Adios to the Big Fat Payout?
How Can the World Series of Poker Be Improved for 2007? Part Two
Overall I thought that everything went very well during the 2006 World Series of Poker. There was a definite improvement in the bathroom situation, and a huge improvement in the food service. The tournament staff was pleasant and seemed to want to work with us at every turn. Still there are a few items that definitely need to be tweaked for 2007.
Last time I discussed two big items that I believe must be changed for next year’s Series. The H.O.R.S.E. tournament needs to become a four-day event, and the no-limit shootout tournament should start with 10-handed tables rather than six-handed tables. This week I’m bringing three additional important improvements to your attention.
Should the Exit Events Award Bracelets?
Notice that they had a big turnout for all of the exit tournaments (the $1,500 no-limit events held concurrently with the Championship Event). People didn’t have to play against as big a field at the end to win a bracelet, so a lot of the top players were playing in the $1500 events after the Main Event had already started. There were a lot of yeas and nays as to whether the exit tournaments should award bracelets. But since Harrah’s had already decided that they would be bracelet events, they stuck with that decision.
In my opinion, the exit events should not be bracelet tournaments. I believe that once the Championship Event starts, no more tournaments should be scheduled because a lot of people have left town by then so there isn’t a full pool of players. A lot of people hang around just to play in tournaments with shorter fields. And yet, people have pointed out to me that those “short” fields are larger than many of the WSOP tournaments from past years. It’s something of a Catch-22, actually: Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. But my own opinion is that no bracelets should be awarded in these exit events.
Should You Be Able to Enter the Big One After It Has Started?
I have a definite opinion about the Big One, too. I don’t believe they should be running satellites for the Championship Event after it has begun. That is, once the first day has started, I don’t think anybody else should be able to enter the Big One.
They were still running satellites and letting players enter after the first day. In fact this year’s Series had four first days, so that a person actually could still enter within the first two hours of the fourth Day One. And in my opinion, this is wrong.
Somebody came up to me with an interesting viewpoint, although I don’t necessarily subscribe to it. “Well, look,” he said, “Phil and Johnny and you were all knocked out early. And so, a lot of guys think the field might be easier and will go ahead and enter it after they’ve seen so many strong players get knocked out.” Whether or not there’s any truth to this notion, I don’t think that people should be able to enter a tournament in which somebody has already been knocked out, no matter how many starting days the event has.
Adios to the Big Fat Payout?
I believe that the payout structure has been flattened out way too far. I brought this to Jeffrey Pollock’s attention at the party that Harrah’s held for bracelet winners, and predict that the payout structure definitely is something that the committee and Harrah’s will be looking into for 2007. The squawk amongst the players was not about the percentage of the prize pool that Harrah’s was taking out of the tournaments, because that was published in advance and they expected it. No, their big complaint was that the number of places paid had been drawn out so far.
Let me give you an example. Last year, the first exit tournament had 975 entries and paid $220,000 for first place. This year’s first exit event had 1105 entries and it paid $230,000 for the top spot. With well over 100 more players this year, only $10,000 was added to first place. This was the most noticeable example of the flattened-out payout.
The main object of tournament poker is that there is a big payoff for first place. Now that big payoff has been watered down, with less than 22 percent going to the winner. Previously, no tournaments in the history of poker had paid less than 30 percent for first place in brick-and-mortar casinos. “If we wanted to play to win those low percentages, we could’ve played online,” several of the players told me. More than 100 people came up to me and asked about things like this during the Series.
You expect a smaller percentage to be paid for the top spots in the big tournament. In fact the Main Event has never paid the big percentage for first place that other major tournaments pay because of the huge number of entrants. The $12 million first prize is a big-big figure, but it sill is a very small percentage of the total prize pool. If they had given 40 percent for first place in the Big One this year, the winner would’ve gotten $32 million!
So, it’s not the Big One’s payout structure than people are complaining about – it’s the other ones that have been watered down by paying 10 percent of the field. Ten percent is a nice figure, but I don’t think it’s a good idea because it reduces the first-place prize by too much. Some players have been voicing the opinion that the only reason the payout has been flattened so much is because the more players who are paid, the more people can afford to buy in for the next tournament and the more that adds to Harrah’s bottom line. That’s corporate America! If I were Corporate America, I’d be doing it too, because I’d be making more money from the venture (9 percent of each tournament buy-in). But that’s beside the point — we need to look at it from the players’ point of view.
And from that viewpoint, I still would have to say that, although there are a few things that need to be attended to, everything went well overall. Jeffrey Pollock and his whole crew should be commended on how smoothly they got it all done. I think there were some little glitches that need to be talked about and smoothed out for next year, and that will be the mission of the Advisory Committee in tandem with Pollock and his WSOP staff.