2010 World Series of Poker Spotlight -- Jamie GoldAll-Time WSOP Money Leader Sits Down with Card Player |
|
The winner of the 2010 main event will receive more than $8.9 million — a mammoth figure no doubt, but still just 75 percent of what Jamie Gold received when he won the 2006 main event, which remains the largest field the World Series has even seen.
Because of that win, Gold remains the all-time money leader in the 41-year history of the World Series of Poker. Despite that recognition, the 2006 champ has not been a fixture on the poker scene the past few years, choosing to spend much of his time away from the poker tables.
Gold played Day 1B of the 2010 WSOP, but failed to move on. However, before he was eliminated, he sat down with Card Player to discuss why he only played two WSOP events this year, the projects he’s been working on, and the future sponsorship opportunities he envisions for the poker world.
Focusing His Energy Outside of Poker
Many of the most well-known poker pros anchor themselves to the Rio every summer to compete in every World Series of Poker event that they can possibly handle in the hopes that they can add another bracelet to their collection.
Gold is one of the exceptions. This summer, he arrived to Las Vegas the week before the main event, playing one preliminary event before the big dance. He cashed in a $2,500 no-limit hold’em event before making a quiet day-1 exit in the main event.
The former talent agent says that in future years he expects to play a full slate of events, but he’s just not at that point in his life yet.
“I believe that later in life, that will be what I want to do,” said Gold. “But I don’t see the World Series of Poker going anywhere anytime soon. And I have so many other things that I do in my life [right now]…I feel like while I’m relatively young, and I have a lot of energy, and people still care about me, I have the ability to raise a lot of money for things that I care about. Poker will always be here.”
Instead of playing poker constantly, Gold has been involved with charitable organizations in a way that few poker players ever have been. He’s attended or hosted dozens upon dozens of charity poker tournaments, and has used his L.A. connections to drum up money and support for his various causes.
Now, he’s teamed up with some of the biggest celebrities on the planet to help with the Global Creative Forum, a group that includes former president Bill Clinton and various movie stars such as Sean Penn, Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Biel. The goal of the group is bring Hollywood, the United Nations, and various world organizations together to positively affect the world.
“I thought that I was going to run my own foundation. That was my plan, where I could help maybe 10 different charities,” said Gold, before he realized that he could do more good by joining the Global Creative Forum. “I’m just lucky to be a part of it. Bill Rouhana, who [was the CEO of a publishing group that greatly expanded] Chicken Soup for the Soul, he’s the head of this whole thing. All he seems to care about is giving back and changing the world in a positive way.”
Gold successfully pitched the idea of hosting a poker tournament for the group in L.A. on Oct. 11, so he is hopeful that he can do his part to raise money.
“This year was about Haiti. Next year is going to be the green initiative,” said Gold. “I’m very proud of the work that I’ve done in the last few years, but I feel like there’s a lot more to do.”
The Revolving Door of Poker Sponsorship
As of right now, Gold plays without a patch or poker site sponsor. It’s a pretty stunning fact considering that there are hundreds of players sponsored by various sites, and Gold easily remains one of the most famous players on the planet due to his monstrous win.
The 2006 champ says he’s hesitant to jump into a new sponsorship because of his past experiences. He won the main event as a representative of Bodog, but as the UIGEA passed (which affects payment transfers to and from poker sites) and the legality surrounding online became murky, Gold admitted it was “a bad experience…because it was a pretty scary thing.”
Last year, he signed what was billed as the largest online poker sponsorship deal ever with an upstart poker site called aced.com. However, that relationship quickly fizzled as the money stopped changing hands.
“It was supposed to be $12 million guaranteed, plus the back end. I got a very small percentage of it, the first few payments,” said Gold. “It all seemed real. They had the money there. We checked. But it turned out, well actually, I’m not supposed to talk about it because we just legally finally separated. It took a year.”
So after a second abrupt poker sponsorship, Gold is on his own again. He was asked why he still hasn’t joined one of the major sites, and his plans for that department in the future.
“PokerStars and Full Tilt don’t need me. They have enough celebrities, enough players,” said Gold. “But there are sites that I could do very well for, that I could attract [tens of thousands of] players in a year. There are a lot of sites that could benefit from that.”
Gold says he’s declined to join an existing site because he is determined to include a major charitable component to this endeavor, and he doubts many existing sites would be willing to shell out as much to charities as he is hoping for.
However, he is working with a company in Asia to start a new poker site out there, before eventually opening it up in America and then Europe.
“They have guaranteed that they will give away 10 percent of every dollar they make to charity,” said Gold, who said he will be spending a lot more time at the poker tables whenever the new site launches, which he hopes will be later this year. “I am going to be on tour. I’m going to play a lot of the European Poker Tour and World Series events this next year.”
Poker — Its Future and Gold’s Place in the Game
With all of the time he spent trying to get various deals and sponsorships for his clients when he was a talent agent, Gold is in a unique position to speak from a position of intelligence about where he sees the game going in terms of mainstream sponsorship.
“Mainstream sponsorship is so pertinent to the future of poker. If you don’t get to the mainstream, you don’t get to that next level,” said Gold. “I think that the World Series of Poker has done a great job in attracting brands, but it’s not their fault that mainstream big-name brands have not come along.”
Gold said that poker was on the quick path to widespread acceptance and recognition for mainstream sponsors before the controversial UIGEA was passed in 2006, which has hampered online poker sites and created confusion about the laws affecting the industry.
“Moneymaker obviously created the huge boom and when I won it, it seemed to be at its height in terms of media and attention and players and money,” said Gold. “It was going the perfect direction.”
But when the UIGEA passed, Gold said it seemed to remind all the mainstream sponsors that there are a number of people out there, most specifically the “religious right,” who oppose all forms of gambling.
“The mainstream brands have to be very careful,” said Gold. “It takes time to change, but I think it will. We have the ability to make it change.”
Gold says the influx of celebrities into the game and the charitable donations the industry produces will ultimately be what puts it over the top and makes it acceptable to mainstream sponsors.
He applauded the sites that ran charity tournaments and accepted donations for the Haiti relief effort, saying that those were the kinds of things that were going to make all the difference.
“There’s going to be too much benefit and too much upside for brands,” said Gold. “How can you ignore that we get like a thousand hours of television coverage a year because they replay it all the time? It’s just a matter of time.”
Gold likened poker’s situation to where NASCAR was just a few years ago.
“It’s the same thing as NASCAR. They used to think NASCAR was a backwoods, second-rate sport and all of a sudden the right people got into it and the attention came,” said Gold. “But it didn’t take NASCAR two or three years. It took them a minimum of 10 years and now the sponsorships are incredible.”
As for what he sees for his own personal role in the game’s future, Gold has pledged to do all that he can to bridge that gap and make the connections necessary to bring in those kinds of deals. He also hopes to improve his game to see where he will rank alongside the greats one day.
While many accused him of being arrogant during his win in 2006, where everything seemed to go right en route to his victory over a field of 8,773 players, Gold sounds much more modest these days.
“People misquoted me left and right. I never said I was the greatest player. I have so much to learn,” said Gold. “I believe it takes 10 or 20 years to become that great. There’s a reason why Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, and Daniel Negreanu are at the top — these guys have been playing for 20 or more years. Give me 20 years and then maybe I’ll be into competing at that level.”
Copyright © 2001-2024
CardPlayer.com. All rights reserved.
