It seems like years since it was announced that 60 Minutes would be doing a story about online poker (specifically the AP and UB scandals). Since then, small details have leaked out here and there about how they would paint the industry, who would be involved, when the story would air, etc.

Last week, I was told by one of the people involved in the story that the piece would air that coming Sunday. By then, it was widely expected that the 60 Minutes broadcast would not be a good night for poker. I sat down to watch, and "live" blog the show, and was ready to be as cynical as I am when I blog the WSOP episodes – but this time perhaps justifiably so.

Time code in minutes into the broadcast

0:00 – "… pales in comparison to the amount of people that are gambling on the Internet right now, even though it's illegal and unregulated in the US."

It's always nice to have your thesis statement be around 50% true.

0:01 – My good friend Todd Witteles makes an appearance in the intro. I knew Todd was interviewed and would probably make the final cut, but from the few preview commercials I saw it looks like he is going to be featured a lot – which is good because Todd understands how horrible the scandal was, but he’s still a positive ambassador for online poker.

0:06 – Wow, AP/UB segment is the first one up. I don't watch 60 Minutes, so I don't know if that's usually reserved for the main story, but if so, then it beat out whatever I just fast-forwarded through about Michael Phelps.

0:07 – Looks like 60 Minutes Dude actually has a good grasp of how things went down since he credited "the players themselves" for outing the scandal. This might not be a hatchet job after all.

0:07 – "The shadowy and profitable business that operates outside US law" - I may have spoken too soon.

0:09 – 60 Minutes Dude sits down for a tutorial on how to open an online poker account. They use screenshots of going through the process. Why did they choose to use Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker as the sites to show 60 Minutes Dude how to sign up for online poker? I don't know; seems rigged.

0:10 – "This $18 billion industry is illegal in the US, but the ban is almost impossible to enforce."

Broadcasting Rule #2 – As long as your thesis statement is at least 50% true, the rest of your statements can be less true than that… for example, they can be (what we call in broadcast journalism) "false."

0:11 – Wow, this is incredible. 60 Minutes Dude just said three consecutive sentences that were almost, like, 80% true.

0:12 – Witteles: "You can do it from your own living room, you don't have to get dressed." If you know Todd, you know that second part is especially important to him.

0:13 – Seems like they're doing a pretty good job telling the story so far. I like that they picked Todd and two other well educated guys as the interviewees. It gives some credibility to the industry as a whole, as well as to the investigation itself (if they had used some broke, degen college kids people might’ve thought it was just a witch hunt perpetrated by sore losers).

0:14 – I'm actually getting goose bumps as they walk through the story of everything unfolding. It happened so spread out in real time that it was hard to grasp the totality of how huge the scandal really was. They're now talking about how someone at AP accidently sent that huge spreadsheet out with all the cards from the infamous POTRIPPER (one of the outed cheaters), and I'm actually feeling a genuine sense of pride for the poker community.

0:15 – "Which is equivalent to winning a one-in-a-million jackpot six times in a row" - staggering.

0:17 – Pretty good job overall describing the Kahnawake and how the infrastructure is really set up.

0:20 – Good to see them actually bringing Russ Hamilton's name out. I'm still not sure about his involvement, but the guys who have more info than me say he's involved and they haven't been wrong about too much so far.

0:21 – Wow, that ended rather abruptly. No Mike Sexton?? No Gary Wise?? No Nat Arem??
I would have to say that overall 60 Minutes did a much better job of portraying the whole picture than I expected. I would have liked SOME talk of how the major sites are very trusted, and specifically how Full Tilt's backend infrastructure is setup in a way that superuser cheating is virtually impossible.

It is still very easy to tell when non-poker media outlets talk about poker. It was clear that 60 Minutes Dude did his best to really understand everything, but that's just impossible to do in four weeks (or however long they worked on the project).

Overall – I don't think it will hurt poker as much as I expected. Still, can't imagine it helped.