Now that I've had some time to catch my breath and have a few weeks in which I slept all seven nights, I figured it was time to do a bit of evaluation on the good and the bad at this year's
World Series of Poker, both for me personally and from an operational standpoint.
My Series: While I did manage to turn an overall profit from the 23 events I entered, I was nonetheless quite disappointed with my results. Every poker player's goal at the
WSOP is to win a bracelet and the cash that goes with it (in either order, depending on personal preference), and anything less than that cannot be considered a real success. With today's huge fields, I expected to have a legitimate shot in probably only four or five events (after all, I'm no Rob Mizrachi; I'm not sure that he entered an event without cashing this year). As it turned out, I cashed three times - in the initial mixed limit/no-limit hold'em, $5,000 no-limit hold'em, and $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. events. My deepest finish was 11th in the H.O.R.S.E. event, but it paid enough to earn me a modest profit for the six-week
Series.
For the fourth straight year, I never really got anything going in the main event. I did manage to make it through the first day, but I was crippled early on and had to fight for survival the rest of the session. I think I ended the day with the same $20,000 we started with, but considering that my stack was as low as $4,000 in mid-afternoon, I was encouraged. However, on day two, I forgot to win a pot, which is a mistake you don't want to make in a poker tournament.
Thoughts on the expanded schedule: When the schedule of events for 2007 came out, I was excited to see so much diversity. However, there were choices to make, as many days featured multiple events. As the tournament played out, I was forced to skip several of my favorite events, including five of the high-low split events. These are probably my best events, yet I played only two of them the entire
Series. This was by choice, of course, as I opted to enter other events knowing that this may happen if I survived for a while. It was a good problem to have, I guess.
One negative of the busy event schedule was that final tables really seemed to lose a lot of their excitement. I can't say this from personal experience, however. In years past, when a final table was going on, the buzz from it permeated the entire room, adding a great deal to the atmosphere of the tournament. I still remember a no-limit hold'em final table at Binion's Horseshoe that featured a "
Rounders rematch" of Seidel vs. Chan. There was some serious energy in the tournament room that day. Now, there are often two final tables being played out simultaneously, costing each one some of its luster. I don't mean to imply that winning a
World Series event is any less prestigious than in the past; rather, that the final table ought to be a spectacle, and with all that was going on in the Amazon room, they were sometimes lost in the shuffle.
Another problem with running so many tournaments was in providing useful tournament clocks that were visible to the players. Often during the
Series, I found myself at a table that had no visual clock, meaning I had to keep track of the time remaining in a level myself. For players to pay thousands of dollars to enter an event (including a significant percentage that went straight to the house) and then not have access to a tournament clock (as they would at any local $20 tournament) is inexcusable, in my opinion. The solution? More TVs would help, for starters. Also, the large number of flat-screen televisions that were elevated and ringed the room all displayed the same information or television channel, so perhaps some rewiring could make things better, too. My brother-in-law is an electrician, and if Harrah's doesn't have someone who can do it, I'll bet he can.
Tournament structures: Going into this year's events, I knew that we would be starting with "double chips" for the first time in
WSOP history. This means that if the buy-in was $5,000, instead of getting $5,000 in chips, players would begin with $10,000. Is this a good thing? Well, it
depends, of course. First, how does one define what is good for the players? Given that most players are superstars in their own minds, double chips is a good thing only if it increases the skill factor. Here is a comparison in a couple of areas on the new versus old structures, and which has the edge in providing a more skillful arena for the better players:
• More room for early maneuvering - With twice as much in starting chips, players could afford to lose some pots early on and still recover. Also, there was more time to wait out a bad initial run. I didn't think that starting the blinds at a higher level was enough to offset the benefits provided by the extra amount of chips. In past years in events such as the $1,500 no-limit hold'em tournaments, players who lost even a moderate-sized pot were immediately relegated to extreme short-stack status. Also, in events such as the $5,000 no-limit hold'em, there was some quality time for deep-stack play, which is not typically a feature of World Series events.
Edge: double chips (However, I am making an exception for the main event, in which the blinds escalated too rapidly early on, in my opinion; I think the $150-$300 level needs to be inserted next year.)
• Average pot significance - In my opinion, the less important any one hand is, the more skillful the tournament as a whole. Of course, there always will be some key hands. However, if you're sitting on an average stack late in a limit tournament, and lose a pot that was raised preflop, with one bet on the flop, another on the turn, and no bets on the river, and you suddenly find yourself on the brink of elimination, there is something wrong with the tournament's structure. Players with average stacks should be able to lose a number of smallish pots before becoming critically short, not just one or two. Unfortunately, such was the case this year. This problem can be rectified in a couple of easy ways; namely, adding one or two moderate blind increases late in the event, or lengthening the time of the levels from 60 to 90 minutes at some point. My suggestion would be that day-one levels (when there is plenty of play with double chips) last an hour, and then increase to 90 minutes on day two for the remainder of the event. I think this alone would stop the "all-in fests" that took place late in nearly every event this year.
Here is a bit more evidence to support my case, drawn from personal experience:
Event No. 1, $5,000 limit hold'em at the 2003
WSOP, in which final table rounds lasted 90 minutes. With six players remaining, play at the final-table lasted nearly six hours without a single elimination. This was due not only to the resiliency of the all-in players, but also because the slow level increases left us with plenty of chips to play, such that an average-stacked player could contest and lose a few hands without being eliminated. I don't think that any of this year's limit hold'em final tables even lasted as long as six hours.
Event 22, $5,000 no-limit hold'em, this year; 63 spots were paid. It is typical that after the money is reached in a tournament, there is a flurry of eliminations. This event took that concept to a whole new level, though. I finished in 31st place, and I don't think I played for more than an hour after the money was reached. Think about it: Half the field gets eliminated in just over one hour! Nothing but skill there. I wasn't around for it, but I heard that the final table was done in less than three hours, start to finish. Given the amount of money and prestige at stake in these events, the players deserve a better structure. I don't mean to take anything away from James Mackey, the bracelet winner in this event, as he had to play great poker for a couple of days to put himself in the position to win, but I just think that tournaments of this magnitude should allow for a lot of play throughout, not just initially. It's not tough to fix, but I don't believe the answer lies in giving the players more chips to start with.
Edge: past structures
So, another year is in the books, and now that I've had some time to sleep, I can't wait for 2008!
Mark Gregorich has played poker professionally in Las Vegas since 1995. He is regarded as one of the top Omaha
eight-or-better players in the world, and contributed to that section in Doyle Brunson's Super System II. Mark is primarily a cash-game player, but occasionally tosses some dead money into the prize pools of major tournaments.
