WSOP

June 22, 2007

It sounds like the WSOP is raging on without me. I’m mired in work here in Cambridge and have been almost blissfully unaware of the poker world congregating on the other side of the country. I’ve lost contact with all but a few poker friends (and most non-poker ones too) so what little I’ve heard has come through news feeds.

From what I have heard directly though, people who’ve won seats to the main event are being given the option to just pocket the cash instead. So I expect this year’s will be the first in recent memory (and maybe the first ever, but I’m too lazy to look it up) to be smaller than the one previous. I will be surprised if it tops 5,000 players at that rate, and 3-4 thousand seems reasonable.

When you think about it though, that’s still pretty amazing. Tournaments with $40 million dollar prize pools were unheard of when I first started playing, and with the exception of Mike Sexton, I’m not sure anyone expected such a thing might happen in our lifetimes.

Harrah’s is, of course, doing the right thing from their perspectives. The vig on a few thousand main event entrants is nowhere near worth the legal hassle they’d possibly incur by letting PokerStars and others buy people seats. Within a few years this entire mess seems like it will be sorted out anyway.

Looking through the year’s results were surprising. It seems almost entirely like random people winning. I mean, you expect that to an extent, given the size of the fields, but this year it seems like unknowns are bagging far more than the last two.

While I don’t really miss poker lately, and am more than glad to be far away from the three ring circus that Harrah’s now calls the World Series, I do miss Las Vegas. I haven’t seen many of the people I’ve spent so much time with over the last four years. I keep getting these free trip offers in the mail from Harrah’s, and they remind me of the food I’m missing.

Sorry if I haven’t been keeping up with this blog, but you’ve probably come to expect that by now. I’ve been busy writing in many
different
places, including some private stuff. And I’m also getting married in under a week. That’s been time-consuming, even though I’m a ten hour drive away from my fiancée, who is doing most of the planning at this point.

So since I won’t have much time between now and then, I’ll set the over/under for this year’s WSOP main event entrants at 4,500. What’s your bet?