Spend enough time around the professional poker circuit and you’ll quickly realize that it’s a very small and incestuous group. Players and media members spend hours, days and sometimes weeks together in casinos and card rooms around the world and, as expected, the close quarters inevitably lead to friendships (and, sometimes, more) between the two groups.

This is perfectly normal and, quite frankly, not a big deal in most cases. A poker pro sharing a drink or a meal with a player can be beneficial for both parties. And, so long as clear lines are kept between professional and personal relationships, there’s no real issue. When the lines are blurred, however, things become less clear.

Whether or not friendships affect reporting is irrelevant, because it’s the perception of impartiality that matters. If people paid to report on poker can’t separate personal feelings and biases from the stories they’re covering, how can anyone trust what they say or write?

We’re only a couple of weeks into this year’s WSOP and I’ve already seen plenty of instances where the line hasn’t just been blurred, but erased completely. Specifically, I’m referring to the increasing and increasingly annoying practice of poker journalists openly rooting for their friends during individual events.

Tackiness aside, this practice just makes the offending journalists look unprofessional. And maybe they are. The fact is, many of the reporters on the poker beat are young, inexperienced and have little, if any, professional journalism training. For many, these low-paying gigs are their first post-collegiate jobs and are merely a way to make some money in an industry they enjoy while they look for something better.

They don’t understand the importance of impartiality – or at least, the importance of maintaining the appearance of impartiality – because they’ve never been taught that journalists are supposed to remain objective about the stories and people they’re covering. Of course, this isn’t always easy or possible, but true professionals do everything they can to separate their personal feelings from the story they are reporting on. And, if they can’t, the good ones do their best to make their biases clear to their readers, viewers or listeners.

Take Maria Ho’s final table in the $5K No-Limit Hold ‘em tournament last week. While a number of journalists used their Twitter accounts to publicly root Maria on during the event – even as some of them were reporting on the action – others, like Change100, did the right thing and made it clear that they were not acting as media while sweating Maria. From her Twitter stream; “The badge is off for a while – railing @mariaho in the final four of the $5k NL. She just doubled through Allen Bari. Go Ho!”

All well and good, I can hear you saying, but at the end of the day, isn’t Change’s declaration overkill? Media members rooting on their friends is no big deal and it has nothing to do with real news.

Wrong.

Look at what’s going on in the poker world at the moment: the top three sites have been indicted by the DOJ, players are bitching about the fact that they can’t get their money off of Tilt, pros are suing their sponsors and skipping the WSOP, etc., etc., etc. These issues affect many of the pros that media members call friends and could possibly color their reporting of specific events.

And, in the end, whether or not friendships affect reporting is irrelevant, because it’s the perception of the reporter’s impartiality that matters. If the people who are being paid to report on the poker industry can’t be trusted to separate their personal feelings and biases from the stories they’re covering, how can anyone trust what they say or write?

Take me, for example. Some of you probably know that I used to work for one of the major online poker sites. Some of you don’t. Unless you know me personally, you probably don’t know which site I used to work for and, from reading what I write here, you should – ideally – never be able to figure that out. And, while I occasionally address issues surrounding online poker, I never, ever write or comment on anything specifically related to my former employer.

Why, you ask? Because I know a lot of people who still work at the company and I have a vested interest in seeing the business and the people running it succeed. In short, there’s a chance that I may not be able to report on the issues surrounding my former employer in an impartial or unbiased manner, so it’s best for me not to put myself in a position where my credibility can be questioned.

Sure, rooting for your friends when they go deep in a tourney is a “minor” ethical infraction in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons why it shouldn’t be done. However, if you must play cheerleader, have the good sense not to do it publicly on Twitter.

Glitz. Glamor. Excitement. So far, the 2011 WSOP has had none of these things, and honestly, I’m finding the whole thing kind of sad. It’s not the World Series of Poker we all know and love… it’s more like the World Series of Meh.

The thing is that after spending a number of hours wandering around the Rio during the first week, it’s hard to put a finger on what’s different about this year’s event. Maybe it’s fallout from Black Friday and the fact that sites like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker don’t have their usual suites. Maybe it’s the fact that the first week’s events were tailored more toward professional players and featured more mixed games and higher buy ins than the casual player is comfortable playing.

Or maybe I’m just jaded.

The halls feel emptier, the rails aren’t as jammed, and people just seem more serious than usual. Event numbers have been good, but no one appears to be having any fun.

