Published: July 21, 2008 12:54 pm      

Flaws in WSOP's new format

The new-look World Series of Poker Main Event pared its original field of more than 6,500 players to the nine who will make up its final table last week, leaving the poker world to endure its longest-ever wait before a champion is crowned.

But the two burning question as the chosen nine go on what the WSOP website is calling a “117-day break” before returning in November to settle things, are: “Four months from now, will anybody care who wins?” and “Does anybody care now?”.

Poker has established a huge fan base over the past five or six years, largely through telecasts of important events such as the month-long World tbSeries in Las Vegas and the weekly World Poker Tour (which travels to casinos through the U.S. and abroad for its tournaments). The game’s top players have achieved rock star status, celebrities have become visible — and in some cases successful — additions to the competition, and amateurs such as the aptly-named Chris Moneymaker (whose unlikely victory in the 2003 Main Event is credited with igniting the current world poker craze) have become spokemen for poker websites and products.

ESPN bought the rights to telecast the Main Event and the more than 50 WSOP tournaments leading up to it a few years back, and the network usually begins its replays of selected tournaments early in the summer. By the time telecasts of the Main Event (which traditionally ends in July) finally begin, the holidays are approaching, and anybody who cared knew who the winner was months before he raised his hands (full of money of course) in triumph on cable TV in the fall.

This year, though, the WSOP and ESPN powers-that-be decided to keep the poker world in suspense by delaying the actual telecast of the action at the final table for almost four months after the Main Event’s final nine had been chosen. The field will be sliced to two after the first day, and the winner of the record $9.1 million first prize will be decided in a one-day, heads-up contest.

In theory, the thinking is probably sound; in practice, though, it might be a little tougher to turn the new format into ratings gold.

Sure, the identity of the winner will be more of a surprise than it would have been under the old WSOP telecast schedule, but the final nine in this year’s Main Event have ABSOLUTELY no star power. Only two — Canadian Scott Montgomery and Floridian David “Chino” Rheem (currently with the second smallest of the nine chip stakes at just over $10 million) — are ranked in the top 600 among the world’s players, and Rheem is also the only one of the Main Event survivors to ever finish in the top five in a WSOP tournament.

A native of Miami, Rheem has cashed in at least one World Series tournament every year since 2005, with his biggest payday ($327,981) being earned through a runner-up finish in a $1,000 buy-in no-limit Hold’em event back in July of 2006. His career WSOP bankroll of $474,843 is more than double that of the other eight at the final table combined, but it is less than half of what any winner on the World Poker Tour could earn for a victory and little more than a sixth of what Moneymaker collected for winning the Main Event five summers ago.

Other than Rheem, the final table is as big a collection of no-names as perhaps has ever been assembled for a tournament offering a seven-figure first prize.

The chip leader, a blue-collar guy from Cottage Hills, IL, named Dennis Phillips, had cashed for a total of $4,578 in a couple of minor WSOP circuit events in Tunica, MS, before playing in the Main Event. He will have almost $27 million in chips to play with when the tournament resumes, while Ivan Demidov, a 26-year-old Russian with the second biggest chip stack at $24.4 million, cashed for almost $40,000 in a no-limit event at this year’s World Series and has the second highest 2008 earnings of anybody at the final table.

One of two Canadians in the final nine, Montgomery came into the Main Event on a major WSOP roll, having already cashed in three tournaments during the month and banking $73,700 (also his career World Series earnings), and his third-best chip stack of just under $20 million should make him a major factor when play resumes.

Other than the almost total obscurity of the nine amateurs at the final table, the format of the final two days could also present ESPN with a problem. Not only will the grand finale be presented in the middle of football season, but the second day could be over in the blink of an eye, leaving network executives to dip into their vault for a replay of yak racing from Tibet or the national lawn bowling championships from 2005.

By its every nature, no-limit Texas Hold’em is a volatile game with dramatic swings possible on the turn of each card. If the player with the smaller stack puts all his chips in the pot on the first or second hand of heads-up play and loses, the tournament will be over, and advertisers who didn’t have their spots early in the program will be left with nothing but the poker equivalent of dead air.

ESPN probably has a Plan B for such an outcome (by November the network will have hours of 2008 WSOP footage in the vault), but the true poker savant will have already seen most of that and will wander through the dial looking for a football game to kill the rest of the afternoon.

Main Event veteran Dr. Bruce Van Horn of Ada said he also sees a chance for amateurs to fine-tune their games and change the November version of the final table into a much different animal than it would have been in July.

“What it’s going to do is that those guys who got there by pure luck, somebody’s going to take them under their wing and teach them how to play in the next few months,” said Van Horn, whose payday for finishing second at the 1996 Main Event was a little more than two-thirds the $901,000 the ninth-play finisher this year will receive. “I know I would if somebody had a chance to win $6 million.

“I think it will be a different kind of final table than it would have been,” he added. “Those so-so players will be a lot better by the time November rolls around.”

Van Horn said the nondescript nature of this year’s final nine is a product of the current poker explosion on the internet, which allows amateur players to cram years of poker experience into months and prepare them to lock horns with — and beat — the world’s best.

“Some of these guys can play pretty well that have been playing on the internet,” Van Horn said. “But I haven’t heard of anybody at the final table this year.”

Van Horn failed to cash in two tournaments at the WSOP this year before returning home to Ada, and he is now preparing for next month’s final of the $3 Million WinStar World Championship Series.

“The tournament starts (August) 20th, and my first day is the 21st,” said Van Horn, who earned his seat (worth $5,000) with a victory at a satellite tournament this spring. “Everybody will start with the same chip stack, but I’m not sure how much that will be.

“At least if I get knocked out of that one, I can just drive home.”