As I watched I did wonder about how well the show was being received by those who didn’t share my enthusiasm for poker -- the so-called “casual” fan of poker or sports in general who happened on the coverage and perhaps had stuck around for longer than a hand or two.

Ratings were reportedly favorable overall for both the Sunday and Tuesday broadcasts, with the average viewership exceeding the network’s expectations. Still, I assumed that factors such as the long, relatively unexciting sequences between knockout hands or the fact that hole cards weren’t shown until hands had completed might have deterred some viewers from watching more than a short while -- never mind through several meals like me!

Among these ruminations about the audience for the WSOP final table shows, I can’t say that it occurred to me to think about how women might be more or less interested than male viewers by the coverage. It was not until my He Said/She Said partner Jen Newell suggested the topic to me that I thought to consider whether there might have been reasons why women would be less interested in the extended, comprehensive coverage than men.

Jen mentioned to me the relative lack of female presence on the shows, which I’ll concede was certainly the case. All of the players were men, of course, as were most of the commentators. Kara Scott did appear for short periods now and then to offer observations and to interview players after they had busted out, but for the most part we were watching men play cards and listening to men talk about them doing so.

Poker pro Vanessa Rousso did join Lon McEachern and Antonio Esfandiari in the booth for a short stretch on Sunday afternoon, and in fact right after her arrival was challenged to comment on one of the most significant hands at the final table.

The hand featured eventual winner Pius Heinz and Eoghan O’Dea. At the time, O’Dea gotten close to chip leader Martin Staszko while Heinz had slipped to eighth of the remaining nine players. Heinz had opened preflop and Ben Lamb called, and it folded around to O’Dea in the small blind who made a hefty reraise that only Heinz called.

The flop came 8c-8d-4c and O’Dea made a continuation bet of just under half the pot. After some thought, Heinz called, pushing the pot up around 20 million. The turn then brought the 2c and another bet from O’Dea, this time for 8.2 million.

Heinz went deep into the tank, giving Rousso and the others a chance to speculate about the players’ holdings. The consensus was that both players had big pocket pairs. O’Dea looked very strong, said Rousso, and as time wore on she suggested that Heinz looked like he was about to fold, his “muck face” indicating as much.

Then suddenly Heinz announced he was all in! And O’Dea folded in a snap. It turned out that O’Dea held Ah-Qd while Heinz had Qc-Qs. That hand shot Heinz up to second place while knocking O’Dea down to eighth, utterly changing the dynamic at the final table as Heinz was thereafter able to continue pressuring the others on his way to the chip lead and his eventual victory.

Even though Rousso had been fooled somewhat by O’Dea’s betting and demeanor, her commentary was helpful and added to the excitement of watching the hand play out. But her spell in the booth was brief, and soon it was back to a male-only group offering analysis of the play.

I understand Jen’s implication that having more women on the broadcasts might have helped attract more women to watch. I definitely think the producers missed an opportunity Tuesday night to have Poker Hall of Fame inductees Barry Greenstein and Linda Johnson take turns in the booth at some point during the more than six hours they were on the air that night. Both would have added to the show, and Johnson in particular -- besides entertaining us with her wit -- might’ve been able to talk about women’s increased participation in the game.

One other aspect of the 15-plus hours of coverage on both days that I noticed was the unrelenting focus on actual play with relatively little “color” or emphasis on the players’ personalities or other contextual items of interest from the WSOP.

Even the 15-minute breaks were largely taken up with further analysis and focus on the hands. There were a few very brief packages shown, all repeats of biographical bits about players that had been shown in previous episodes. But for the most part the broadcasts concentrated on the play and little else.

It could be that such an intense focus on the play -- while favored by hardcore fans and players -- might have turned off some casual fans, women among them. I know that when my wife and I watch the edited WSOP shows on ESPN that the “color” provided by the brief bios and other segments between hands makes the shows a lot more interesting to her.

Then again, my wife isn’t a poker player, so the distinction I’m drawing here may be more between committed poker enthusiasts and non-poker people than between men and women.

It’s very likely that when it comes to attracting and keeping audiences for its WSOP coverage, ESPN isn’t especially concerned with building significant viewership among women. And while I always like to see efforts made in the service of attracting more women to the game, I don’t necessarily believe it to be ESPN’s job to do so.

It will be interesting to see how the “almost live” broadcasts from this year’s WSOP will influence future poker programming. We are likely heading toward an era in which the live show will become more prominent, perhaps even the norm for poker shows.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what role women might play on these types of shows. And whether, as has been the case previously, the shows will largely continue to resemble other sporting events where we are mostly watching and listening to men at work.