ESPN to televise poker, and made Dave, “hire number one,” as he tells it, “and the rest is pretty much history.”
“Dave and Matt are storytellers,” Horowitz told me when we fi rst began discussing this article. “They may not have known poker when they started doing this, but they knew there were a lot of good stories out there embedded in the game that were just waiting to be told.”
Unfortunately, once I walked on set and asked the fi rst production guy I saw where I could fi nd Maranz and Swartz, it became clear that locating either while fi lming was taking place wouldn’t be easy.
“They’re here, they’re there... they’re everywhere,” laughed cameraman Mike Flanagan, who, like many on the crew, has been with the show since the fi rst day it set up shop in Binion’s Horseshoe Casino six years ago. “Those two guys never stop moving. But, believe me – they’re around.”
Not only were they around, but they had been nonstop, working days that began at 10 a.m. and sometimes didn’t end until well after midnight for nearly two months straight.
“So, what do you think?” asked Maranz, a tall, middle-aged fellow with a welcoming face whom I fi rst met when the PLO table went on break.
I blurted out a few random questions about the things I’d seen so far and how they worked, only to realize I had suddenly become that annoying reporter trying to get the baseball coach to talk about how the game was going during the seventh-inning stretch. “We’ll get to some of that later,” Maranz said politely. “Just hang out and enjoy yourself for now.”
Shortly after taking my seat, however, the second half of the 441 team made himself known, scurrying about the main stage with a headset strapped tightly around his head, looking just as calm, cool, and collected as his counterpart and communicating with everyone on set. “There he is, right there,” Flanagan said, pointing. “See that tall, skinny guy talking to like four people at once? That’s Dave.” And while I would briefl y introduce myself moments later, by now I’d realized patience was needed. After all, ESPN’s coverage of the WSOP was a product that wasn’t built overnight. And learning how each stone was laid wouldn’t be either.
‘IT NEVER STOPS’
On Day 2 of the behind-the-scenes tour – the day myself, Maranz, Swartz, and Horowitz all met in the ESPN production tent to discuss the logistics of how they pull this off each year – Maranz remarked that all this talk about how the show was made actually had him curious about something.
“I wonder how many cameras they use at the Super Bowl?” he asked out loud shortly after we began. “Because I would be willing to bet it’s not as many as us.”
Turns out, ESPN brings 40 cameras to ensure they don’t miss a moment of the action – just shy of the 53 that Fox used at this year’s Super Bowl.
“It’s a lot,” Swartz said, noting the eighteen hole-card cams between the feature and secondary feature tables, the seven roving cameramen, the two cameras dangling from massive cranes that overlook the main table, two cameras that sit on what looks like a fi ber optic railroad track and rotate around the table, a spy cam, a fl op cam, and a half dozen or so others positioned in various spots around the Rio.
And the manpower to pull it all off? A staff of nearly 80 is required – 55 in Las Vegas along with 22 back in New York who log and edit the footage as it comes in daily. (Every night after a fi nal table is shot, the Vegas crew boxes up every piece of footage and ships it overnight, then the Big Apple team begins processing the hours and hours of tape – yes, they still use tape – to create rough cuts of shows ready for Maranz, Swartz, and Horowitz to make fi nal edits to once the Series ends.)
“Logistically, this is a pretty complicated thing to pull off. Even this year, some of our new people on staff walked in and were like, ‘Man, I didn’t realize how massive this operation is,’” Maranz said. “I mean, we’re covering a sporting event like no other – because it’s one that lasts two months. Most competitions, like a football game, for example, you show up, you cover it, and you know that no matter what happens, it’s not going to last longer than three or four hours and then you’re done. You can go home.
“But with the World Series of Poker, we don’t stop fi lming until the players stop playing, which can last thirteen, fourteen, fi fteen hours sometimes. So, it’s not an event where you just show up and do it, or even the Olympics, which only lasts two weeks. Now, no disrespect to the Olympics, but it’s two weeks. This is day after day, long, long hours for six to eight weeks – and it never stops.”