Still, jaded or not, the fact remains that the Rio just doesn’t have the same excited vibe that I’m used to feeling during the first week of the Series. The halls feel emptier, the rails aren’t as jammed, and people just seem more serious than usual. What makes the feel of this year’s Series even stranger is that the event numbers have been good. People are playing cards, but no one appears to be having any fun.

So, is there anything that the Rio and WSOP staff can do to loosen things up and pump some more excitement into the proceedings?

Unfortunately, I don’t really think so. Throughout the first week, the staff has seemed as attentive and responsive to players as I’ve ever seen, and I feel like they’re really working to make this year’s series something special. Sure, the much-hyped grudge matches fell a little flat in real life, but those can be fixed in post. And they took place on that massive, mothership feature table set, which should look awesome in high def. (I fully expect someone will figure out how to replicate the last five minutes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind on that thing before the Series is done.)

Bright lights and forced drama aside, it just feels like Caesar’s is fighting an uphill battle against forces that are out of their control. I mean, when the biggest story of the week is about the player who’s boycotting the WSOP as a big FU to his sponsor, you’ve got some problems on your hands.

It’s way too early to label this year’s WSOP a disappointment, but my hunch is that the suits behind the scenes are getting a little worried about how this year’s Series is going to play on TV and in the press. Without some big names making some deep runs in the next few days, it’s going to be hard for them to convince the general public to pay attention to what’s happening on the felt rather than looking behind the curtain to focus on what’s happening in the courts.

So come on people, lighten up. Sure, you’re playing for a shot at fame, glory and life-changing money, but really, do you have to take things so seriously?

The DOJ dropped an A-bomb on the online poker industry Friday, and, as you’d expect, the impact was devastating. Within hours of the DOJ’s indictments, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker had shut down real money gaming in the US, effectively killing online poker and leaving millions of customers with nowhere to play.

And while the sites are scrambling to readjust to a world where approximately 40 percent or more of their business just disappeared and mount legal defenses for themselves and their executives, the fallout from Friday’s bombshells continues to spread far and wide from its epicenters in Dublin and the Isle of Man.

I could go on, but I’ll just end up depressing myself and that’s no fun.

While Full Tilt and Stars were certainly the two biggest poker sites operating in the states, their reach extends far beyond the virtual felt. Until Friday, these sites were the drivers of a whole industry that revolved around their players, television programs and live tournaments around the world. With the sites gone, the poker economy they supported is sure to follow.

As I write this, a number of my friends are getting trashed on Pisco Sours down in Peru, where they’re covering the end of an LAPT event for PokerStars and PokerNews. The sad fact is, though, this may be the end of poker reporting as we know it.

Providing live tournament coverage is expensive and resource-intensive, and sites like PokerNews can’t exist without financial underwriting provided by sites like Stars and Tilt. With those players now out of the US market, there’s no reason for them to be spending resources on tournament reporting when that money can be better spent on the high-priced legal teams they’re undoubtedly going to need to put in place. Bottom line – that WSOP coverage that everyone has been gearing up for next month probably isn’t going to happen.

Of course, that may not be the worst thing in the world as today’s crackdown will surely impact the size of this year’s WSOP. All those online qualifiers that send thousands of hopefuls to Vegas every summer? Yeah, they’re gone. And online players who were thinking of raiding their bankrolls to finance this summer’s live shenanigans in Vegas? They’re not going to be seeing that money anytime soon.

Who else will fell the impact of Friday’s bombshell? How about the folks who produce all of the great poker programming we like to watch? Do you really think there will be any new episodes of Poker After Dark or The Big Game? Don’t you think that ESPN is suddenly rethinking their plans for their coverage of this year’s Main Event? You can bet that the production companies and TV networks are all going to be hedging their bets and looking for new programs to fill their production and broadcast schedules.

Let’s not forget the poker mags like Bluff and CardPlayer who live on advertising revenue provided by the big online sites. With no US players, there’s reason for the sites to spend money on new ad buys, which means those publications will probably make it to press a few more times before their money runs out.

Other folks who will probably be scrambling for new revenue streams are the people who run online poker training sites like CardRunners, PokerVT and the like. Their US customer base just disappeared along with the ability to sit at real money tables. While I’m at it, I should probably mention folks like the agents at PokerRoyalty who just saw their commissions go down the drain. And the players who make their living by spending their days grinding online all day. I’m sure there’s a whole group of 20-somethings in Panorama Towers who are all learning how to say “Would you like fries with that?”

