By
grapsfan |
Published
May 02 2008, 03:42 PM
“Hello, is this baseball commissioner Bud Selig? This is Dick Emptysuit, vice-president of sports programming at Fox. I’m calling to make a request about scheduling the World Series this year. You know how it’s always around the 3rd week in October? Of course, you do. You run baseball. Anyway, we’d like for you to push it back to the 2nd week of November, so it aligns with our Sweeps Week. Now, I know it’ll be snowing in about half the cities where you play, and it’s the rainy season in about eight others. I know you’re punishing the teams who smartly prepped their playoff rosters and rotations to best compete in the Fall Classic. I know you’re punishing teams who managed to stay healthy and survive the marathon of the baseball season. I know you’re punishing teams who got hot at the right time and have been playing their best baseball at the time it counts the most.”
“Well, Mr. Emptysuit, if you know how damaging it would be to our game, why would you ask me? Give me one good reason why I should agree to destroy much of the integrity of the most important week of our season!”
“Mr. Selig, I’ll give you two good reasons. One is this giant bag of cash I have in my left hand. The other is the giant bag of cash I have in my right hand.”
(long pause)
“Yeah, OK. We’ll do it.”
The above scenario is fictional, and completely preposterous. Isn’t it? None of the major sports leagues, no organization with a top-15 brand recognition, would dream of completely messing with the integrity of their most important competition, would they? No one would believe it, right?
Army of non-believers, meet WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and the rest of the team at Harrah’s. The final table of this year’s Main Event will be played approximately 4 months after they reach the final nine players, per request of ESPN. See, their ratings have been slipping a little bit in the last couple of years. And rather than accepting the nature of rapid-rising fads (like poker was to many people) and the damage of having a douchebag and a Jesus-calling recluse as the last two champions, ESPN made a devil’s bargain with Harrah’s. The game itself, what happened the two weeks leading up to the final table, be damned.
Players who are worn to the nub by the brutal schedule of 14-hour days will have a chance to rest and regain their senses. Thousands of betting patterns, tells and reads accumulated over 10 days will fade in the distance, replaced by potentially misleading editing and mediocre commentary in the TV coverage. Table images carefully crafted will be totally blown when the world sees what someone’s hole cards actually were in key hands. Mediocre players who made it to the last day on prayers and dumb luck will have the funds to hire the best coaches they can find.
I wouldn’t expect Pollack (a NASCAR guy at heart, where everything is for sale), Harrah’s (a giant conglomerate with no ties to what made them a historical gambling mecca) or ESPN to care about the game. But where were the Player’s Committee? The professionals who are involved to be the defenders and bastions of poker, defending it from corporate greed…what happened to them? Negreanu, Lederer and crew complained loudly about the “World Series of Hold’em,” the lack of mixed games, and the never-ending grind of 16-hour days which come from squeezing huge fields into 2-day prelim events. Now, when the powers-that-be are doing something far more damaging to the game’s most important tournament…they go along! Why?
The answer is, they’ve let us, and the game down, because they’re as greedy as the next guy. They could give a shit about integrity and the spirit of the tournament. They know making the amateurs disrupt their lives for a second time, to come back out to Vegas, gives them an advantage; they already live in Vegas or are used to travel. They can spot tells on TV which others will miss, and more importantly, know what to do when they surface again. They will have far greater leverage to attract sponsors and business deals from their seat at the Final Table. The pros need more recovery from six weeks of constant tournament play than does the amateur who flew out just to take his satellite-earned seat at the table.
So who can blame ESPN for trying anything to keep the poker gravy train rolling a little while longer? Who can blame Harrah’s and Jeffrey Pollack for lining their pockets a little more? Who can blame the pros for sacrificing the purity of one of the truly open competitions left, for what they consider to be a +EV move? Why should they care?
As poker players, we’ve already proven a willingness to take the whip, over and over again, to play. Absolute Poker had cheating within the executive ranks of the company? OK, I’ll still play there. UltimateBet explicitly allows bots and multi-accounters in their cash games and does nothing to respond to a high-stakes scandal of their own? OK, I’ll still play there. Bodog’s interface gives me epilepsy, the client crashes regularly, and their checks bounce from time to time? OK, I’ll still play there.
So now, the World Series of Poker has done something completely corrupt and potentially disastrous to our Main Event, the most prestigious thing in the game we love. How do you make your displeasure known? What are you going to do about it? Yeah, I know. I’ll still play there.
* For a contrasting opinion on the WSOP final table rescheduling, P5's members and visitors are encouraged to read Justin Shronk's article titled The Art of Progress.