38TH WORLD SERIES OF POKER: People line up for shot at winning poker title

[clevfan]

Jul. 06, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

38TH WORLD SERIES OF POKER: NO LIMIT TO THE MADNESS

People line up for shot at winning poker title

By ARNOLD M. KNIGHTLY
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Justo Guerra has spent the past few days in Las Vegas trying to play his way into the main event for the 38th World Series of Poker, which seats its first tables at noon today at the Rio.

Since his arrival from San Angelo in west Texas on Monday, the construction company owner has spent his time playing in various tournaments to try to raise the $10,000 buy-in stake required to enter the no-limit Texas hold 'em event that will run through July 17.

"It's just the excitement of it," said Guerra, after registering for one of the satellite tournaments. "It's the experience of playing in it and maybe winning some money."

The Rio is also running a variety of satellite tournaments with entry fees ranging from $300 to $1,000..

The main event is the culmination of the World Series of Poker tournament, which began five weeks ago and has already awarded 54 tournament champions with gold and diamond encrusted bracelets, including all-time bracelet leader Phil Hellmuth, who won his 11th on June 12.

"We've been running hard since June 1," said Jeffrey Pollack, commissioner of the World Series of Poker for Harrah's Entertainment. "But the World Series is unique in its ability to capture the world's attention."

Pollack said he would not speculate about whether the main event will approach last year's record 8,773 entrants.

He said the final total "doesn't matter" because of the event's long history and because it is still considered the top poker tournament in the world.

"We've been around for a long time," Pollack said. "We've grown very organically within the poker community."

Guerra was one of hundreds of hopefuls standing in line waiting to register for the world championship event or one of the many cheaper satellite events that could help contestants avoid paying the full $10,000 buy-in.

Cory Kuchenberg, a manager of a food distributor in Escanaba, Mich., won a satellite tournament in Michigan to play in his first World Series event.

He said the lure of playing in the main event tournament is the opportunity to win "life-changing money."

"Anybody can win," said Kuchenberg, who has been playing poker for four years. "You don't have to be a pro."

Amateur Jamie Gold came from the entertainment industry and won last year's main event worth approximately $12 million.

Guerra said he has already won $5,000 since he hit town. However, he noted, his girlfriend has spent most of the winnings.

If his satellite strategy doesn't pan out, he said he will pay the $10,000 so he can experience the main event for the first time.

Pollack said media coverage and sponsorship of the tournament have helped the World Series grow.

"We really just begun to modernize the tournament," said Pollack, who joined Harrah's in October 2005 from NASCAR, "With the backing of Harrah's, we're not going anywhere."

Wider marketing of the tournament is also helping lure players from all over the world.

Internet poker friends Daan Slütter and Mark van der Voorden arrived from Holland hoping to catch a run of luck that could get them to the final table.

Slütter and van der Voorden are having their buy-ins paid by Team PokerNews after playing in satellite tournaments back home.

"This is the biggest tournament in the world," said Slütter, carrying a duffle bag with the Team PokerNews logo. "The main thing is to play in the main event."

Thursday was also the beginning of the newly reconfigured 2007 Gaming Life Expo, which runs through Sunday.

The Rio-sponsored expo focuses more on men's lifestyle outside the world of poker, offering a mix of golf clubs, energy drinks, clothing and apparel, hard liquor, poker industry booths and strippers.

The convention is free and open to the public from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. in the Rio Pavilion, but guests must be 21 to enter.

The expo made news earlier this year when it banned Internet poker sites, which were some of its some of its largest exhibitors in the past.

Expansive booths from Web sites such as PokerStars, Bodog, Full Tilt, Paradise Poker and Ultimate Bet were apparently replaced in part by a few local gentlemen's clubs.

The Sapphire Club booth near the front entrance included a stripper pole complete with a scantily dressed stripper.

[StarnetGypsy]

FOX Sports on MSN - More Sports - Buzz fading, but poker still going strong

by Kerouac Smith, FOXSports.com

Back in 2003, the World Series of Poker main event started a frenzy that not only catapulted poker into the mainstream, but elevated it to the level of "sport."

Just four years later, on the eve of the 2007 main event, it certainly seems as if mixed martial arts has supplanted poker as the niche sport du jour.
So if UFC is the new poker ... where does that leave the old poker?

Poker's future actually became less certain well before UFC exploded onto the scene. It began with the passing of the Safe Port Act, which prohibited the transfer of funds from U.S. financial institutions to online gambling sites, leading industry giant Party Poker and several smaller online poker rooms to close their doors to U.S. players.

Others, notably Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, stayed open for business, although it became harder for players to deposit money. Still, business thrived and the sites, partly due to a lack of competition, enjoyed record turnouts.

Which brings us to the World Series of Poker.