I could go on, but I’ll just end up depressing myself and that’s no fun. So, I’ll leave you all with this thought; What happened [Friday] was most definitely bad for poker in the short term, but if it prompts Congress to finally take a serious look at the regulation of online poker, then there may be some long-term benefits.

A lot of things have changed in the poker world since the Zynga PokerCon ended here in Las Vegas last Saturday. Partnerships have been approved (Caesars/888), announced (PokerStars/Wynn) and speculated upon (Full Tilt/Station Casinos). Legislation surrounding the legalization of online poker has been introduced and debated in various jurisdictions around the country and, I’m pretty sure that Erik Seidel won another high-stakes tournament somewhere in the world.

In short, it’s been a pretty busy week. And yet, with everything going on – or perhaps, because of it – I still find myself puzzling over Zynga’s potential role as a player in the post-regulation poker economy.

For those of you still unfamiliar with Zynga, they bill themselves as the largest online poker room in the world with a database of approximately 38 million players who compete for chips and tokens that have value only within the confines of Zynga’s proprietary system. In other words, Zynga is a play money site in the truest definition of the word. And yet, they came to Las Vegas last weekend to hold a live event for their fans and players.

Zynga has something every major real money site is looking for: players who have yet to make an initial deposit online. Would Zynga really stay out of real money gaming if someone came along with a partnership offer they couldn’t refuse? I don’t think so.

Populated by attendees who either won or bought their way into the event through Zynga’s site, the two-day conference was an interesting mix of Zynga players and industry insiders who were looking for information on this most mysterious of potential competitors or, perhaps, partners. I can’t speak for anyone else at the conference, but I have to admit that I walked away from the event with no clear answers.

As a fan event, I have to say the PokerCon was a success. For the cost of a $125 entry, Zynga’s players received professional instruction from Annie Duke and a plethora of other name pros, the chance to meet legends like Doyle Brunson and Mike Sexton, free food and drink at a Zynga-sponsored party, and a seat in a $100K tournament with a guaranteed payout of $26,000 to the winner. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.

As a “coming out party” for Zynga Poker, however, I can’t say I was as impressed.

In all honesty, Day 1 felt more like an Annie Duke poker school sponsored by Zynga Poker, rather than a Zynga event. Sure, they had branding scattered around the room and some very attractive women walking around in branded T-shirts, but other than that, there was no real sense that Zynga was announcing itself as any kind of player in the online poker game. That lack of conviction was compounded by the poker room’s General Manager, Lo Toney, who gave two very brief speeches (2-3 minutes each) thanking everyone for turning out, but lacking in any kind of detail about what the future might hold for his brand.

When asked directly about plans to enter the real-money market, Toney made it clear that Zynga is a social gaming company that is very happy with its current business plan of selling virtual goods to its millions of players. And, on the surface, that’s not a surprising answer, considering that game plan has earned them billions in revenue in just a few short years. Still, companies exist to make money and everybody in the poker world knows there can be huge value in pulling off a well-timed bluff.

Does that mean I think Toney is lying about the company’s intentions? Not necessarily. Do I think he’s playing his cards close to the vest? Without a doubt.

The fact is, Zynga Poker has something that every major real money site is looking for – tons of players who have yet to make an initial deposit online. That’s a whole lot of new fish for more established players to feast on and hundreds of millions in extra rake for the sites to add to their bottom lines. So, would Zynga really stay out of real money gaming if someone came along with a partnership offer they couldn’t refuse? I don’t think so.

With the increasing amount of legal and strategic maneuvering going on in the poker world these days, it seems unlikely to me that Zynga will remain happy to sit on the sidelines while all of the other players pick teammates for the big games that are yet to come. I guess only time will tell. Until then, can someone please send me a virtual drink on FaceBook?

We’re a month into 2011 and already, the poker season has revved itself into high gear. Since January 1, we’ve seen major multi-tournament events in the Bahamas, Melbourne, and now LA. If that’s not enough poker for you, then head to Vegas where you can play in a couple of smaller, but still notable, tournament series; the Caesars Winter Classic (running now) and Venetian’s venerable Deep Stack series, starting on the 28th.

And while I’m as big a fan of a good tournament – or tournament series – as the next guy, I have to ask has poker gone too far?

