Too Much of a Good Thing?

Jon Katkin

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The Poker Economy

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OP-ED

We\’re just two weeks into the 2010 WSOP and the Amazon Room is already filled with people walking around like zombies. Don\’t believe me? Just take a good look at the players, the floor staff and the media the next time you head to the Rio. Everyone\’s got a 1,000-yard stare and there are still five weeks worth of tournaments left to play.

Now don\’t get me wrong, I love poker as much as the next guy, but I have to wonder if we\’ve finally gone too far.

This year\’s WSOP features 57 different events with price points ranging from $1,000 to $50,000. If you were rich enough — and crazy enough — to play every open event, that would mean plunking down more than $500,000 on tournament entries over a seven-week period. While this is unlikely to happen, there will certainly be some pros who drop close to this amount in search of the ever-elusive gold bracelet.

The WSOP is one more manifestation of our culture\’s desire to \”Super Size\” everything from soft drinks to shopping malls. If it\’s bigger, it must be better, right? That\’s the Vegas way.

And while the majority of players will spend considerably less over the course of their WSOP visits, they still won\’t be getting off cheap. With transportation, hotel, tournament fees and other miscellaneous \”entertainment\” expenses, most out-of-towners who come to Vegas for a week or two will find themselves going home with some great stories and at least 10 thousand fewer dollars in their wallets. Call it a vacation or the world\’s most expensive lottery ticket. Harrah\’s calls it a prize pool. And we know to them that also represents ever-important revenue.

The fact is, the WSOP is just one more manifestation of our culture\’s desire to \”Super Size\” everything from soft drinks to shopping malls. If it\’s bigger, it must be better, right? Of course it must. And, using that logic, I fully understand Harrah\’s desire to constantly \”improve\” the WSOP by adding new events and more wow factor so that they can separate players from their money with ever greater efficiency. Dazzle them with brilliance and baffle them with bullshit. It\’s the Vegas way and who am I to question how things are done?

Still though, I find myself growing more and more uneasy each and every time I set foot in the Rio and see players telling bust-out stories to complete strangers in the Bad Beat Bar or hitting their friends up for \”just one more buy in.\” But with so many tournaments at the Rio and in competing venues around town — not to mention the cash games — seven weeks of the WSOP can be like a crack binge for desperate poker degenerates from around the world. There\’s always just one more pot to play… one more tournament to enter… one more shot at greatness and redemption.

With so many tournaments at the Rio and in competing venues around town — not to mention the cash games — seven weeks of the WSOP can be like a crack binge for desperate poker degenerates from around the world. There\’s always just one more pot to play… one more tournament to enter… one more shot at greatness and redemption.

I wasn\’t around the industry before the WSOP moved from Binion\’s to the Rio nor before Chris Moneymaker changed the face of poker as we know it, but I know plenty of people who were. Back then — less than a decade ago — the World Series was still predominantly played by professionals who got together each year to determine who was the best of the best. Sure, some talented amateurs had worked their way into the fields, but the Series belonged to the pros. They played for money, of course, but bragging were just as important.

Since then, ESPN and the Internet have taken poker out of the back rooms and made it a mainstream game, which has been great for prize pools, but I believe, somewhat detrimental to the WSOP\’s soul. Nowadays, the WSOP is as much about getting lucky and making a name for yourself as it is about poker. Sure, there are some pros who are established and wealthy enough that they\’re actually playing for the glory of victory. But, for every one of them, there are tens, hundreds, and even thousands more who are playing for nothing more than a quick payday and, maybe, a deal with an online poker site.

Is this wrong? Of course not. But it is kind of sad.

Harrah\’s is all about expansion. Over it\’s 73-year history, the company has grown from a single bingo parlor in Reno to an entertainment behemoth, with more than 50 properties on five continents and countless ancillary companies. There\’s no doubt that all that overhead costs money and that putting on events like the WSOP aren\’t cheap. But trust me, with the millions of dollars Harrah\’s is making in rake, tournament fees, room charges and food consumption — not to mention additional revenue from various corporate sponsorships — no one is crying poverty and no one is speaking (publicly, at least) about downsizing the WSOP in order to control costs.

And that\’s too bad because more and more, I\’m hearing people talk about the fact that the WSOP may have finally reached its sensible size limit. In fact, 2010 is the first year since Harrah\’s took control that the number of bracelets hasn\’t increased and I\’ve heard rumor (unconfirmed as of now) that some people within the WSOP organization would like to scale it back to a smaller, more manageable and, perhaps, more prestigious series by decreasing the total number of events and increasing buy-ins. I applaud their thinking if it\’s true, but I also suspect that it will never happen.

Time marches on and, like everything else in Vegas, progress means growth and growth means more revenue.

That\’s the bottom line and nothing is going to change it.

Semi-regular Pokerati contributor Jon Katkin is a former professional journalist and poker industry veteran. He writes about his low-stakes Vegas grind at Chaos Theory, and on Twitter @JaKatkin.