$50. That's the correct short-term EV impact of Harrah's TOC decision

[Jedster]

Many posters, myself included, have said that the short-term impact of Harrah's decision to allow sponsorship exemptions was about $500.

Upon further reflection, this number is actually quite misleading and overstates the impact Harrah's decision.

As background, obviously the $500 number is figured by subtracting the average EV of a player in a TOC without exemptions from the actual average EV. With 111 players, the average EV was $18,018 and with 114 player it dropped by $474 to $17,544.

But the core argument that what Harrah's did is unfair is this: when players signed up to play WSOP Circuit events, they did it in part because they understood that they were in part qualifiers for a $2 million freeroll.

Therefore it is the EV impact of these players which must be considered. To look at the 111 people who actually qualified is results-oriented thinking. It's the same as saying that since Helmuth ended up winning $325,000 the EV impact was $3k per player. Yes, that was the actual impact -- but not the EV impact.

So let's take a look at what the correct EV impact really is.

To do this, I'm just going to look at the circuit events. I think everybody would agree that the TOC played some role in getting these off the ground and I also think that everbody would agree that the WSOP itself would have had roughly 5,500 entrants regardless of the TOC promotion. So anything "stolen" from them is more incidental (and because of sheer numbers is rather meaningless, especially considering that the all WSOP final tablers won at least $1 million.)

Going into the first circuit event, you'd figure that you had about a 10% shot of qualifying for the TOC and that the TOC would have about 110 players. So you figured that if a TOC seat was "worth" about $18k then you're entry into a circuit gave you about $1,800 in TOC equity.

Now let's say you knew that there would be three sponsorship exemptions. Now you'd figure you'd only have about $1,750 in TOC equity based on a seat now being worth $17,500. That's a $50 loss in EV. Not exactly earth shattering.

Sure, Harrah's communicated poorly about this. No question there. And you could argue that they "stole" $50 from every player who entered a WSOP Circuit event. But that argument doesn't appear very consequential when you consider that what they were really doing was changing the average WSOP Circuit event entrant's TOC equity from $1,800 or so to $1,750.

Then, if you pause for a moment and consider the longer term positive implications of sponsored poker, you'll realize that there is absolutely no way that the integration of Pepsi into the sponsorship of poker tournaments is not going to have far more benefit to players than the $50 EV that was "stolen" from them.

I mean there is really nothing to debate here. It's so obvious that I can't believe that professional poker players aren't kissing Harrah's ring. I understand that some players who actually got lucky and got into the TOC and who played long hours only to get frozen out of the money are pissed, but as far as I can tell, that's just whining from poker players.

My advice: get over your $50 EV loss and focus on making poker the greatest game on television. That's the way to make the big bucks. Not getting nitty over sponsorship exemptions.