I really hope a legitimate player wins the WSOP

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

With the stories flying around (who knows which ones are even true?) about all these pros getting sucked out and busting out of the tournament by some jackass calling an all-in bet with nothing and then rivering, I started to worry about what might happen to the WSOP if things like this become too commonplace. I hope the tourney's not getting too big for its britches. If it ends up being a place where there are so many fish that'll suck you out that even the best of the best can't beat them all, I wonder if the pros will start playing elsewhere and the tournament will lose its legitimacy. For the moment, the money is just too much to pass up, but that may change in the future if the WSOP gets to be just too ridiculous. ESPN's coverage and Moneymaker's win may have been the biggest boon yet to the WSOP and poker in general, but I wonder where it's going.

I realize this is all a bunch of Chicken Little BS right now, but it's still something to think about (but not too hard).

[Dynasty]

If you think that a large number of weak players entering the WSOP will make the pros go away, you just don't understand how a pro thinks.

[Toonces]

Absolutely. No pro poker player in their right mind would give up equity like this unless they just didn't want to play 7 days of poker for the biggest title in the country. Of course, it's pretty unlikely that one of the top 50 pros in the country will win the tournament. However, I'd be willing to bet that 5 of the top 50 finish in the money and I expect to see at least one of the top 50 pros in the country at the final table. The final table alone has an EV of $1.8 million. The EV of finishing in the money (if you don't make the final table) is $37,000. That means that (if my assumptions are right) that even though 90% of the pros won't even place, a top 50 pro has a 8% chance at $37,000 and a 2% chance at $1.8 million dollars. That's a total EV of $36,000 for a $10,000 buy-in, and no pro's going to give up $26,000 in equity for a weeks work.

[Sly_Grin]

First of all, what is your definition of a "legitimate player" ? Lemme guess, it's someone you've seen on TV. Well guess how most of the field got there ? By winning their way in, often defeating hundreds of even of thousands of other players. There are people playing online who play more hands in a month than top pro players see in a year. With "sit and go's" players get massive experience playing short handed. Everyone has been brainwashed by "Rounders" into thinking poker is 95% tells and that is simply not true.

There are also "pros" who don't even make a good living. They play the tour, putting up literally hundreds of thousands in entry fees, you see them make a WPT final table and assume they are getting rich.

There are also other pros that stick to the cash games so you've never heard of them. TV has the general public thinking Annie Duke is the Queen of poker while someone like Cyndy Violette is miles beyond her as a player (and a fox, too !).

And you are talking about a $10k buy-in tournament !! Do you really think most of the field is fish ? don't be ridiculous.

Lastly, the thought that a professional would NOT want to play in a tournament because too many people make bad calls is about the dumbest thing I've read here.

[Syntax]

Could you elaborate on your EV calculations?

[Toonces]

Final table is just dividing the total money available at the final table by 9 people.

The other EV is dividing the remaining purse by 216 (225 moneywinners - 9 final table people)

[Freudian]

Whoever wins it is a legitimate player. Lasting 6 days in a field with pretty much every 'legitimate' player in the world should prove so.

[Syntax]

You do realize that EV and average are two different concepts? For each player to have the same EV at the final table, they would all have to be equal in skill and equally stacked.

[Michael Davis]

I think this is a really low estimate. This puts them on par with all players at large.

-Michael

[Daithi]

/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[paland]

Yeah. Now it's more like the NCAA basketball tournament where upstart teams beat the Established Teams on any given night (how dare they!!) I think they call that "March Madness".

[eastbay]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah. Now it's more like the NCAA basketball tournament where upstart teams beat the Established Teams on any given night (how dare they!!) I think they call that "March Madness".

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't that kind of weird to contrast?

Pretty much everybody loves it when a nobody college comes in and wins some upsets at the NCAA tournament.

Contrast that to an unknown winning a big poker tournament. Everybody instantly hates them. (Well, not everybody, but there is definitely a trend.)

Wonder why that is?

eastbay

[aaronjacobg]

the good players hate him because we have all sat down with that same guy a hundred times. The guy that no matter how well you play he will suck you dry. It's a bit illogical because this is the same guy that we will take the money back from and more the next day but we still hate him for our short term losses.

