I'm trying to figure out if this is possible ... a tape delayed WSOP main event final table (obviously with seeing the hole cards)? Obviously it can't be live because theres no way to keep the hole cards secure, but if there was live, but delayed coverage, could it work? how long would the tape delay have to be, would it have to be 30 mins / 1 hour or what the tourney have to be over to ensure there is no way to feed back from watching the coverage back to the players table.

I'm guess I was just really frustrated with ESPN holding the coverage so long last year, I think it would be fascinating to watch the final table "live".

Tourney would absolutely have to be over. You can't have the cards known to anyone while the information could theoretically be given to the players.

That said, it'd be neat to see it, say, the next day, all day, with commentary, but ESPN would get much less out of it, so it's not gonna happen. Plus, most people don't want to watch 10-15 hours or whatever of poker, they just want to see the "important" hands.

I guess I was trying to figure out how "stale" the information would have to be, I did come to the conclusion it would have to be at the end of the tourney, which really means that even for real poker fans that would want to see every hand (hence why I was suggesting it be PPV) much less attractive.

Even if the PPV was say, 2 hours behind the table, the information that could be gotten from the plays would be too valuable, right?