For a moment, let’s forget about all the money it would cost an average player to follow the circuit around the world and just look at sheer number of events that a tourney player has to choose from. I mean, if you want to become a professional hobo, there are probably worse ways to see the world than by joining the poker circus. Los Angeles, Vegas, Atlantic City, Biloxi, Paradise Island, Prague, Sao Paulo, Melbourne, London…. The world’s your oyster if you can pay the freight and handle the jet lag and inevitable food poisoning you’ll pick up somewhere along the way.

There’s too much poker to be played in too many places. All of these tournament options are slowly cannibalizing each other by stretching the player base – and the players’ bankrolls – too thin.

The fact is, there’s barely a week left on the calendar where there’s not some kind of tournament begging to be played. Even if you just confine yourself to the continental US, you can easily go months without ever sleeping in your own bed or seeing the family you used to have. Decide to play internationally and you could easily find yourself classified as a missing person unless you can regularly Skype with your loved ones to prove that you’re still alive.

Unlike real sports that have clearly defined off seasons, poker is now a year-round pursuit. You don’t get weather delays or rain outs and no one cares if it’s 10 degrees or 110 degrees outside, so long as the poker room is a comfortable 72 and the structure is good. Throw it and they will come.

So, you might ask, what’s the problem?

To put it simply, there’s just too much poker to be played in too many places and all of these tournament options are slowly cannibalizing each other by stretching the player base – and the players’ bankrolls – too thin.

Let’s look at the LAPC and the Aussie Millions, for example. Right now, many of the world’s best – and best known – pros are soaking up the summer sun down under in Australia while they compete for the Aussie Millions title. It’s a premier event and there’s no reason not to play if you can afford the time and tournament entries.

At the same time, however, another premier has just kicked off at the Commerce Casino in LA. And while the LAPC certainly won’t be lacking players, it also won’t have anywhere near the star power (at least in the poker sense) that it should have. Sure, you’ll see plenty of Hollywood celebrities at the Commerce over the coming weeks, but don’t hold your breath looking for poker luminaries like Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan or Patrik Antonius. The commute from Melbourne is just too far.

As a second-tier player, the absence of the game’s best players from tournaments like the LAPC is surely welcome. Who wants to play against tougher competition when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line? But for the casual players – and for the tournament officials – the absence of these players is sorely missed.

To run a successful series, you need to attract players. And while the promise of big money is always a fine lure, the fact is, being able to advertise that you can share a table with the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke or Howard Lederer is as much – if not more – of a draw than the money is.

Craziness, you say? No. The fact is, most casual players are never going to make a big score in a major tournament no matter how often they play. The fields are too big and the competition is too tough for them to have anything approaching a real chance to make a final table or pose for the winner’s photo. But, if they have $1,000, $2,000 or $5,000, they can easily find themselves sharing a table and playing pots with the likes of Dan Harrington or Barry Greenstein. And for most players, that opportunity – and the potential stories it can provide – is worth the money they dump into the prize pools.

Speaking of money, let’s look at what it costs to play in the biggest live tournaments these days. If you want to play a Main Event at any kind of “name” tournament series, you have to count on having an extra $10,000 burning a hole in your pocket. Barring that, you can always try to satellite into the big tourney for anywhere between $500 and $2,000 per shot. Assuming you don’t win your seat on the first try, multiple buy ins can quickly run into big money as well.

Of course, today’s big tournament series all feature plenty of side events with buy ins ranging from $500 to $5,000 for the player on a budget. Like their more expensive counterparts, these events offer some amazing ROI, provided you can work your way through the huge fields without making any catastrophic mistakes.

Now, let’s say you’re an average player who decides to take a few shots at some of these side events. Assuming you play three tourneys with an average buy-in of $1,000 each, you’ll have to finish somewhere in the top 20 of at least one event in order to break even on your investment.

Oh, and that’s without counting all of the money you’ll have to spend on travel, hotels, food, liquor, strippers and the like. Unless you can make the money on a regular basis – or have an unlimited trust fund – be prepared to watch your bankroll melt away faster than an Antarctic iceberg.

I know, I know. It looks like I’m really down on the whole tournament circuit, but the fact is, I’m really not. Like I said earlier, I like tournaments and well run tournament series. But in moderation.

For 99.99987 percent of the players in this year’s events, the 2010 WSOP has come to a close. Some were winners and many more were losers. And, for nine lucky combatants, there’s still one more long day of poker left to play before someone claims the game’s most prestigious title and poker’s second-largest payday ever.

As tonight’s television coverage of the Main Event (ESPN 9p ET) moves past the massive Day 1 fields and more and more players see their WSOPs come to an end, I just have to wonder: Where did they all come from?

