The Trial of the Century

On the Saturday after the 2005 World Series of Poker had ended, Irishman Padraig Parkinson went to the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport and showed his ticket. "Sir, your flight isn't until tomorrow," said the kind woman at the counter.



"I know," said Padraig. "I'm only here practicing. I want to make sure my ticket's gonna work!"



I knew exactly how Padraig felt. After eight weeks in the 110-degree confines of the Nevada desert, that plane back to Europe had the feel of a prison break. But that's not to take anything away from the 2005 World Series of Poker, which will go down as a watershed in the history of the game.



I went as press, was there as an observer, a job partly made difficult by the sheer enormity of it all. I think back to my flight to Las Vegas, to the home of the game, where Benny Binion started it all with an idea for a championship to decide the best player in the world. I think back to every trip ever to the World Series of Poker, where the thrill that sets one's haunches tingling is about finding the best, playing with them, and then hanging out to talk poker when it's over.



That was gone; I never found nor saw that in Las Vegas this year, where every final table had at least two players who drooled on their chips, and an atmosphere of Bristol Bingo. No. The World Series was big this year, massive and all-encompassing, a feeding frenzy of cards and chips held in an area the size of an airplane hangar in a convention hall in the Nevada desert. It was all stripped down. There was no bar, no camaraderie, no familiar faces at the tables, and no shrimp cocktails by the pool. What was left was the game itself. The game of poker was on trial at the 2005 World Series of Poker, and I'm relieved to say that the game survived. But I wish I could say the same about all of the players.



It was what it was. It was the new game of poker, what poker has become – something very far removed from the ninehanded, low-rising, small-field blinds of yesteryear – a monster made on the Internet. The game of poker has gone onto the Internet, and the 2005 World Series of Poker was when it came home to roost. And in the midst of it all, a question was answered: Is it luck or is it skill? Poker is skill, but luck is the hawk riding shotgun on her shoulders.



Who paid for the World Series of Poker? The 2005 World Series of Poker was paid for by the Internet, in two ways. A lump of players won the money to play in the World Series on the Internet; they won it on the Internet and brought it to Las Vegas themselves. And then there were the sponsored players. The sponsored players won their money on the Internet, as well. It was made for them by the sites that sponsor them and spit back into the game.



What's next? Where do we go from here? How silly does a £200 freezeout with 124 runners on a Monday on the mainland seem now? It doesn't seem like anything. Poker can't go back, it must go forward, and forward is television that is paid for by the Internet. Last year at the World Series, there was no respect given to the Internet, but that wasn't what 2005 was about. In 2005, the Internet was all but celebrity, with hospitality suites, basketball shirts, scantily clad girls on the motorcycles, and a lifestyle show to beat the band. Internet sites were given the golden pencil at the World Series of Poker, with logos in bloom and business cards at every door. But I wish I could say the same about the players.



It's really very simple. The strong will survive. The television companies and the Internet sites are dealing the cards.



The ones getting squeezed right now are individual players, squeezed out of respect while playing their poker. There are murmurs, chattering from four corners of the poker world, that the time is now for a players union. I think it could happen. I hope it will happen. One day it might make sense as a question of money, but that time is not now. A players union is needed as a question of respect, of basic individual rights, when a person plays poker. The good news for the future, however, is that the game of poker will be fine either way.