How to get featured on a live tournament blog

Ever wondered why the amazing hand you played never made it onto a live tournament blog? Barry Carter explains how to guarantee you'll get reported on.

I was at the PCA last week and I spoke to a number of players and my friends in the poker media about the live tournament updates we read for events like the WSOP and EPT. I found myself explaining to a lot of players how they can get featured more on the live updates blogs when they are playing a live event.

I discovered that a lot of players were frustrated when they thought they played a hand really well, yet nobody had written about it. 

While it is true that the most famous players will always take centre stage in any sort of tournament report, it is much easier than you think to get reported on in the live updates. Whether it is to show your friends how you are doing or to make a name for yourself, you don’t have to be famous to get mentioned.

The hardest job in poker

Doing the live updates blogs which show the chip counts and key hands from a tournament is one of the hardest and most thankless jobs in the world. I’ve done it and it was so tough I could not hack it long term. I have massive respect for all of my peers in the poker media who do it regularly.

It’s hard because it can be boring and physically gruelling. You often work 10-16 hour days. You are standing most of the time. You are stood around waiting for something, anything, to happen. (Crazy hands are a rarity). The hours are so long that you just prey for a three-way all-in to end the tournament (I was there one day when that happened and it was awesome). 

It’s thankless because no matter how hard you work, the only feedback you get is negative. People complain when you don’t cover their favourite player. People complain when you don’t cover their friend who is playing their first live event. People complain if the hands are boring (something which you have no control over). The players will complain if you misreport a hand they played. 

So I implore you to treat the bloggers with respect. If you take the following advice, not only will you make their life easier, you will almost guarantee that you will get your name featured in the coverage. 

Make their job easier

The key to getting featured on a live updates blog is to make the blogger's life easier. They are looking for good content, but it’s a crapshoot whether they will be at the right table when something worth writing about happens.

Maybe the most important thing to do is always have your chip count ready. The blogger can’t touch or get too close to your chip stack, so they have to squint their eyes and guesstimate what you have by looking at it. You should always have your big chips at the front anyway, but make it a ton easier by simply telling them what you have along with your name when they walk by. I guarantee you they will be delighted at this and you will certainly make it into the next update, because it's a chip count they can be 100% comfortable about the accuracy of. 

The bloggers are always looking for interesting hands, but they have to be there to witness them. You can help them exponentially by calling them over whenever there was an interesting hand that they missed. Either a hand you played or another one at the table. We all like an easy win. They’ll rush back to report this hand rather than wait to see one themselves, and if it happens to be a hand where you crushed someone, that’s all the more fun. 

Finally, just be friendly to these guys and try to make the tournament more fun for them. Crack a few jokes and talk to them on the breaks. It’s hard work on the tournament floor and anything you can do to break the monotony will be very much appreciated.

If you make life easier for these guys in this way, I guarantee you will get featured more than your fair share on the live tournament reports. They are going to go straight past the Phil Ivey table, straight past the Daniel Negreanu table, and will make a beeline for yours. They’ll see you as someone who makes the job of live reporting much easier, and as such you’ll get featured a lot more on the reports, and may even get invited to do a TV interview too.

Have you ever had an interesting hand featured on a live tournament blog? Let us know about it in the comments.