After a slow start, the 2010 WSOP finished strong, enticing 72,966 players total to Las Vegas to play in 57 separate events — a 20 percent increase over 2009′s record-setting figure of 60,875. And it wasn’t just the smaller events that benefitted. After hitting a high-water mark in 2006 with 8,773 entrants and a prize pool worth more than $82.5 million, the Main Event contracted over the next three years, attracting no more than 6,844 players for the big dance. Until this year, that is.

The best guess is that live satellites account for about 15 percent of the Main Event field. Combined with the online qualifiers, that means roughly 40 percent paid something less than $10k to play in the tournament, which seems about right. Still, that means that about 60 percent (roughly 4,400) of the players coughed up $10K each for their seats at the WSOP tables.

According to the WSOP’s official figures, 7,319 players took part in this year’s $10,000 Main Event. That’s 825 more people than who played in 2009, or an increase of nearly 9 percent. Now I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty impressive, especially in today’s economy where nearly 10 percent of the general public in the US is out of work and Europe is struggling to keep countries like Greece and Ireland from going completely bankrupt under the weight of huge budget deficits.

All of which, again, begs the question, where on Earth did all these players come from?

The first and most obvious answers is, of course, satellites. But here’s the thing — according to the folks at Harrah’s, the number of players sent from online sites was actually down a little over previous years. For example, PokerStars only qualified 1,018 players for this year’s Main Event, which is about half of the qualifiers they’ve had over the previous few years. And, of those players who earned entries, only 839 actually bought into the tournament. Full Tilt Poker, which has traditionally sent fewer players to the Main than Stars, qualified approximately 600 players for this year’s tournament. Though we don’t have an exact figure on how many of those qualifiers actually played, it’s safe to assume the majority of the qualifiers showed up in Vegas. Smaller sites, like UB, Party Poker, Everest, Winimax and the like all qualified between 100 and 150 players each.

For the sake of the math, we’ll assume that, in total, the online sites qualified about 2,250 players combined and that 1,750 of them actually showed up at the Rio. That means about 25 percent of this year’s field qualified online.

Fuzzy Math
The numbers get a little fuzzier when we start talking about players who earned their seats through live satellites at either the Rio or one of Harrah’s participating casinos around the world. Officials at the WSOP don’t track the number of players who earned lammers in the round-the-clock satellites that run throughout the WSOP and, because these lammers can be used for any event on the schedule, it’s impossible to tell how many players earned their Main Event entries (or a portion of their entries) at the satellite tables.

After talking with folks such as Nolan Dalla and Ty Stewart, the best guess is that live satellites account for about 15 percent of the Main Event field. Combined with the online qualifiers, that means roughly 40 percent paid something less than $10k to play in the tournament, which seems about right. Still, that means that about 60 percent (roughly 4,400) of the players coughed up $10k each.

Of those players, about 10 percent are true professionals (Lederer, Ferguson, Negreanu, etc.) with bankrolls sufficient enough to easily cover the cost of a $10k buy in. And let’s be generous and say another 10 percent are “known” professionals (either live or online) who are being staked in the event as part of someone’s stable or as part of a deal with one of the online poker sites. That covers the buy ins for another 880 players, leaving us about half the field who bought in on their own dime.

Of this remaining group, let’s say another 10 percent of the field is made up of players who ran deep in one of the preliminary events or in one of the other big poker series around town over the summer and that another 15 percent is comprised of people with enough disposable income (professional gamblers, Wall Streeters, Hollywood folk, tech millionaires, trust-fund types, etc.) who don’t have to think twice about dropping $10 grand on poker tournament. Suddenly, we’re left with just about 25 percent of the field unaccounted for. And it’s this 25 percent I find the most interesting because these are the players that aren’t easily categorizable.

Coming of Age
After talking with veteran WSOP reporters/commentators and Harrah’s staff, three theories have developed to explain where these remaining players came from. The first is that at least part of the group is made up of online players who have cleared out their online accounts because of fears about being able to move money on and off of their favorite sites. With a sudden cash windfall in their pockets, the theory goes, why not take a shot and play at the WSOP? That seems reasonable enough.

As does the second working theory, which states that many of the additional players in the field are newly minted 21-year olds who are taking their first shots at the WSOP. As Nolan Dalla commented, “There’s a new crop of young players every year… it only makes sense that a bunch of them will head to Vegas for the summer.” And, looking at the average age of this year’s November Nine, Dalla seems to be on to something.