And when he says it never stops, Maranz isn’t exaggerating. The yearround process begins once they leave Vegas in mid-July after taping the events. The next two months are spent editing, followed by the fi rst production meeting about next year’s show shortly after.
“I think we had our fi rst meeting about the 2008 (WSOP) like September or October last year,” Swartz said, and both he and Maranz laughed. “It’s a year-round thing. Communicating with ESPN, Harrah’s, the poker players, the crew – everyone has to be on the same page, so when we get to Vegas, we’re all ready to go on Day 1.” And then, of course, there are the stories – the show’s bread and butter.
“The stories we fi nd and are able to tell is what defi nes our show and makes us different from everyone else. Because that’s what we do: We’re storytellers,” Swartz said. “Yet, because we’re doing it during a live competition, it becomes so much than just a show about poker. It’s a documentary about poker – and just like the characters, it changes with every year.”
“When we meet for the fi rst time about the next year, Matt’s already got a list of players compiled whose stories we have to cover,” Swartz said. “Then we resolve the stories of characters from the year before. Like this year, we’ll be following every move of Jerry Yang. Or what about Scotty Nguyen and the roller coaster he went on last year? Has he been able to shake that off? And of course, we’ll follow the guys who had good years in 2007. Each time, we just try to build.”
And that’s exactly what’s happened. The fi rst year, they fi lmed just the Main Event, for a total of seven one-hour shows. In year two it was expanded to 22 total hours – 10 for the Main Event and 12 for a range of preliminary events. In 2005, that number jumped to 26 hours (12 for the Main Event) and then each year forward, because of the show’s phenomenal success, the network has continued to not only order more shows, but also more total hours of programming.
ESPN broadcast a record thirty hours of the 2007 WSOP, which included a series of one-hour shows from twelve bracelet events – showing only fi nal tables – and eighteen hours from the Main Event.
This year, however, ESPN will air only six non-Main Event tournaments, though the kicker is this: Each show’s going to last two hours. “In previous years, a one-hour show has handicapped us because we’re forced to knock out nine players in sixty minutes and what you end up with is a lot of all-in situations,” Maranz said. “This year, poker fans will get to see a lot more sophisticated play and a larger variety of hands within a two-hour show.”
And with the fi nal table being delayed until November this year, ESPN will cap a record twenty hours of Main Event coverage with a preview show profi ling the fi nal nine players and a two-part fi nal table program: The fi rst will be two hours of the fi nal table playing down to three players and the second will feature the fi nal three as they play down to a champion. And because the idea behind delaying the fi nal table is to be able to air the fi nal of the Main Event just hours after it happens – unlike in years past when nearly everyone watching the coverage already knew who won – the onus falls on ESPN to fi lm the fi nal table that afternoon and have it edited and ready for air that night.
“That’s one of the big changes this year, having to put together a show on the fl y like that,” said Maranz, who added that they’d come to expect at least one major change each year since the show began. “After the fi rst year ESPN wanted more hours so now we were fi lming more events. While in year three it was the location change from Binion’s to the Rio, then back to Binion’s for the fi nal table – so we basically had to tear down and set back up overnight. Then in year four, we decided to air the Main Event fi rst, which meant we had to edit and get the show together a lot faster than normal because it was the last thing we shot. And last year, it was the show going to (high defi nition), which meant new graphics and new look, including everything from set design to graphics, to editing and budgeting.”
Of course, the unexpected – when dealing with a unique competition like the WSOP – is expected.
“Every year, we say the same thing: You can plan all you want, but the second we land in Vegas, it never goes down the way it was drawn up,” said Swartz with a laugh as he, Maranz, and Horowitz all shared a smile and an empathetic glance.
THE CURTAIN OF OZ
After more than two months of talking, watching, eating, sleeping, and fi lming poker, the biggest day of the season has arrived for the ESPN crew: July 3 – Day 1A of the Main Event.
I’d been invited to attend the 10:30 a.m. production meeting to hear what kinds of things the team is supposed to be on the lookout for when play begins; what makes for good TV.