The crown jewel among players, the WSOP has exploded since Internet qualifier Chris Moneymaker outlasted a field of 839 entries to take down a $2.5 million first prize in 2003.

Since then it's grown exponentially each year, with 2006 winner Jamie Gold beating 8,772 players for a whopping $12 million.

But that was during the heyday of Internet poker, when all the major sites were sending hundreds of players via satellite. Poker Stars alone says it sent some 1,600 players, about 1,000 of them Americans, to play in the $10,000 buy-in main event starting Friday.

That may change this year. Poker Stars is still running plenty of qualifiers, but it's no longer registering the players itself. Instead, they are putting $10,000, plus another $1,000 for travel expenses into players' accounts and leaving it up to the individual players to register themselves.

"This is the first year we're kind of letting go of the reins, per Harrah's instructions, and letting players buy themselves in. We hope to get a good number, but we can't say for certain," Susan Lindner of Lotus Public Relations, representing Poker Stars, told the Poughkeepsie Journal.

It's one thing to plop down a $10K entry fee when you've never actually had your hands on the money. It's quite another to plunk down $10,000 in actual cash you'll likely never see again, considering poker tournaments generally pay out only the top 10 percent of finishers.

But players have been doing just that for years to get into the main event anyway. The second most popular way to get in is to win a live satellite tournament. Your average satellite is a 10-person, $1,000 tournament that allows one person to win their way in. While some winners pocket that cash, plenty of others are happy to get in for what feels like a discount.

So the big question is how many players will this year's main event get? The organizers are planning for 10,000 and say the Rio will handle it if there is overflow.

James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street, spent two weeks in June playing preliminary events and says they aren't bluffing.

"They just added a fourth day. They must know something. I wouldn't be surprised if they surpassed it," says McManus.

World Poker Tour president Steve Lipscomb is watching with interest.

"I don't think anybody has any idea how many of those people will actually show up," says Lipscomb. "Everybody's very curious to see what happens this year."

If the turnout from the preliminary WSOP events are any indication, a record attendance wouldn't be surprising.

There are 55 total events at this year's World Series, ranging from a $500 casino employees event to the ultra competitive $50,000 HORSE event that drew 148 high rollers and poker pros.

HORSE is a limit poker game that rotates through five different games, hold 'em, omaha eight or better, razz, seven-card stud and seven-card stud eight or better.

"The main event has become slightly silly. The true championship is now the HORSE championship," said McManus, who played two smaller HORSE events, but was skipping the $50K main event.

Positively Jim McManus

James McManus captured the feel of the World Series of Poker Positively Fifth Street, detailing his trip to Vegas to cover the trial for the murder of Ted Binion and the progress of female players in the WSOP. While he was there, he qualified for the main event and wound up taking fifth place — winning a cool $247K.

He still plays, both live and online and is a player rep for Full Tilt. So it made sense to find out what he thought of the future for Internet poker.

"Some very smart, well-funded and highly motivated people, including (former senator) Al D'Amato, Rep. Barney Frank and Jesse Jones (founder of the World Poker Association) are working very hard to get the law overturned or get poker exempted from it," said McManus.

"Given how central the game has been to the American culture for 200 years, it would be a shame if they don't succeed."

When it comes to the history of poker, the guy knows his stuff. In fact, you could say he's writing the book on it. He's currently working on a new book, Poker: America's National Pastime, which is also running as a "History of Poker" series for Card Player magazine.

He's also skipping the main event this year, despite placing fifth during the infamous trip chronicled in Positively Fifth Street.

Packed in among those are a slew of events with buy-ins ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, and these events have been drawing major turnouts since the series began on June 1. Event No. 3, a $1,500 buy-in tournament, drew 2,998 players. Event 15, also $1,500 to enter, had 2,628 entries. Event No. 49 had a whopping 3,151 people pay the entry fee of $1,500.

Clearly there's plenty of cash to throw around ... and plenty of people to throw it.

Maybe the Internet legislation won't ruin the main event after all.

ESPN's Norman Chad doesn't think so, telling the Poughkeepsie Journal, "I don't know how it will play out with Congress or legally, but no matter how it plays out, people are still going to play on the Internet in the long run. So as long as that occurs ... I think it helps the little poker boomlet on television survive."

It certainly hasn't stopped people from playing the biggest online tournaments.

On Sunday, there were 6,813 folks gunning for $192,000 in a $215 entry fee tournament on Poker Stars. And that's nothing special; that happens every Sunday, when most of the online poker rooms hold their "majors." That same day featured a $216 tournament on Full Tilt that drew 3,189 players and netted the winner just under $114,000.

Logging in at 4:30 p.m. ET on Monday showed 88,000 players online at Poker Stars and 32,000 at Full Tilt. Certainly there's no shortage of players finding a way to get money online.