The Darvin Moon Effect?
The final theory is, for lack of a better term, being referred to as the Darvin Moon effect. Just like the Moneymaker effect that followed his unlikely win in 2003, some grizzled WSOP vets speculate that Moon’s improbable second-place finish in 2009 was enough to spark a new wave of low-stakes players to take a shot at the big prize in these tough economic times. And, while I agree there’s some merit to this argument, the question I have is where did these people get $10K for a buy-in?

Did the mortgage their houses? Sell their cars? Form a syndicate of un/underemployed friends like the groups of factory workers who occasionally hit big scores in the Mega-Millions lotteries around the country?

No one really knows and, maybe, that’s for the best. If it wasn’t for folks like Moneymaker, Moon, Steve Dannenman and Jerry Yang, the WSOP certainly wouldn’t have grown as big as it has as quickly as it has in the past seven years. These players, rising from the ranks of the great unknown, continually show that poker is that most egalitarian of games where a social worker, accountant or logger can sit down with professional players and still come out ahead. Try doing that on the baseball diamond or the golf course. It’s just not gonna happen.

And in the end, it’s this aspect of the World Series that makes questioning where all of these Main Event players came from a moot point because, the answer is “Who cares just so long as they keep on coming.”

Brand names serve an important purpose in our society. For consumers, they offer a simple shorthand that let’s you know about a product’s quality – or lack thereof – while at the same time providing a quick way to flaunt your status or hipness to the unwashed masses in our burgeoning consumer culture.

For businesses, brand names are just as important. Let your quality slip or make your product too ubiquitous and your value – both real and perceived – begins to slip. Make your product trendy or limit its availability and you’ll have customers clamoring at your door to get their hands on it.

With 57 events on the calendar, the WSOP is hardly as elitist as it was in the past, but that’s OK with the folks at Harrah’s because when it comes to poker, there is no substitute for a gold bracelet. Win an event and you join a still exclusive club that includes some of the greatest players in the world. Play your cards right, and the WSOP is a golden ticket to the top of the poker food chain. Bust out before the final table and you’ll still leave town with a great story for your friends.

For $1,500 you can play one WSOP tournament and take your chances against a single field of 3,000, or for the same money you can play five Venetian Deep Stack events against a combined field of about 2,400.

And that’s what makes the WSOP the brand when it comes to tournament poker. Win or lose, playing a WSOP event carries with it an inherent coolness that other poker players innately understand and respect. But if you’re a serious low-stakes player looking for a big summertime score in Vegas, there are actually much better options to consider outside the Rio.

Just take a look at some of the other popular tournaments currently running in Las Vegas. The Venetian’s Deep Stack, Binon’s Poker Classic, and Caesars Mega-Stack series all coincide with the WSOP, offering daily no-limit events, with $100 to $550 buy-ins. The Golden Nugget’s Grand Series is a solid option for those looking for lower-limit Stud, Omaha and HORSE.

None of the tournaments will make you a millionaire. Hell, you won’t even see anything approaching a six-figure payday. But that’s OK, because they still provide what every lower-stakes tournament player is looking for (or at least should be):

Value.

Look at this way, this year’s first $1,000 No-Limit Hold ‘em tourney drew 4,345 players, with the top 10 percent getting paid and the winner taking home more than $652,000. Not bad for three days works, granted. But, let’s take a closer look at what this really means. While Aadam Daya certainly doesn’t have to worry about where is next meal is coming from for a while, Linyang Song, who finished 441st, walked away with just $1,877. After paying for his trip to town, his hotel and food, it’s likely that Song’s min-cash actually cost him money. What’s more, there were 3,904 other players who each put up $1,000 and walked away from the tournament with nothing more than a $10 food comp.

The story wasn’t much different in the year’s first $1,500 donkament, where 2,092 players entered and 216 got paid. Winner Praz Bansi walked away from the table with more than $515k while the 216th finisher min-cashed for just $2,880. The following events weren’t much different, with the next two $1K events drawing fields of 3,042 and 3,289 respectively and the $1,500 tournaments attracting an average field of 2,432 players.

For a player on a budget, that’s an awful lot of run-good necessary to make a sizable score.

Now, look at the Venetian’s Deep Stack series, which is easily the most popular non-WSOP event in town. With most daily tournaments featuring buy ins between $330 and $550, these events are certainly easier on the wallet. And, with average fields of 600 players each day, first place money is usually worth somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000. To put it another way — for $1,500 you can play one WSOP tournament and take your chances against a single field of 3,000 other players or, for the same money, you can play five Venetian events against a combined field of about 2,400.

