Enlarge By Steve Marcus for USA TODAY Professional poker player Annie Duke, to the right of the dealer, competes during a special 40th annual No-Limit Hold'em, one of the three events featured in the World Series of Poker. Coverage of this year's World Series of Poker will be different from the last few years. ESPN decided not to film the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event, which incorporates five poker disciplines. While the event has become prestigious among poker die-hards, it doesn't translate well to television and the ratings suffered. WSOP UPDATE: Main Event to crown new champion Instead, ESPN will be airing coverage of three events from this year's WSOP: the 40th anniversary $40,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em event, the Ante Up for Africa event and the Main Event. This year's Main Event will have unprecedented coverage, with more televised hours than ever. These changes haven't come without controversy, though, because a scheduling conflict has forced ESPN to scramble. WSOP organizers agreed that it made sense to add another day before the final table takes place in November, citing that the Main Event should be a test of poker skills rather than endurance. In past years, players routinely played 12-plus hour days back-to-back-to-back. With the added day, there is a different problem. The pace of players being eliminated appears to be ahead of last year's pace. ESPN's challenge is that it is committed to filming approximately three hours of footage on each day of the Main Event. That wouldn't normally be difficult, but the added day of play, plus the tournament director's decision to play fewer levels a day than originally scheduled, gives the network less flexibility. Rather than creating three exciting hours of television from a 10- to 12-hour day, ESPN will have to find stories to tell in a shorter time period. What that means is that the poker fanatics might get more of what they want. True poker fans want to see more of the nitty-gritty hands and less of the standard, all-in confrontations with AK racing against QQ. True fans want to see the little things that pros such as Phil Ivey do to amass large stacks of chips. A lot of those "nothing" hands — while less exciting than the all-in confrontations — are interesting for a totally different reason. There is also a dispute about whether the tournament organizers made the right decision by cutting some of the days short. Many feel that by shortening days, it will produce disastrously long days at the late stages of the tournament, from about 45 players down to the final nine. This year's WSOP structure, however, has been the best in history. It's the same as last year's, only the players started with 30,000 chips rather than 20,000. Theoretically, the more chips in play would make the tournament last longer. In recent play, however, we haven't seen that at all. Players are dropping at an astounding pace, and there's really no explanation for it outside of total randomness. This year's bubble to make it into the money (664th place) lasted a record 1 hour, 48 minutes. When it gets down to 10 players left to make the final nine for November, expect another long, drawn-out battle. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more