As I walked through the Rio, however, I thought about how grueling it must be for all those 55 employees involved in taping the WSOP and the hundreds of hours they spent in this very building day after day – all culminating with today.
The grind began more than sixty days earlier when the crew fi rst touched down and began working on the most minor – yet crucial – details of the operation.
The primary objective upon arrival becomes setting up the feature table, which takes about fi ve days. Once that’s fi nished, the stage and its look remain exactly the same from the fi rst tournament through the end of the Main Event.
As for the look of the Rio’s Amazon Room, the hotel crew takes care of arranging all the poker tables, while the only tweak the fi lm crew makes is hanging the giant ‘balloon lights’ over each table, which lends for a better quality shot by the roving cameramen.
And remember that long, fl owing, purple velvet curtain I mentioned earlier that backdrops the feature table? Well, pardon the cliché, but that’s truly where all the magic happens.
It’s a proverbial curtain of Oz, and outside of ESPN personnel not many know what actually goes on back there.
“Yeah, there’s no shortage of things back here to keep track of,” said Jeff Christian, a renowned technical wiz in the TV business (Super Bowls, Olympics, you name it), who has been the director of photography for the show since its inception and is responsible for both designing the entire ESPN feature table set and arranging the cockpit-like scene that exists behind it – a massive collection of electronic devices consisting of fi fteen monitors, a half dozen sound boards, an instrument that measures light, and enough wires to hang yourself if you tripped and fell. “It’s probably a little overwhelming to someone who’s never seen it before, but after so many years, it feels like home to me.”
To Christian’s immediate right sit either Swartz or Maranz, calling the action to the cameramen. The day I was back there Swartz happened to be the one directing traffi c, but he wasn’t necessarily telling anyone what to do but rather what to be aware of.
“Dave’s not really having to give them instruction, because our cameras are set and we’ve told them ahead of time who to watch for,” Christian says as Swartz tells one of the cameramen circling the table, “We got a big pot brewing here. Seat 6 and Seat 2 squaring off. Maybe the biggest pot of the day so far.”
One seat over from Christian sits Sari Bickford, who, like Christian, has been there from the start. Bickford’s primary job during play is to manually – yes, manually – log each hand as it plays out.
“Every hand, every bet, every raise, every check-raise, every all in, every fold – I make note of it,” Bickford says as she shows me her journal, which – despite new technology that can electronically log the hands on a computer – she still keeps with a pen and paper. “That way, we have a note on each hand and can (put an asterisk) next to the ones that we think we’ll want to show.”
Next to Bickford is one of the show’s rotating producers who monitors the feature table chatter and logs each conversation. This is done for the same reason as Bickford’s hand log, so that key confrontations, showdowns, or can’t-miss, good-for-TV moments can easily be found later when the show is being edited and voice-overed by ESPN announcers Norman Chad and Lon McEachern back in New York.
Finally, to Christian’s left, behind an even more mysterious curtain, sits someone whose sole purpose is to watch the hole-card cams in play each round and ensure that they’re all working properly. This is the only member of the crew in the Rio who has knowledge of what the players’ down cards are.
“(This backstage area) is basically where this part of the team stays during the course of this entire event, and while it’s a lot of work no matter what side you’re on, the fi nished product and how successful it’s become is something you feel proud of,” said Christian. Horowitz couldn’t agree more.
“The fi rst time you see everything and how it all works, it’s awe-inspiring. There’s been a bunch of articles and press out there about what allowed poker to take the lead. Henry Orenstein’s invention of the hole-card cam is one. They mention that ESPN decided to televise it. But lost in the shuffl e is the infl uence of its historical rise to popularity, and that was provided by Matt Maranz and Dave Swartz,” Horowitz said. “They set the direction of where poker is these days.”
SHUFFLE UP AND DEAL’
With exactly an hour and a half to go until the fi rst camera starts rolling on Day 1A of the Main Event, I slid into the ESPN production tent and found every member of the fi lm crew listening intently to Maranz as he held court in the day’s only production meeting.