The same holds true at Caesars, the Nugget, and Binion’s — where $1,500 goes much, much further, and your odds of cashing against smaller fields become much stronger.

Does this mean you shouldn’t play in a WSOP event? Of course not. Huge fields notwithstanding, the WSOP is the big dog of the poker world for a reason and, if your goal is to play the tournament for the experience, there’s nothing else that can compete. But, if you’re looking to come to Vegas in order to try and build a bankroll, there are better opportunities all over town.

Sure, winning a Venetian Deep Stack may not be as prestigious or lucrative as winning a WSOP event, but honestly, what good is a gold bracelet that you’re probably never going to wear anyway? And wouldn’t winning one of those be better than min-cashing in a $1,500 tournament?

For my money, I’ll take the smaller payout and the better odds any day of the week. And, if I happen to do well at the Venetian, the Rio is just a mile up the road.

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.

For most of us, $50,000 is a whole lot of money. It’s a year’s salary. A new car. A down payment on a new house. Our savings.

For others, however, $50K is pocket money — a single pot in a $200/$400 game or a roll of the dice on the craps table. It’s also the cost of entry into the first marquee event of the 2010 WSOP, the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship.

Over its short life, this tournament has undergone a variety of changes as it tries to cement its identity in the poker world. Starting out as the $50,000 HORSE event in 2006, the tournament quickly gained a reputation as the true players championship because of its hefty buy-in and mixed-game format. In that first year, 143 players ponied up $50K each for a shot at the title and the chance to play mixed games on ESPN.

The poker economy isn’t what it used to be. Players who wouldn’t have thought twice about dropping $50K two years ago are now looking at the cost of entry the same way many of us look at $1,500, $2,500 or $5,000 events.

Poor ratings forced a format change in 2007 and 2008, however, when ESPN agreed to broadcast the event only if the final tables were all No-Limit Hold ‘em — a game that’s much easier for the general viewing audience to follow. The change didn’t do much to affect the number of entrants, as 148 players registered for the tournament in both 2007 and 2008.

ESPN dropped the $50K HORSE event completely in 2009 and, it can be argued that the lack of potential TV time, combined with the beginning of the economic crisis, had a significant impact on the field as just 95 players competed in the event last year. Now, however, the $50K HORSE event is back on the air – renamed as the the $50,000 Player’s Championship and featuring an eight-game mix along with a TV-friendly NLH-only final table. Michael “the Grinder” Mizrachi took down the $1.5 million bracelet last night in what had to be good-for-TV fashion – with his brother and other well-known pros falling by the wayside before he ended up mano-y-mano against an interesting Russian high-roller.

While this event is certainly popular with a small – albeit influential – subset of players, real questions after five years are, is it successful and will it be back again in 2011. According to the WSOP’s PR Director, Seth Palansky, the answers are yes. Speaking recently on the new Wicked Chops podcast, Palansky said WSOP officials set the over/under on the number of players in this year’s event at 100, and were very pleased with the fact that 116 players registered for the tournament.

And, while 116 players is nothing to sneeze at, that number is significantly smaller than the one being bandied about on press row before the start of the event, when usually well informed sources said WSOP officials were expecting at least 130 players — still nearly 20 players shy of the tournament’s high water mark.

Is Palansky just trying to put the best face on a disappointing turnout? And, if so, does it matter?

What does seem clear is that the poker economy — like the overall US and world economies — isn’t what it used to be. Before the start of the WSOP, I had a chance to speak with a couple of well known and well respected pros whom you would expect to be playing in this year’s Player’s Championship. They certainly have the bankrolls to afford the game and the skills to be competitive. Yet, they decided to pass — all for similar reasons.

In each case, the players said that with the tourney’s high price point and loaded field, they just don’t see enough value to justify parting with $50,000, as nearly 90 percent of the entries are sure to do. Think about that for a second. With 116 entrants, the tournament is paying out 16 places, with a min-cash paying out just over $98,000. Eighth spot, which is the first to bust from the final TV table, earns a little more than $182,000 along with whatever bonus money is being offered by the player’s sponsor site — usually between five and six figures for players from sites like PokerStars and FTP. First place pays more than $1.5 million, plus bonuses.

