Play vs Watch — What is Better for Poker Industry: Inspired by Sam Greenwood

The Fundamental Mistake in Approach to Poker on TV

The harsh truth is for the most part of any broadcasts or shows poker is extremely boring.

People sit around the table with a too-cool-for-the-school posture without even speaking to each other and toss cards and chips without almost any spice following it.

It is static, boring, uneventful and can be actually interesting to watch only if you are in deep love with poker and understand what’s going on with the hands (or, at least, think that you understand).

Even poker streamers with their personalities, intense emotions and bursts of tilt are boring to watch for the majority of each broadcast. Yes, we have a few exceptions — Bert “girafganger7” Stevens with his unique character or Kevin “KMartPoker” Martin coming to poker right from the “Big Brother Canada” reality show — but even they do not attract a lot of new viewers and players on their own.

The main reason for poker being so poorly distributed to masses is the narrow focus of poker brands on increasing their room’s traffic instead of making more viewers without necessarily luring them to the tables.But as Derek Kwan actually nailed it on X (ex-Twitter), in the modern conditions of the world, the poker industry must work on viewers as spectators if it wants to have “The Queen’s Gambit” effect:

Why the Reality Show Can Change Poker If Made Right

If you try to Google statistics about the popularity of the TV reality shows in the USA, you will find out that different sources estimate an amount of U.S. households which have watched some variation of TV reality shows at least once between 60% and 90%.

More than a half of viewers in different polls also admit that they find reality TV more entertaining than classic scripted shows.

Among the reasons for people to watch reality shows instead of other shows are:

1. Level of drama in each episode
2. Hatewatch or fanwatch tied to personalities in the show
3. Third-hand cringe
4. Cheap and easy connection to other people without having real relationships
5. Socialisation and community bonding around show

People also can more easily connect their life experiences to reality show characters because the latter are closer to them on the household level. And they love to gossip about people from the screen and judge them while secretly adoring — The Kardashians won’t let us lie here.

So, imagine that poker will enter the house with these characteristics as a show. No rich people throwing money, no angry pros, no “fish” playing poorly and being mocked because of that — no nonsense of this sort but instead real working people with real life problems.

For the average person connecting with poker players can be not just hard but even impossible sometimes.

Try to evaluate poker players as a subject for a reality show. They play the card game with close to zero typical work issues that the majority of the population has. No angry or stupid boss, no annoying colleagues, no inconvenient office space — they do not even struggle with their work tasks because they literally do not have them.

So, there are only two ways to make poker players interesting subjects for reality show:

1. Take people with zero knowledge in the game and show the process of their growth in poker or giving up on this journey with all raw emotions and struggles. However, it should be shot extremely entertaining to avoid boredom of uneventful poker players’ being.
2. Take established, rich and well maintained poker pros and use them for spicy shows about drama at high stakes. With conflicts, personalities mismatch and different emotional interactions.

However, even these ideas can be good for industry only if viewers could connect to people on the screen and situations they find themselves in. And when it comes to poker it can be really hard.That’s why the idea of Sam Greenwood, that we share in the next part of this article, may be the greatest and most positive for the poker industry as of 2025.

Sam Greenwood’s Idea: Reality Show About Poker Staff

In his blog on August 30th, 2025, Sam Greenwood shared a unique idea for poker-related content that can change the industry for good: poker reality shows following staff on PokerStarsLive or Triton instead of poker players.

As a reference Sam used the “Below Deck” reality show focused on work and struggles of crew members of a superyacht.

How entertaining this look alike show about poker could be: people “just like me” from behind the scenes of major poker series share their work drama and fun with viewers.

A lot of people can relate to them even if they never ever work or even visit a casino. Dealers meet very different people at the tables but also have good and bad bosses, strange interactions with each other, work fails and nice achievements comparable to other works.

Tournament directors are always here to put out the drama — remember how hard it was for them with Will Kassouf on WSOP 2025 — and manage every series to give players the best possible experience.

Security personnel try their best to maintain safe space and stop any potentially dangerous situation as soon as possible.

And there are only three categories of staff that maintain the series — we can only imagine how varied and interesting the view from the eyes of others may be.

However, the biggest pitfall here is how to shoot the show without creating a disaster in the background by interfering with casino logistics and traditions of working. But this is the topic for poker companies to figure out — we just offer them to consider this experimental format for the sake of poker’s future.