He began by dissecting exactly how the opening scene on Day 1A needed to be captured. “Okay, so after we get the fi rst shot on the ladder in the hallway of everyone fl ooding in, we want to try and get those players heading to their tables to talk to us. Ask them a question, ‘Ready to win that bracelet? Feelin’ lucky?’” Maranz said to his staff. “Then, (WSOP Commissioner) Jeffrey Pollock will say a few words and introduce Wayne Newton, which will cue the UNLV marching band to walk in behind Wayne and play ‘Viva Las Vegas.’ Showgirls will follow that, and just as the song reaches its crescendo, Wayne Newton will welcome everyone to his city and tell the dealers to ‘Shuffl e up and deal!’”
As the staff had a chuckle and Maranz moved on, I was handed what the crew calls a daily “WSOP Cheat Sheet” – a list of well-known players and their seat assignments. It also contains the names of those at the main and secondary feature tables on Day 1A, which happened to be highlighted by Scotty Nguyen on the main stage and bracelet winners Bill Gazes and Ciaran O’Leary on the secondary. Those two feature tables, as was later explained to me, are not hand-picked by ESPN, rather ESPN waits for the computer to generate the table assignments and then the crew looks down the list for an “interesting” lineup. If that lineup ends up being a dud or loses its star player, the producers then look at replacing the entire table with another one.
“Once we fi nd the table that looks the best, we move that entire table to the feature table,” Swartz told me a day earlier. “We don’t hand pick who we want. You have to remember, this is a competition – a sporting event – with a lot of money at stake and we would not do anything to make that setting (contrived). We just fi nd a table, and watch it play out for that day.”
Each producer – seven of them total – headed out to the fl oor after the meeting that morning, taking with them a cameraman and sound guy. Each is given a map of the tables separated into what the crew calls “vectors”, or coverage sections. During play, each vector will have one producer, one cameraman, and one sound tech in it at all times, making for a total of seven such crews roaming the Amazon Room. Each mini-crew is responsible for watching over and fi lming the most compelling action spanning the forty to fi fty tables in their vector. “Now get out there and go fi nd us the next Jerry Yang,” Maranz told the group. It was now 11:40 a.m. – 20 minutes before cards get in the air.
Surprisingly, once 12 p.m. hit things went fairly smoothly. The halls were packed with eager players and an ESPN cameraman balanced on a ladder in the Rio’s hallway, fi lming the players as they arrived. Shortly after taking their seats – just as planned – Wayne Newton, the UNLV marching band, and the Vegas showgirls paraded into the room to the delight of everyone.
“Basically, what we start out with is the players you know. But as they bust out, it becomes about the players you don’t know,” said producer Sarah Krieger, whose vector on Day 1A contained such notables as Brandon Adams and Gavin Smith. “And that’s really where we have to pay attention. We all have different jobs to do to get the shot, but at the end of the day, we’re all reporters just out here looking for the best story.”
As Day 1A wound down, I caught up with another producer, Erick Barchie, who’s been with the show for two and a half years and calls it “probably the greatest project I’ve ever worked on.”
“The best part about the job is being able to turn on the TV and see this segment that you helped fi nd or fi lm and know it made a great piece of the show, while the hardest part is simply keeping up with the sheer volume of action,” said Barchie, who proceeded to show me a clipboard of player profi le sheets he’d given to interesting looking characters to fi ll out during the day’s action. The sheet included a questionnaire that Barchie would study that night, trying to identify players with interesting stories and get them on camera the next day.
“Like the year Jamie Gold won it – here was this guy who came up to me and was telling me he had a lot of chips and I should come to his table and check out the action,” Barchie continued. “So I took down his name and we started following him. Nine days later, he still had the chip lead – and I think we all know how that ended.”
The conclusion of Day 1A of the Main Event would also mark the end of my trip. After all, I’d asked every question and seen everything and the process was essentially rinse and repeat.
As the fi nal level of the night wound down and I wrapped things up in the Rio, I knew that in less than two weeks, someone from in that room would be perched to take home over $9 million.
I also knew that when I saw the broadcast this time, I’d be watching it in a whole new way.
