Barry Carter: What Do You Want From Tournament Reporting?

Today Barry Carter would like to get your feedback on how the results of tournaments are reported. Do you want detailed hand analysis or just the bare facts?

A man winning a poker tournament

Most of my columns so far for PokerStrategy.com have involved me telling you what I think, but I would like to start today by asking you what you think on a particular subject.

How do you want tournaments reported back to you?

A poker friend of mine and very good blogger, Alex Rousso of Unibet Poker, wrote a blog last week where he suggested that tournament reporting was over the top. That most people did not want to see a massive break down of all the hands played, or to have the action recounted in such a fashion that it made everything sound more exciting than the inevitable standard coin flip fest that most final tables are.

He suggested that most of us are looking for much more basic information of who won, what they won, and how the others busted.

It prompted a very interesting discussion after the blog, where most sides for and against were argued. The one thing I took away from it was that we do not ask the people we write for often enough what they want.

So the question of the day is, when you look up the result of a tournament, do you want the core information, or do you want play by play analysis of all the major hands and action?

Before I go any further, the discussion was primarily on tournament reporting after the event, not the live updates done during a tournament, so for today we will focus on that.

Now back to the more familiar routine of me telling you what I think.

Man Wins Poker Tournament

If any of you follow me on twitter, you might see a long running joke I have when I tweet the results of a poker tournament. I end with the hashtag #manwinspokertournament. It is a cynical little joke, which basically highlights that no matter how much you break it down, the end result is usually a man wins a poker tournament, and little more.

I've been doing this job for over five years, and in that time, I have reported on the story of 'Man winning poker tournament' hundreds, in fact probably thousands, of times. Yes there are often added elements to make the story more interesting, a human interest piece, perhaps they were playing their first ever live event, perhaps they won the Triple Crown as a result of this victory, or perhaps they silenced some critics in the process.

But ultimately it is still just a man, or a woman, winning a poker tournament.

Because that is the minimum requirements for a poker tournament report, what way do we want to tell the story? Some of my colleagues try to fill the gaps by focussing on some major story or drama that unfolded at the final table. Others like to go down the strategic route and using the opportunity to dissect the action and major hands. Personally, I tend to try and keep it succinct and keep to the major facts.

Most of the time when I am looking up football results, I want to read about goals, major incidents, and a two sentence summary of how the teams performed. That is also what I think most of us want from a tournament report. For that reason, I love the reports we do at PokerStrategy.com. The key facts are there, the payouts & chip counts are there, and some nice visual representations of the action are there too. A nice neat package, with little waste.

But much less information about the major hands, and if there is, it usually is some massive hand with genuine drama or statistical unlikeliness, that really was worthy of mention. Anyone who has been around poker for a while has seen AK vs QQ more often than they have had hot dinners, and I personally feel that the poker audience can be spared 95% of the 'standard' hand match ups, they can fill in those blanks for themselves.

Why do I feel this way? Well it certainly is in part because I am getting sick of writing about stuff like AK vs QQ myself, so I am naturally assuming others would think that way too. Poker journalism is becoming very interesting these days (Thank you Full Tilt), and there are just so many more interesting things to read and write about. Some of the people around poker are fascinating, some of the scandals are enthralling, and the market is becoming so sophisticated that there is a hell of a lot to write about.

Typical Reading Habits

I also know from having studied the actual habits of the typical poker reader, from things like Google Analytics, that your average reader does not get as far as pressing on the scroll button. The average time spent on a page is rarely more than 2 or 3 minutes, so for that reason, you need to be able to summarise all the major points right at the start.

Another man winning a poker tournament

We live in an age of instant gratification, in particular with how we consume our media. Most poker forum threads inevitably have people asking for cliffs or saying TLDR for the more involved discussions, so your typical poker reader is clearly not looking to spend an hour of their day looking at play by play analysis.  

That is my opinion on what people want when the results of a tournament is reported to them. I think most of us are looking to get brought up to speed with brevity and without needless information.

But I already know I cannot be 100% correct, because I have friends who like to read incredibly detailed tournament reports for fun, because they love immersing themselves in anything poker related that could improve them as a player (And good for them too, I wish I shared the enthusiasm).

So once again, my question is, what do you want from a tournament report? Do you want a level of detail that could almost make you feel you were sat at the final table with the players, or do you want the whole thing packaged up nicely into 3 or 4 paragraphs that you could read on your phone on the way to work?

I would love to get your thoughts in the comments box, or on twitter.