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well, there are quite a few players I’ve had a very similar thought about at the table **** that guy is a real thing we’ve all had
He insulted Keating and Bill Klein for chrissake. He’s absolutely the guy that everyone tries to give social cues to not berate fish and does anyways.
Yes.
Fair enough - I haven’t watched enough of the stream and hadn’t seen him out of line. But yeah, if he gets drunk and berates players that is bad.
This makes total sense imo.
But this is provably false, at least on streamed games.
Gonna be wild when it turns out that yes, Bryan was giving hole card info to a player, but it turns out he was giving it to Garrett.
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Here’s a security update that all streams that use rfid should implement immediately:
Don’t read the cards until they are on the way to the muck/after the hand is over. Put the card readers more central on the table, and just make the rule that as players are done with their hand they dispose of them in their assigned rfid box outlined on the table, similar to the box the cards must be placed in currently. Train the dealers to pitch cards nowhere near the readers. Seems ironclad-ish.
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This is probably a dumb question but why does anyone need access to the hole card data in real time? Am I wrong assuming the rfid reads the data and software populates the graphics based on that data?
If it doesn’t work this way, why?
The data has to go somewhere. If it’s going somewhere as it’s being read, it can be intercepted and redirected, even if delays are built into the software. The only way to 100% eliminate this possibility is to not read the cards until they are mostly irrelevant.
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I agree. But I think right now someone literally watches the data live, right? Why? I’m not talking about someone intercepting it. Why in the course of normal operations does someone need to see it live?
Mostly so they have max time before airing to do graphics etc. I think.
Right but why aren’t the graphics just automatic from the feed? Is there some reason the computer can’t generate the graphics without human intervention?
This would make so much sense. Just have a system where the players when they fold or show that they move the hand to where it can be read. They claim that the range of the RFID readers they use is one inch, so should be pretty easy to say put the readers say in the middle of the table. Would be a bit of training to get players to put them there when they fold, but should be too hard.
All this does kind of make you wonder how much dodgy stuff was going on in the old ESPN lipstick cam days. I doubt there was much security at all back then.
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My first thought was that the commentators obviously need the hole card info during the hand. But then I realized there’s no reason they can’t add their commentary track after a delay but before the broadcast.
And now I’m wondering if this is already how it works. I’ve always imagined the commentators are watching and commenting live but there’s no reason it has to be this way.
I know for sure the commentary is delayed a lot. For example, the night of the j4 hand it was 2 hour delay before Bart saw the action.
Thus my question why anyone needs to see it live?
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At least with the WSOP, it seems like the live commentators are watching with the same delay as the home audience. Iirc there were a few years where Tuchman said something like the commentary booth was located in a spot where he could still see some of the action so he knew that a big hand had gone down, but he wouldn’t actually see the full cards up action until a half hour later (or whatever the delay was).
And if you watch most of the youtube live streams, the commentators are usually reacting to the chat in real time, not on a time delay. For example, if someone is tanking on the river, the commentator will ask the chat “would you call” and just a minute or two later they’ll say, “the chat pros want a call” or, "“Jimmy Bluffett thinks a reraise would get through.”
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They could also configure the software to blackout the hands in production, and not show them until it’s going to the broadcast booth 2 hours later. They could program it to black them out if they’re read and flash them red if they aren’t read. All the crew needs the graphics for live is to make sure the readers picked them all up. The commentators are working off the delayed feed anyway.
Yes, likely 3-5 people. Graphics, sound, director, possibly someone switching between cameras, and presumably Feldman and/or Vertucci who may be filling one of those roles or may just be keeping an eye on all of it.
It’s probably that he didn’t go into the booth until he had to, so he saw some of the hands in the first 60 minutes of the ft, or whatever the delay was.