The world watched as Joe Cada became the youngest World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event winner ever on Tuesday night, outlasting Darvin Moon to the tune of $8.5 million. Poker News Daily went backstage to sit down with announcer Lon McEachern prior to the episode’s production.
About 15 ESPN staffers huddled around three televisions on the back side of the stage at the Penn and Teller Theater as the action unfolded on Saturday shortly after the dinner break in the 2009 WSOP Main Event. One day later, the ESPN crew feverishly worked to piece together the episode, which featured McEachern and Norman Chad providing commentary. On Monday, heads-up play between Moon and Cada commenced at the Rio at 10:00pm PT and the show aired 24 hours later on one of the largest cable stations in the country.
Poker News Daily: While we’re talking, seven players remain in the WSOP Main Event on Saturday night. Talk about the pace so far.
McEachern: We expected a much quicker pace. It’s a lot of surprising play. I’m surprised at the guys who went out and I’m surprised at the guys who are still in, but you never know. There are so many chips in play and this is what we expect every year.
PND: You haven’t seen the player’s hole cards yet. Are you looking forward to getting into the broadcast booth with Norman Chad to begin recording?
McEachern: Absolutely. It’s always exciting to get in there after scads of people put their magic touch to it and put us in the driver’s seat. Hopefully, we don’t crash it. It’s a lot of fun to get in there and we never know what’s going to happen other than we know we’ll be working with a fine product.
PND: How long will the recording process take?
McEachern: It’s going to be a normal week for us, which is two hours of programming. We normally do one show per day when we’re voicing. We’re capable of doing more and so it’ll be a long day on Sunday into Monday. We’re just doing an hour and a little more on Sunday and then on Monday we’ll come back and finish the second hour. On Tuesday morning, we’ll finish up whatever heads-up there is to do.
PND: We notice you’re donning headphones and looking intently at the television monitors. Explain what you’re looking for.
McEachern: What we’re trying to do is get a feel for how play is going and who’s raising whom from what position. We’re not going to show all of the hands, of course, so we try to get an idea of who’s picking on whom and who is getting desperate. It’ll give us more of a sense of how this table played down so we can work it into our commentary and give people a feel for it as a whole.
PND: How have you and Norman Chad been able to keep your commentary and relationship with each other fresh after so many years working together?
McEachern: I don’t know if people watching it think it’s fresh, but it’s still fresh to us. We get a “class A” product every time we get in the booth. What we’re looking at is the best in the business and we realize that. The people we work with give us a product that is fresh every time we look at it. We’re constantly trying to keep it new, keep it exciting, and keep it quality. In one sense, you feel this burden to keep pushing the envelope with your performance and I think Norman feels the same way. We try to keep learning and try to find ways to make it a little different and a little better. So far, so good.
When is ESPN or other broadcasters of poker events going to start adding more stats to the viewing experience. While I now can also predict the odds of the heads up race what I believe is missing is the context of how hard it is sit there at a table. We could use a info bar that tracks the total time of table play and the number of the hand being shown. Then it would make a lot of more sense when you see Phil Ivey muck a winning flush hand or player go all in with rags. I can not imagine Joe Cada and Darvin Moon playing 88 hands after 16 hours of tournament play if the tournament had continued the same night.