Jake

[redwings03]

I played with a guy on Poker Stars (DeOhGee if i remember the name). I ripped through him at a 10-20 shorthanded table and thought he was certainly a fish. Perhaps my estimation was right, but 3 days later in the WCOOP main event $1000 buy in there he was in the final 30 players. (I was knocked out around 200th when A7s called my KK move in on a 2 6 8 flop for the record and made a flush but that's another post). In any case I remember wondering how he had made it so far and thinking he had no shot, but I watched as the deck ran him over...he often showed his hands when people folded and it was the super premium hands over and over until it was just him and another player left. That guy took the prize too, just shy of a quarter million. Unreal, because I knew I would most probably have gotten the same result had the deck been so kind to me. So the reason the public has a love/hate relationship with the random winner is we feel he got breaks that we deserve. Do any of deserve those breaks, maybe or maybe not? I think if you play great and do it often at many tournies you will eventually get the luck to fall your way. That's what the pro's do, they bring their A game over and over and the cream often rises, not always, perhaps not in this tournament but often enough for them to make a living and keep playing.

[redwings03]

Agree on most everything you said.

1- Many cash players you have never heard of are true money makers.
2- Pro tournament player is a rough way to make a living and it has it ups and many many downs save for the very upper echelon of players who are smart with earnings outside the poker world. I have been told by my good friend who is a "cash pro" and now delving into the tournament circuit that many players are chronic gamblers (this should not be a surprise - we all know Stu Ungar, but there are many others as well) with horses and dice and so on and they often must borrow entry fees and there will be a line of people waiting to collect from them when the pro finally hits a tourny for some cash.
3- The real pros lick their chops waiting for amateurs. Of course I heard Danny N was bitter he made the mistake of trying to bluff at Internet qualified "calling stations" who would not be bluffed. I think I could have told him that for far less than the 10k buy in as well.

4- Legitimate Player??? If my buddy or someone like my buddy were to win, you will never have heard of him...but, he is out there playing at cash stakes that would make most of us think twice before joining the game. Trust me, he is legit, skilled, confident and knocks heads with many names you know when they dip in the cash games.

[eMarkM]

Absolutely. It may be much harder for any given pro player to WIN the WSOP outright with the fame and glory that entails, but it should now be easier for them to MONEY.

[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
It may be much harder for any given pro player to WIN the WSOP outright with the fame and glory that entails, but it should now be easier for them to MONEY.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what everybody seems to be missing in the "all these new players are making the WSOP a crapshoot" posts. The simple fact that there three times the number of players in the tournament this year compared to last year automatically makes the tournament harder to win. But, a strong tournament player should have an easier time getting a good return on his $10,000 investment. And, for a pro, that's what counts.

[slamdunkpro]

Sadly, she's out

[fnurt]

This is an interesting post. I think we all realize that when an online qualifier wins the WSOP, the huge influx of fish is good for everyone. But still, I have seen a lot of posts like this, hoping that a "name" player wins anyway. What I think people are looking for is some tangible confirmation that this is a game of skill, to justify all the time we spend on it. If a well-known player emerges from this field of 2600 to claim the title, it proves that there really is a significant element of skill in this game, and we can all rest easier.

Of course we know it's a game of skill already. It's a combination of skill and luck, and sometimes it's hard to wrap one's mind around that concept.

Let me share a comparison from my own experience. I happen to be a tournament backgammon player. Backgammon is a very similar game to poker in terms of the role of skill and luck. Many of the top backgammon players in the world have turned to poker because it requires many of the same skills and because the money-making opportunities are better. In fact, going into today, the chip leader at the WSOP was Abe Mosseri, who happens to be a top backgammon player. Erik Seidel and Jason Lester are a couple more names that may be familiar to you.

The reason I bring this up is that unlike tournament poker, tournament backgammon is a game without a large supply of fish, so I can tell you what it's like. In a tournament of a couple hundred people, you might have 10 or 20 top pros clustered at the top who all have an equal shot to win, but the fact is that well over half the field probably plays well enough to win, if the dice are with them. There are very few players who are just so hopeless that they represent dead money. And just like in poker, even if you're dead money, you can still get on a lucky streak and knock a much better player out of the tournament. So while it's fun and challenging to play against top pros all the time, there's not a lot of EV in it.

Let's change this scenario and add a few hundred more people to the tournament, some of whom are tough customers, but most of whom are fishy. Your chances of reaching the money are probably a little worse than they used to be; you have a much softer field, but now it takes longer to get to the finish, and there are more chances for something to go wrong. But when you do get to the money, you'll suddenly find there's a lot more of it there, because of all the weak players who entered.

Individually, the weak players are annoying because they are "unbluffable" and beat you with hands like K6o; but collectively, they contribute so much additional money to the prize pool that there's no question it's a golden opportunity. So root for a "name" player to win the WSOP all you want, but understand that overall, poker players have it pretty darn good right now.

[BigBiceps]

I thought they should still keep the 10k event, but have a 100k main event, so that the field was smaller.

10k in 1970 is really like 40-50k today, so they should up the buy-in for the main event.