Worst Idea Ever?

We apologize for the month-long hiatus, but the real world reared its ugly head once again. I hope you’ll all join in me in congratulating fellow Official Scorer Josh on graduating from law school. He will likely be MIA for a few months while studying for that pesky little bar exam. The good news is that I have plenty to write about. I was going to start off with an in depth analysis of the NBA playoffs but with all the pressures of finals Josh forgot to get the express written consent of the NBA. So much for that idea, I guess.

Some of you may have picked up on the fact that we are poker enthusiasts. Well for me it goes a bit farther than that. I have been playing poker semi-professionally (which is to say that the majority of my income has come from poker) for the last eighteen months. I even cashed in a 2007 World Series of Poker event. So when I was doing a little research to determine what World Series events I would be playing in this year and I came across this from ESPN, needless to say I was more than a little befuddled.

In summation, players who play in the $10,000 Main Event this year (beginning July 3rd) will play down to the final nine players who will make up the final table. This will happen sometime on July 14th. The tournament will then be ‘paused’ for a full 117 days and resumed on November 9th. All players will be payed ninth place money right there (9th place paid $525,934 in 2007, $1,566,858 in 2006) and then paid the difference between that and their final placing in November. The remaining prize money will be placed in a high yield savings account with the interest accrued being added to the prize pool. The four month hiatus will be used to promote the final table. All nine remaining players will be booked on talk shows, sign endorsement deals, and be followed around by ESPN camera crews.

I was so dumbfounded by this that I immediately hit the forums (www.twoplustwo.com) to see what people were saying. As I thought, the natives were restless. People were pointing out all sorts of potential hiccups. What if a player dies in the interim? What if one is arrested? In rehab? A foreign player could be denied a Visa to return. Two or more players could work out a way to collude. These people would be targets for bribery, blackmail, extortion, etc. There are a million ways this could work out terribly and I see very little upside.

ESPN says that "[t]he innovative change -- offering fans an enhanced way of following the excitement and drama of high-stakes tournament play -- was made in collaboration between the WSOP, ESPN and the WSOP Players Advisory Council." Well now I had a hard time believing that the Players Advisory Council (PAC) actually signed off on this. The PAC is made up of fifteen professional and amateur poker players including Annie Duke, Daniel Negraneu, Howard Lederer, Steve Zolotow, Phil Gordon, Steve Cloutier, Cindy Violette, Tom Snyder and Robert Williamson III. They work with Jeffrey Pollack, the Commissioner of the WSOP, and they represent the players, advising Pollack on player concerns and recommendations.

So I decided to call one of the members of this committee and see what he had to say. I called Robert Williamson III, professional poker player, bracelet winner and one of the best Pot Limit Omaha players in the world. He also happens to be an all-around nice guy. Robert said that initially he was vehemently against the idea, but after thinking it over for a while he decided that there were some distinct upsides. Poker suffered a critical blow to its legitimacy and growth in September of 2006 when President Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) into law. Online poker rooms, the easiest and many believe the best venue for new players, have lost many of the ‘fish’ that makes poker so profitable for the pros. Poker had been making strides toward legitimacy year after year. Participation in the WSOP Main Event had been growing at a near exponential rate every year. In 2003, the year of the famous Moneymaker boom, there were 839 entrants. The following year there were 2,576, there were 5,619 in 2005 and 8,773 in 2006. But in 2007, following the passage of the UIGEA (which caused Harrah’s to announce that it was no longer accepting third party satellite registrations -- online satellites for example) there were only 6,358. In the entire thirty-six year history of the event that marked only the second time that there was a decline in registration numbers (14 fewer players registered for the 1992 event than the 1991). But I digress. Robert told me that while he felt the four month break was excessive, there was a real opportunity here to show people the merits of the game. He pointed out that if we end up with even two well spoken players at the final table making the rounds on the talk shows to build up hype, it can really call attention to a real problem that affects many Americans; the UIGEA. As it stands now, poker gets one new “ambassador” every year, this year it would get nine. He also pointed out that the PAC had very little actual say in the final decision and that while they were consulted they had no real ability to veto the decision.

Well, after a nice long conversation with Robert I felt a little bit better about this whole thing, but not much. The NFL takes a two week break between the Championship games and the Super Bowl. Two weeks is a reasonable amount of time to hype up the big game, though truth be told I am beyond sick of the coverage by the end of week one. I think a week or two would have been sufficient time to hype up the event. Robert reminded me that the only people who stand to lose here for real are Harrah’s and ESPN. He also mentioned that it isa one year experiment and if it doesn’t end well, it will be back to normal next year.

Stay tuned for a detailed accounting of my WSOP trip next month, as well as an interview with Robert Williamson III sometime in the future. You can visit Robert at www.RWIII.com.