One of the reasons televised poker became a hit was because it allowed viewers at home to see each player's probability of winning the hand, and how each new card dealt affected those odds. We won't see it in Fox's broadcast of tonight's World Series game, but baseball broadcasts could be similarly spiced up by judiciously showing each team's probability of winning—and how every important home run, strikeout, bunt, and stolen base affects those odds.

Win probability, also known as win expectancy, is calculated either by looking at what happened in every other recent game in the same situation (a team up one run in the bottom of the eighth inning with no one on base and two outs has won about 87% of the time from 1979-2004, according to Walk Off Balk's Win Expectancy Finder) or by running a computer simulation of the game situation. Either formulation can be used to track a game as it happens (as the Washington Post has done for Nationals games), and help us appreciate the importance of major events.

Gelf asked Dave Studeman, who wrote a useful guide about Win Probability for Hardball Times in 2004 and a follow-up this year, what he thought of the idea. He replied:

The Texas Hold-em televised odds is something that's mentioned often when I chat with folks about Win Probability. I find that posters either love the idea or loathe it. Of course, I would love it. I think the greatest use of real-time win probability would be insight into events and strategy. For instance, did the manager bring in a pitcher at the right time? Or just how big/crucial was that hit, or that error? Was the home run the big hit, or the double just before it? Things like that. In all cases, it should be remembered that Win Probability is just a guide, not an answer.

What if you want to follow along at home, without Fox's help? Beyond entering the game situation manually on Walk Off Balk, there aren't many easy options. Studeman writes, "Hardball Times writers do track WPA during the postseason games in real time with the spreadsheet, but we don't post live to the Web."

Carl Bialik contributed to this article.