Here is my question of the moment. I like watching poker, in particularly the worlds series of poker, because I think the announcer is funny as heck. I was wondering about the production of the tv shows. Do they film the games, edit them down, then have the announces put in their part or do the actually do commentary during play while a director shifts the video shots around like a sporting event?

Well I don’t know about that but Padraig Parkinson is a natural and Gabe Kaplan.

Since they film the games for later broadcast for the most part, I am pretty sure that the announcers are simply commenting on the edited footage since the hole cards are shown. In a live broadcast, the hole cards are not shown for obvious reasons.

I don't know about the World Series of Poker but the W.P.T. used one of their own announcers teamed up with one of our shift managers when our casino hosted the tournament. They did it on the fly, during the action and I hate to admit it but our (ex) shift manager did a surprisingly good job. I still think their was some editing afterwards.

It's actually a combination of live and edited in commentary.

Gil

For the most part they do a really good job and make poker entertaining to watch.

I forget the year but my favorite tourney they show is when Stu Unger won his last one and he kept going back to Kaplan to tell him what was going on in the game.