It’s not that these players think the tournament, in and of itself, is too expensive or that the field is too tough. Instead, it’s a matter of simple bankroll management and the fact they believe that playing this event, in the greater scheme of the overall WSOP, doesn’t make financial sense. Players who wouldn’t have thought twice about dropping $50K two years ago are now looking at the cost of entry the same way many of us look at $1,500, $2,500 or $5,000 events.

Is this event worth the price? Is there better value somewhere else for less money?

When even the richest and most successful poker pros in the world are asking such questions before entering “big” tournaments, what does that mean for the casual players for whom a trip to the WSOP is a significant financial commitment? Will they show up? If so, will they play as many events as last year? Will they play events outside of the Rio? Will the overall number of players at this year’s WSOP drop for the first time in post-Moneymaker, Harrah’s-driven history?

For Palansky and Harrah’s executives, these are burning questions for the 2010 WSOP. Even though you won’t hear them say any specific number or benchmark really matters, they do. Field sizes, and the dollars associated with them, have to factor into any profit-minded corporation’s assessment of an event’s success, and how they consider the vibrance of an overall market.

So while 116 or any other number may not alter how things run this year, it has a lot to do with what kind of poker we’ll see in future WSOPs.

Which brings us to Brian Townsend, a Full Tilt Poker pro and popular CardRunners instructor who has recently learned something about bans and TableRatings. It seems that Townsend, Cole South, and Brian Hastings got together to brainstorm strategies for taking down Isilidur1 shortly before Hastings booked his incredible $4.2 million win against the Swedish phenom.

While their strategizing was in no way a violation of FTP’s Terms of Service, the fact that they poured over a Townsend-supplied database of hand histories in order to decipher Isildur’s playing patterns was — and, as a result, Townsend is now playing without his red status for 30 days. Our buddy Matt Parvis has the full story over at Poker News.

It has a $550 buy-in (with $200 rebuys through the first hour). Early RSVPs include the likes of Doyle Brunson and the usual crew of high-stakes Las Vegas charity-circuit rounders, along with Phil Laak, Sam Simon, Jennifer Tilly, and others. Here’s a video invitation from Tilly, with more details about the tournament itself.

This event is put on by everybody’s favorite omnipresent scooter-rider at the WSOP, Jacob Zalewski, and raises money for his One Step Closer Foundation’s fight to make life easier for Cerebral Palsey sufferers like Terrance, featured in the video below:

The question is, with millions of dollars being shifted around each session – or hand, as the case may be – how much longer can they keep these remarkable games going without any fresh fish at the table? Our friend Bill Rini thinks the answer is not much longer.

With all of the coverage the November Nine has gotten – and will continue to get through reruns on ESPN – it should come as no surprise that a new, younger generation will become interested in poker, perhaps inspired by a 21-year-old world champion who got his start online years before he could play in American casinos.

The question is, what is the best, most responsible way to teach kids about poker and “gambling”?

For my part, I suggested my friend buy his son some chips and a number of quality poker strategy books that he must read before starting to play penny-ante games at the kitchen table. Anyone have better suggestions?

Live poker is most certainly rigged.

I was standing on the balcony as the hand played out and the emotions were obvious.

Pre-flop – aces vs. kings

Post-flop – aces vs. quads

Sitting on stage near their main man Phil Ivey are the Humphreys, the little old couple who have rooted him on since his days as an Atlantic City phenom. Next to them are some of Ivey’s newer friends… rap mogul Irv Gotti and rapper Ja Rule.

Wouldn’t you love to listen in on their conversations?

While we can’t see the cards, we do have some large monitors and hand-by-hand commentary to help us keep up with the action. It’s pretty cool, actually.

A view of the final table from high in the sky.

A Closer Look at the Action

You're not putting this on eBay, are you?

Who says you need to final table to make money at the WSOP?

It was certainly the tensest moment so far as both Joe Cada and Jeff Shulman considered taking Ivey on and, potentially, knocking him out. In the end though, Ivey’s fold equity was enough that he took down the pot and lived to play on.

I can’t wait to see what happens when we have an all-in and a call.

Some of the faces in today’s crowd include Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth (who walked in with Jeff Schulman before sitting down to hawk copies of his book), Chris Ferguson, Jennifer Harman & Marco Traniello, Allen Cunningham, Phil Gordon, Greg Raymer, Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, Daniel Negreanu and Perry Friedman.

Hellmuth Hard at Work

Earning a seat at the table was apparently based on overall gaming play as opposed to poker ratings, which means there was probably a lot more gamble going on than there will be inside the Penn & Teller theater.