Just Poker Talk

The Pahrump Valley Times has an article about the World Series of Poker. It talks about the how Harrah’s is expecting 10,000 entrants this year. That’s old news, but what interests me about the article is this statistic: “Half of the 2006 participants were estimated to have won their seats in online qualifier events.” Obviously this a factor in the record setting 8,773 participants at the Main Event last year.

In the article it also talks about how Harrah’s is being more stringent about the use of their trademark and logo. This was all said during the WSOP teleconference* a few weeks ago, except I wasn’t clear on Harrah’s motives for this, which I now realize have to do with online poker rooms using the WSOP logo and trademark to advertise their WSOP qualifier tournaments. And this in turn may explain why Harrah’s does not accept entries won on online poker sites. Or maybe not; this is just my hypothesis.

The big question for me is why does Harrah’s refuse to accept entries from online poker sites? Are they looking to commercialize the tournament further by forcing online sites to sign endorsement deals with the WSOP, to use their trademark and allow said site to hold online qualifiers for the WSOP? If that’s what they’re trying to do, it won’t work, as poker sites have already found a way to get around this by giving cash to the winners instead.

I can understand that Harrah’s wants to protect their trademark, but why do they want to stifle the growth of the WSOP? Growth can only lead to more profit for Harrah’s and Las Vegas as a whole. Commercially there are no negatives to the increased attendance.

The drawback of growth is that the large fields make the Main Event more of a crap shoot than anything. The level of play also dwindles with the increased participants and immense popularity of the event in general. So, personally, I would love to see a smaller field for the Main Event. Some have suggested that increasing the buy-in to 25 grand would discourage entrants and help shrink the field, and I think that is a good idea. $10,000 dollars was worth a lot more back in the 70’s when the tournament first started. But at the same time, if the fields did not shrink, the winner could win 40 million dollars, which is interesting in itself.

*Pokerati has an audio file of the conference posted on their site. You can listen to it here.

WSOP teleconference, online qualifiers for WSOP, World Series of Poker