And those players most affected by an online poker ban are showing they can hold their own if they have to resort to playing live.

Pocketfives.com, a site dedicated to tracking and ranking online no-limit hold-em players, has been covering the WSOP events from an online players' perspective. So far, players registered with the site have cashed in to the tune of over $8.77 million as of July 4.

There were 20 players affiliated with the site who finished in the top 10 of events and four overall event winners during the first two weeks of play.

Among those players is Steve "MrSmokey1" Billirakis, who became the youngest player ever to win a WSOP bracelet (21 years, 11 days) when he won Event No. 1 for $536,287.

Not long after, in Event No. 22, 21-year-old James "mig.com" Mackey won $730,740 and became the third-youngest bracelet winner ever.

Notice a trend there? Young guys making the transition from online play to live play is nothing new, but these guys represent a crop of players that are just now getting their first taste of live action in a brick and mortar casino. The advantage they have over other people trying their hand at cards years ago is the sheer number of hands they've played online.

Internet poker allows a player to see thousands of hands in a short period of time, making the learning curve much shorter than that faced by someone playing in a casino. The young guys winning bracelets during the last month have the equivalent of dozens of years of play under their belts by the time they sit down for a live event. Once they have the probabilities down cold, adapting to live play is their only concern.

While it looks like the WSOP and Internet poker are both going strong, there's a third factor to consider: Television.

While Moneymaker gets a lot of credit for sparking the poker boom, his story might never have been noticed were it not for Lipscomb's innovative hole-card camera.

Letting viewers in on the action helped build the drama and helped push the game into the mainstream. Adding graphics that showed each player's odds of winning the hand at any given time was also a big factor, both in getting viewers involved and to a certain extent, teaching them the ropes.

ESPN used both elements during Moneymaker's run and suddenly poker was the hottest thing around.

So how are the ratings now?

Over 32 hours of programming for the 2006 WSOP, ESPN drew a 1.0 share (962,000 households), bumping up to a 1.3 during the main event. Those ratings were pretty much in line with 2005.

The 2007 main event is getting 12 hours of coverage, up from eight hours last year, and the $50K HORSE tournament is getting 10 hours over a five-week span.

McManus says the increase in coverage of HORSE is a good step toward building on the established poker audience. "It was inevitable that (it would level off). The next step would be to show some forms of poker besides hold 'em. The crowd is addicted to 'I'm all-in.' "

For his part, the WPT's Lipscomb says the WSOP is a "benevolent competitor."

"I always love when the World Series does well and they love when we do well. They are a great complement (to our programming)," said Lipscomb.

Lyndsay LaGree, senior manager of public relations for the WPT, says their show "is and always has been the highest-rated show on the Travel Channel."

And while the WPT recently agreed to switch to GSN, which reaches slightly fewer households, she expects the trend to continue.

"GSN's just a more natural fit, obviously being a gaming network," McGree said. "We'll be a part of their Monday night lineup (which includes the popular High Stakes Poker.)"

It remains to be seen how it'll fare against Monday Night Football, but given that the players provide their own prize pool and the actual content (keeping the cost of producing the show relatively low), the benchmark for success is not as high as with other major pro sports.

But it's clear the TV boom is subsiding.

Two years ago you couldn't flip through the channels without finding poker somewhere. "Hollywood Home Game" on E!, "Poker Royale" on GSN, the Pro Players Tour on Travel, etc. Heck, even the (badly) scripted drama "Tilt" on ESPN.

"A lot of the advertising has changed in the online sector. The shows that didn't have a reason to exist beyond the infomercial are falling by the wayside. ... There was a lot of bad poker television made because (online poker sites) were willing to pay stupid advertising money."

He says it was important to get away from the reliance on online poker advertising, which went away after the legislation was introduced. The WPT locked in Anheuser Busch as a sponsor in its second season.

"I've always been a big believer that one of the important things that we as a sport need to do to gain legitimacy is to gain mainstream sponsorship."

There's still plenty of poker programming, but the shows that keep an audience are the WPT and WSOP mainstays, along with new shows like "High Stakes Poker" and "Poker After Dark" that feature the biggest names in poker (and a few rich amateurs) playing with their own money.

During the poker boom, there were celebrities jumping in left and right. Lennox Lewis. Shannon Elizabeth. Half the cast from That 70s Show. Meanwhile, poker players like Annie Duke, Phil Helmuth and Daniel Negreanu were showing up at Hollywood premiers and on mainstream talk shows.

Now, we've got former UFC champ Chuck Liddell showing up on Entourage and ex-football players like Johnnie Morton and web celebs like Kimbo Slice trying their hand at MMA. And of course, we've got shows popping up all around to try to catch the wave of popularity.

They might want to learn from poker's whirlwind popularity and start to diversify now. And maybe keep an eye on Capitol Hill.