Beginning Feb. 1, ESPN will set aside 8 hours of live coverage to the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event that will take place at the Casino at the Empire. The event will feature 362 players comming from Europe, the U.S. and other locations from around the world that will be playing for a coveted WSOP bracelet.
The games will be split into two starting days and will narrow down over the following 6 days untill a champion emerges. The final table took over 19 hours to complete before the winner was able to claim his bracelet and a $1.5 million first place prize.
The story that lead the news at the beggining of play at the was the presence of Ivan Demidov. Demidov had already made the final table of the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas and was playing in Europe while the tournament was on break until the final table would gather back to play in November.
Demidov was looking for two Main Event wins in the same year altough he had a tough collection of competitors at the final table.
Amongst the finalists you could find Daniel Negreanu, Scott Fischman, John Juanda, Bengt Sonnert, Stanislav Alekhin, Robin Keston, Toni Hiltunen and Chris Elliott which were giving the table a heavy slant toward well-known pros.
ESPN senior director of programming and acquisitions, Doug White, stated “The intimate look and feel of this tournament is different from other WSOP events we produced in the United States,”.
ESPN brought in a new innovation to the WSOP with the Mobile Hole Card Camera. This innovation will allow the network to show hole cards from key hands at many of the outer tables during the series as well as from the feature table.
ESPN’s senior sports producer, Jamie Horowitz, claimed”We believe the Mobile Hold Card Camera will provide fans a great understanding of the overall story behind the tournament, and how the players advanced to the final table,”.
ESPN’s coverage of the WSOP Europe will start on Feb. 1 with the first four episodes airing live at 6 p.m. ET. This will be followed by an encore presentation of episodes one and two on ESPN2 at 10 p.m. that same day.
