State of the Felt -- Matt SavageSavage Talks About the Popularity of Shooting Stars with the Fans at Bay 101 |
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In State of the Felt, Card Player will periodically bring you insights and opinions from some of the most influential players, tournament and poker organization directors, and other people that influence the poker industry. This is a place where the broad trends and forces that continue to shape the game will have space to live and breathe in open discussion.
This week, Tournament Director Matt Savage talks about his involvement in the 2009 Bay 101 Shooting Star event.
Ryan Lucchesi: The Bay 101 event has one of the most varied structures of any event on the tournament trail. What was your thought process in devising this tournament structure?
Matt Savage: I think it is the most unique event on the World Poker Tour, and probably in poker. The early levels being faster made the structure better, in my opinion. It’s the same thing with a deep-stack tournament versus a non deep-stack tournament. Meaning that if you get a little less play in the beginning, you’re going to get more play at the end. Even the pros that came in, they didn’t complain about that, because if they’re going to go broke out of a tournament, they’d like to go broke on the first day. They don’t want to be here the extra few days if they don’t have to be. With the 90-minute levels after day 1, there is plenty of play, and then the two-hour levels with the six-handed tables. What that does is that it combines structure, so that at the final table you’re guaranteed to have a good structure.
RL: The final tables here always feature some of the deepest stacks of any final table in poker. How much is that a byproduct of the structure?
MS: It’s a byproduct of the structure for sure, and with the six-handed tables it makes it so much better, last year we finished at 10,000-20,0000 after a seven-hour final table, which was pretty amazing.
RL: Was there a lot of requests from tournament pros to include six-handed play as much as possible at one of the $10,000 buy-in events?
MS: Definitely, I’ve been hearing that more and more. I’m already thinking about adding that to the LAPC next year. I’m thinking about a $5,000 no-limit hold’em six-handed tournament; I think all of the pros would love to play in that.
RL: Let’s talk about the popularity of the Shooting Star event with the fans. What do you think attracts these large crowds of rail birds in San Jose?
MS: We have the greatest fans in the world here in San Jose, and I think it has a little bit to do with the bounties and the shooting stars. You know that those guys are coming because you see their names and pictures on the wall. You have more access to them here than any other place because you have the big foyer in the middle where everyone comes in each morning and there are pictures and autographs. I think the people who come to Bay 101 enjoy that, and it’s an exciting time for us here.
RL: The Bay 101 event has been gaining popularity now for 13 years, but it really made a huge jump with the fans in 2003 when the number of shooting stars was increased to 50. Do you think the fact that this event has held strong with 50 shooting stars since then is a good indicator of the health of poker’s popularity?
MS: Obviously there are new people coming in each year, new stars. It’s interesting that people always still want to see the old group, as well. We have a lot of new guys coming in here, Chris Moore and Vivek Rajkumar…I think they’re going to be the shooting stars of the future. Then they’ll be the guys whose autographs people will want. There are also Internet stars who have never been seen before that are coming out, that people are learning about from reading Card Player, and I think those will be the next stars of the next generation.
RL: How do you go about selecting the 50 shooting stars at Bay 101?
MS: Well, it started out as Marko Trapani's idea of having a pro-am style golf tournament in poker. It’s grown to bigger numbers since then, but he is still involved in that process. He’s the one that makes the final decisions, he uses management, and my suggestions when he makes those decisions. In moving forward we’re going to have even more trouble than we did this year with people not having the stars they want to see. We’re talking about having two stars per table next year to increase the number of shooting stars we can include.
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