Why poker needs more comedians
After watching Kevin Hart, Barry Carter thinks comedians provide more value than sports stars when it comes to promoting the game.
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I really enjoyed the coverage of the Super High Roller Bowl, in particular Kevin Hart’s contribution. I’ve already written about how I think he will make a great ambassador, but after this week I am even more inclined to think that we should be looking to more comedians to represent the game.
What stood out for me was how quiet his table was (Hellmuth aside), even when he was cracking jokes, as he was doing non stop. This is not a criticism of the players, in fact it is a tribute to their level of focus, to be able to remain stoic when the highest grossing comedian right now is cracking jokes. It did look odd when his jokes sometimes seemed to be falling on deaf ears at his table, but I think this is actually an opportunity.
I’m something of a comedy obsessive. I used to work in a comedy club as a student and we would often have a drink after the gig with the comedians, many of whom (some now well known names in UK comedy) would end up continuing the comedy for a much smaller audience. I read a fantastic book by UK comedian Frank Skinner where he went into a lot of detail about a comedian’s need to entertain, whether it’s an audience of one or 10,000, even when they have made it.
My point is that the a televised poker table presents a brilliant win-win scenario for poker playing comedians. A quiet table will draw out that inevitable desire to entertain in the comedian and he or she will have ample opportunity to fill the silences with comedy gold, which would broaden the appeal of televised poker.
It’s cool watching a famous footballer play poker, but beyond the novelty of them being there, they are just another player for the most part, it’s only if they play a hand well or poorly do we get something novel out of it. With a comedian we (probably) get entertainment the entire time they are there, regardless of if they are in the hand.
Some of the great sitcoms have featured a poker episode, but the ones that have done them particularly well are rarely making jokes about the dynamics of poker, they are using poker as a vehicle to talk about something else. As the old saying goes, poker is a game of people played with cards, and people can be funny.
If you have followed my writing before you’ll know I am a big advocate of promoting the recreational side of the game, sometimes over the dream of becoming a pro. Table banter is one of the great appeals of poker. It’s the reason I still play a home game with my old school friends after all these years. It is also an aspect of poker that doesn’t get promoted all that well on TV (with exceptions, for example, High Stakes Poker).
It’s not for everyone and there needs to be room for good strategic analysis, but putting more famous comedians into televised games is a great shortcut to promoting the social aspects that make this game so much fun. There are plenty of silences waiting to be filled in televised poker, let's make them funny.
Which comedians do you think would make good poker ambassadors? Let us know in the comments:
