A recent front page article here on PocketFives.com entitled “Cleaning Up The Rail” saw longtime Tournament Director Matt Savage address the cheating scandal that marred the Partouche Poker Tour, which runs a November Nine similar to the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event. Ali Tekintamgak was disqualified from the Partouche Poker Tour’s finale because of a cheating scandal involving the poker media. This week, Savage is our guest on the PocketFives.com Podcast.

The involvement of several dubious members of the poker media may turn the world of tournament reporting on its head going forward. Savage explained what the staff of major events can do to preserve the integrity of tournaments: “The bottom line is as Tournament Directors and as staff of these events, and the casinos that are running them, we need to be very careful that we protect the players at all costs… I’d like to see players being protected and I think that was my #1 goal in writing the article. Going forward, we can take care of some of those things that may have been loose ends over the years.”

Whether media accessibility for the WSOP and other live events will be more limited in 2011 and beyond remains to be seen. Savage opined, “The poker media that I know works so hard to make sure they do a good job. The fact that they’re promoting the great game of poker really goes a long way to helping what we do and bringing new people into the game, so I hate to see [so many members] of the media get a black eye over one person or one group.” One-hundred media personnel were credentialed for the WSOP Main Event final table in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Speaking of the WSOP Main Event, Jonathan Duhamel (pictured) became the first Canadian to take down the $10,000 buy-in tournament and walked away with nearly $9 million. “I think it’s great for poker with Canada being the big online hotbed for the world,” Savage assessed. “It’s a bad beat for Full Tiltand a good one for PokerStars because they had seven players at the final table as opposed to two. It was an exciting final table.”

Meanwhile, Savage, who can be found jet setting around the world, is a few days removed from a trip to Macau, the site of the cornerstone Asian Poker Tour (APT) stop. This year, high-stakes cash games took center stage: “The turnout for APT Macau was a little lighter than I hoped, but the fact that we got guys over like Durrrr, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, and Chau Giang playing in the tournament was great. The fact that they’re playing these huge cash games really brought a lot of excitement to the area.” Giang took down a HKD $20 million pot in a cash game, the equivalent of nearly USD $2.6 million.

Finally, Savage is tasked with running poker tournaments across the globe. In fact, he’s a co-founder of the Tournament Directors Association and gave the PocketFives.com Podcast his take on deep stack structures: “I am not a fan of deep stack tournaments. I think a lot of players are under the misconception that deep stack tournaments provide the best structures. I feel the opposite: a lot of play early leads to shorter stacks later in the tournament and at the final table.”

Check out PokerTDA.comfor more details on the Tournament Directors Association. If you’d like to send a question to Savage, feel free to do so at asktheboard@pokertda.com. Check out the rest of this week’s PocketFives.com Poker Podcast.