Let me start this off by saying I love the change that the WSOP made last year, deciding to air every hand live (well, 15 minute delay, but ultimately live). And not showing player's hole cards almost helps you to have a seat at the table, and be trying to figure out what the players have.

I'm sure a decent amount of the people on the forum will agree with me too, as opposed to the edited version with Lon McCarren and Norman Chad. Don't get me wrong, I like the edited version as well, Norman is very funny.

When I try to explain this to people who may only follow poker casually, I say this...the edited versions are like the sportscenter highlights of the WSOP; they will show all the "three-run homeruns" and "diving catches", and highlight a 3 hour baseball game in about 2 minutes. In reality, poker isn't like that! They don't deal AK vs QQ once every 5 hands! To get an idea of a real poker tournament it was nice to watch one with a live feed.

With that being said, there are MANY more casually poker fans than interesting poker fans watching ESPN, and I can't imagine these live poker feeds got great rating