Poker On The Telly
Published: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 Online-Casinos.com
POKER ON THE TELLY
Sky network to offer interactive poker
The latest channel pending launch by the burgeoning Sky television network in the UK should please Brit poker players - it's a poker dedicated offering with an ambitious new program aimed at getting people to play their favourite game via TV.
Broadcast from Sky Poker's Feltham studios, the programs will feature a series of guests (who play along with the onliners) and presenters, such as Helen Chamberlain and Sean Boyce, who discuss the action with experts such as Ed Giddins, Tony Kendall, and Trevor Harris.
The interesting part is the new interactive format, which is available to potential players at home, with the hardware in many cases already in place through the Sky service. Combining TV and Internet multi-table tournament (MTT) action at once will enable viewers with a Sky Bet account to use it to play poker via their set-top boxes, simultaneously watching the whole thing live but for a five minute delay on the new channel, or streamed on to the Web.
Company spokesmen say that stringent age checks and parental controls are used to stop would-be underage poker players from signing up , while the legality of the service is kept simple in that it will only be available in the UK. It remains to be seen whether numbers of new players, transferred from the other Sky Betting arenas or intrigued by the new show, will actually make money for the venture, but high rollers may not flock to the new service as the Web version is a Java applet instead of downloadable software.
The Sky software is apparently proprietary and was in final beta-testing stages this week.
