Poker broadcast glossary

A poker broadcast is the only room where a floor supervisor and a technical director have to understand each other. These are the terms that come up, defined plainly and without the marketing.

Hole cards

The face-down cards belonging to a player. Identifying them live is what RFID makes possible, and the reason a poker broadcast needs a security model rather than just a graphics package.

Broadcast delay

A deliberate offset between what happens at the table and what reaches viewers, so that hole-card information cannot reach anyone in a position to act on it. Enforced in the infrastructure, not by asking people to be careful.

Hole-card camera

The pre-RFID method: a small camera or mirror built into the rail, filming each player’s cards. Effective, fragile, and intrusive to the table.

RFID deck

A deck with a passive 13.56 MHz tag laminated into each card. The tag carries an identifier, not a card face; the mapping lives in the system.

Antenna array

The grid of antennas under the felt — typically one per seat, plus board, muck and dealer positions — that energises and reads the cards.

Anti-collision

The protocol behaviour that lets a reader enumerate several tags in the same field individually instead of hearing them talk over each other.

Registration

Binding each card’s identifier to its actual face before play. A deck that has not been registered is unreadable in any useful sense.

Fill and key

Two linked video signals: the fill carries the graphic’s colour, the key carries its transparency. Together they let a switcher lay graphics over live video cleanly.

Downstream keyer (DSK)

The last keying stage before output, where a graphic is laid over the finished program picture.

Flypack

A portable control room in cases — switcher, audio, graphics, comms, record — brought to a venue instead of hiring a facility.

ESU

Equipment set-up day. A crew day spent rigging and testing before anything is rehearsed or shot, and a real budget line rather than a formality.

TD

Technical director. Operates the vision switcher and cuts the show under the director’s call.

A1 / A2

Audio lead and audio assistant. A1 mixes the broadcast; A2 handles the floor — microphones, comms, and the endless business of keeping talent heard.

EIC

Engineer in charge. Owns the technical facility end to end, and on a card-bearing show owns the delay and security chain with it.

CG

Character generator — the system that renders on-screen graphics. The historical term for what is now a real-time graphics engine.

Genlock

A shared reference signal that locks every device to the same timing. Without it, sources cannot be cut between cleanly.

SDI

Serial Digital Interface. The coaxial video standard broadcast infrastructure is built on, carrying picture, embedded audio and timecode down one cable.

Multiview

A single display showing many sources at once, so a director or TD can see every camera and feed simultaneously.

Replay

A system that records every camera continuously so any moment can be recalled and played back at speed, in reverse, or in slow motion.

Outs

The cards still in the deck that would win a player the hand. Counting them live, on screen, was a poker-television first in 2005.

Board

The community cards dealt face up. Distinct from hole cards, and not security-sensitive — which is why board coverage can run without delay.

Orbit

One full circuit of the dealer button around the table, so that every player has paid every position once.

Muck

The discard pile, and the act of folding into it. A tracked position on an RFID table, because a card that reaches the muck has left play.

Colour-up

Exchanging lower-denomination chips for higher ones as blinds rise, so stacks stay countable — for the players and for the camera.

Final table

The last table of a tournament, where the remaining players meet to decide it. The moment a tournament becomes television.

How RFID playing cards work — the card, the table, and why decks fail to read.
What it costs to televise a poker tournament — what actually drives the budget.
Who invented the RFID playing card — the public record.