The World Series of Poker and the Economy of Poker

Before any chronically bad bankroll managers expect me to spell out how to live in a frugal manner while maintaining a healthy balance and maximising their profit in the game, I will just say that that isn't what this column is about. For one thing, I don't have any definitive answers to those questions, and for another, poker players have a habit of nodding sagely while discussing things like loss limits, game selection, and sensible routines before checking into a suite at the Wynn, buying into some $10,000 World Series of Poker events, and then moving from $2-$5 hold'em to $25-$50 pot-limit Omaha when the first two things are busy digesting a chunk of their roll.

Instead, I thought it might be interesting, now in the throes of the WSOP in Las Vegas, to consider how the poker world (presently mostly convened in the Amazon Room at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino) operates its own special economy, in which virtual dollars are traded for hard currency with a variety of monarchs' heads on it, and large sums of money drift daily from the virtual world to the real one, and back again.

Nowhere is it more obvious that poker players have a different attitude toward money than most people than at the cage at the Rio. Buying in for a minimum of $1,500 to have a shot at a bracelet, record-breaking numbers of players from around the world queue up in droves to hand over what to many is a very tidy sum, indeed, just to have their shot at the title with its accompanying huge briefcase of money. As anyone who's played an undercard event at the Series will know, a shot is all you get, and if two or three confrontations fail to go your way, it's back to the line to try one of the other 51 events (52 if you're a casino employee, senior, or lady -- 54 if all three). Every year, it is suggested that this might be the year of the slowdown in live tournament poker, and every year the WSOP seems to disagree.

Buying in for the main event is an interesting experience. In a world in which cash could be said to be king, there are several things that take its place. A small, round, plastic chip can be traded for a $10,000 seat -- in my case last year, two of them. I won a healthy (in every sense) bet with Roland De Wolfe earlier in the year, and the culmination of that was being chucked two chips in the Rio corridor, one of which turned out to raise suspicions that I could have come by such a thing legitimately, and it had to be returned to the Wynn cash desk before I was allowed to register. Not that an eyelid was batted at the registration booth -- when you've seen over the course of the month 54,288 players parting with a total of nearly $160 million (that's more than the GDP of two countries in 2007), I imagine that dollar bills cease to amaze.

This attitude, if not already adopted by the players themselves, seems to rub off over the course of a few weeks in Vegas. Speaking to a handful of UK players headed there again, the number who left last year with bankrolls in excess of $50,000 and returned with about 10 percent of that is not inconsiderable. Something about the determination of Sin City to reduce one's liquidity via all manner of gambling and entertainment seems to change the attitude of a lot of young players toward their own money during their stay. It is easy to forget the months of online grinding when presented with the awesome opportunities for "living the dream" in the clubs, suites, and cardrooms of Las Vegas. If playing online in Britain is the equivalent of a nine-to-five, changing sterling into double the number of dollars and hitting the Rio is like being handed a trust fund and sent to Disneyland. The fact that the money is all the players' own, and will have to be replaced if that bracelet doesn't materialise, is easy to ignore.

Cash changes hands in a variety of ways apart from at the tables. There are the inevitable prop bets (who can forget Jeff Madsen in his jester costume), last-longer bets (sometimes overshadowing the buy-ins of the tournaments on which they are wagered), and percentage swaps/purchases. There are also bets with bookmakers and, for those with the knowledge and funding, the staking of likely players in events that present some of the best value around. There is a whole subcategory of the poker economy that is hardly ever reported on, but which, if you listen to the idle chat of players at any event, represents a fair proportion of the wagering going on. "I have a couple of horses doing well" is nothing to do with the racetrack, and all about the spreading of a bankroll over a number of players who represent value in one way or another.

Players in the UK sometimes forget that Americans face both tax on their winnings and a climate that is decidedly anti-gambling, despite what the numbers at the Series might suggest. The crackdown on online gaming stateside had a major impact on online players worldwide, but in a way has fostered the community's internal transferring of money more than ever. Poker players often bypass money-changing facilities, with their unfavourable rates and commissions, swapping with each other when transfer of location demands a different sort of currency. Five-figure deals are completed with the sentence, "I'll ship it to you on X," where X is any one of the major online poker clients. With a handshake, e-money becomes a stack of bills (or a couple of casino chips).

But where does it all end up, when the biggest month on the poker calendar is over? The most widely publicised sum will be that handed to the champion of the WSOP main event, which represents the biggest change for a single player. One person will win upward of $8 million and continue to promote tournament poker as a field in which dreams can be made. Fifty-three other people will win bracelets and probably life-changing sums of money. Tens of thousands of other people won't. The same problem has been highlighted online -- that money drifts gently upward, with the largest sums being siphoned off by a handful of the top players. This creates the argument that the poker economy is unsustainable in the long run without a continual influx of new players coming in at the bottom, creating the wealth that eventually drifts upward.

For every sponsored pro heading to the Amazon Room for a bracelet event, there are still, however, hundreds of qualifiers, and despite the difficulties faced by Americans in getting their money online and offline (how many recreational players bother with researching the grey-area possibilities of IP rerouting?), it looks from the starting numbers present at the Rio for the 2008 WSOP that the bubble has yet to burst. There might be a number of simple aphorisms about how money moves around in general in poker: clockwise, for example, or from the bad players to the good, or from the underfunded to the comfortably funded, but in the summer months, it also moves from online accounts and personal bankrolls into Nevada, into the coffers of Harrah's, and the pockets of a few. Europe slows down its live-tournament scene during this period, as our best or most optimistic players change time zones and currency in a bid to be one of them.

Jen Mason is part of www.blondepoker.com. She is responsible for its live-tournament coverage in the UK and abroad.