Is it Really the World Series?

When the perennial cellar-dwelling Tampa Devil Rays beat the New York Yankees early in the 2004 baseball season, the common refrain was, "It's a long season." Over the course of 162 games, the best team in baseball will come out on top. But even then, the World Series isn't awarded to the team with the best record. To the dismay of baseball purists, a team still has to win three playoff series and overcome the short-term luck factor to be crowned World Champs.

Even so, when the Anaheim Angels won the 2002 World Series, they were the undisputed world champions of baseball. But when Robert Varkonyi won the 2002 World Series, could he make a similar claim? On one hand, he beat out 13 former World Series of Poker champions to finish first in a field of 631. On the other hand, the fact that none of those 13 champions made it to the final 45 players tells you that there is a tremendous amount of short-term luck in tournament poker – lest Phil Hellmuth Jr.'s head-shaving remind you that in a key hand, Varkonyi's Q-10 took down Hellmuth's big slick. In what other competitive game could a player who had never played in a live tournament win the game's most prestigious prize, like Chris Moneymaker did in 2003?

Before I address the format of the World Series itself, I first want to say that a serious issue for the long-term prospects of poker is that there isn't a clear way of determining who the best players are. Card Player certainly does a good job with its "Player of the Year" rankings, but when is the last time you've seen the names Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese – arguably two of the world's best players – on that list? Because Doyle and Chip play mainly in cash games, they don't play enough tournaments to qualify. To that end, if you don't see Phil Ivey at many final tables in the future, don't assume he's in a slump. More likely, it means he's running too good in cash games to take a break to play in a tournament.

To solve this problem, I think you have to look at the PGA Tour and NASCAR. Like poker, they are individual sports in which a large number of players can participate in a tournament/race. But what differentiates the PGA Tour and NASCAR from poker is the selectivity of participants. While the game of poker, particularly the World Poker Tour, has done a great job of promoting the fact that anyone can win, it has also created a lottery mentality – supported by amateurs-turned-champions Varkonyi and Moneymaker.

Thus, the question for the game of poker is really the same question for the World Series of Poker: Should it continue to promote the lottery mentality with no criteria for entry and a relatively low entry fee, or should it try to find an objective way to determine the world's best poker player? I won't cop out and simply say, it depends, but I will say that the answer lies in the self-interest of the beholder.

If you're a winning player, the lottery mentality benefits you because of all the dead money it is attracting to the game. By perpetuating the notion that "anyone can win," less-skilled players will be willing to bet their money against expert players. Certainly, this would never take place in chess or gin – the very reason why the best players in those games have a tough time finding a bet. To the cardrooms – both online and brick-and-mortar – the lottery mentality equals more players, which in turn equals more rake and tournament fees. And even for the bad players, the true dead money who have little chance to win, there is value in the thrill of getting a chance to match wits against the world's best. After all, when you pay $10,000 to attend the Michael Jordan fantasy basketball camp, you don't have the chance to compete against the world's best in a meaningful context, and you don't have the chance – however slight it may be – to win $5 million and be crowned World Champion. So, all in all, I would say the current state of poker is a win-win all the way around – in the short-term.

Before I move on, here's a quick question: Name 10 hockey players in the NHL. I'll lay even money that you can't, because now that Gretzky has retired, there are no players who transcend the sport. And to me, that's really the essence of the problem with poker's current state. In order for the game to transcend the community of poker players, it needs stars. Dr. J. saved the NBA; Magic and Bird allowed it to transcend basketball fans; and Michael Jordan brought it global. Golf ratings plummet when Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, or John Daly misses a cut. NASCAR has become one of America's most popular sports because its fans always have Dale Earnhardt Jr. to root for – or Jeff Gordon to root against – while hockey ratings have plummeted. So, while Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, and Phil Ivey may be household names among your friends, they're not going to transcend the poker world unless you see them competing on TV on a regular basis.

The WPT and ESPN have a great business model – similar to that of game shows and reality shows – in that they don't have to pay the talent. But it's that same business model that gives them no control over who plays at the final table. When I asked one of the ESPN producers about the difficulty of filming a seven-card stud tournament, he said, "The issues with showing the holecards didn't even matter, because we had Men The Master at the final table, and he was hilarious." I didn't bother to ask him what would have happened if Joe Schlobatnik were the most marketable player in the stud event.

All of this leads me to the question of what to do about the WSOP. If its goal is to create a system that crowns poker's best player, it has its work cut out for it. In baseball, it takes 162 games plus the playoffs and the World Series to determine the best team, and poker certainly would take that many sessions to truly get to the "long run." Raising the buy-in would be one way to create selectivity, but even the WPT Championship, with its $25,000 buy-in, has a large number of players who qualify through satellites. Did anyone think that Martin de Knijff deserved to be classified as the undisputed best poker player in the world after his 2004 WPT Championship victory? Limiting the field to players who have qualified through a tournament win – as Mike Sexton had done with the Tournament of Champions – is another idea, but again, even by limiting the field, is one tournament really enough to prove greatness over the long haul?

If poker wants to flourish in the future and remain a viable TV product, it must create stars. To do so, it needs to follow the lead of the PGA Tour and NASCAR to create a system in which the top players compete in a selective field week after week over the course of a year – because five years from now, if the average person off the street can't name 10 poker players, TV ratings are going to look a lot more like those of hockey than NASCAR. If you're a winning player, while you may think that poor TV ratings won't hurt you, remember that it was the popularity of poker on TV that initially drove all the dead money to poker in the first place.

Would you carve time out of your busy schedule to watch Greg Raymer play Robert Varkonyi heads up? How about Phil Ivey versus Chip Reese? Remember that it's the former pair who can boast about their World Series of Poker championships, but I know which match I'd prefer watching.

Greg Dinkin is the author of three books, including Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, which is available through Card Player. He is also the co-founder of Venture Literary, www.ventureliterary.com, a literary management company.