If you’re a fan of poker, you’re most likely not concerned about watching your favorite green felt heroes on a TV screen. After all, if you really wanted to see them, your best bet is to boot up your computer or browse the web on your phone. The popular video game streaming app Twitch brings poker goodness to the masses as multiple streamers, professional and amateur, make daily appearances to playing online poker. However, it seems with poker having made the move to the internet so long ago, there’s hardly any place to find it on our archaic television. Fear not, though, as there is still hope. We’ll take a look at a few options left for all of you channel surfers to watch your favorite poker stars going at it.
With any competitive sport, there’s always a league looking to give it as much exposure as possible. In the case of poker, the World Poker Tour is second to none in sounding the horn for card sharks everywhere. The main show in the WPT is a tournament that tours across the United States. It airs Sundays at 8 PM as well as Wednesdays at 11 PM. They might not be the most accessible shows for all of you early birds out there, but it’s quality programming that’s guaranteed to be around for a while longer as Fox announced a five-year deal with the WPT back in August 2016. The WPT averages 900,000 viewers weekly and has been viewed by more than 215 million people since its start back in 2009.
If Sundays and Wednesdays don’t work with your schedule, you’ll also be able to tune in Mondays at 8 PM CST to watch the WPT’s newest series, which has been airing since 2014. Alpha8 ups the ante and showcases worldwide locations and multimillion dollar tournaments. The buy-ins are a minimum of $100,000 and have been recorded in North America, Europe, Asia and South Africa.
Now, if you don’t mind staying up late to watch the greats go toe to toe there’s always the world-famous poker after dark that hosts the most iconic players in a very “smoke-filled, poker legends mingling” atmosphere. The show has run since 2007 and airs on NBCSN starting at midnight. For all of you online warriors that try your hands at video poker, live casino poker and all of the other new and shiny versions that have cropped up over the years, you’ll be happy to know that the online savant that started it all, Tom Dwan, has made his return to the Poker After Dark scene alongside Daniel Negreanu and Antonio Esfandiari. While the show hasn’t quite started to bet for cryptocurrency and the trend only seems to be growing in popularity, you’ll be happy to know the stacks are higher than ever and the banter is at its most devilish.
So if you’re looking for a few TV shows to quench your thirst for good poker, look no further than those three. They have just as much action as what you can find on the web and a strong history to back them up.