Best ME in years??

[fnurt]

[ QUOTE ]
I think Raymer winning it will be terrible for poker. if people realize that poker is more a game of skill than luck, they'll be less likely to gamble when they do play... and they might actually start studying poker.

doesn't that thought send a chill down your spine?

plus, it'll be a cold day in hell before poker is legalized everywhere. players have won events in consecutive years before, and it hasn't seemed to change anything. (I know the field size is much larger this year, making it more of an incredible feat of skill to win twice. do you think the average politician knows/cares about that?)

(yeah, I posted at 5:30 in the morning. what of it?)

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing that happens will be "terrible" for poker, barring Greg pulling out a gun at the final table and shooting all the other players dead. That would be fairly good for publicity, fairly bad for reputation.

The potential to boost poker by having yet another amateur win is pretty tapped out. Having a woman win would be pretty helpful, though, and that's true even if it was one of the female pros. Frankly, if I could pick, I'd say the winner should be some granny who just wandered over from the slot machines. That's a demographic we haven't tapped into much.

[Gbob]

If I was to make a dream player to put at the final table, I would choose a local celebrity who started playing on the internet.

Tom Sartori, you better build that stack back up today. I'm counting on you boy.

He's a singer/songwriter from Buffalo who plays local bars. If he makes the final table than Buffalo will see a poker boom.....and I'll have a very, very profitable year. I'm drooling at the thought of the interviews in the local paper and on the radio, and hundreds of thousands of people in the region thinking "this poker game seems like a cool way to make money."

Go Tom!

[swarm]

[ QUOTE ]
I think Raymer winning it will be terrible for poker. if people realize that poker is more a game of skill than luck, they'll be less likely to gamble when they do play... and they might actually start studying poker.

doesn't that thought send a chill down your spine?


[/ QUOTE ]

I think this ME is perfect in the sense that you have a diverse mix of top regarded pros (Ivey, Matasow, Raymer) sharing the leaderboard with self-proclaimed "luckboxes" who somehow find themselves one of the last 27 people in the tournament (Steve Danneman (read the article in another thread) and Tiffany Williamson). This showcases that poker has skill but it also reinforces the fantasy that anyone can win given the right cards.

If you have all pro's at the end then people think there is too much advantage. All nobody's and people view it as a complete toss up and it becomes less interesting. What makes poker great right now is complete unknowns will be batteling with top of the line pros for LARGE amounts of cash. Who doesn't dream of flopping a set and taken down a big pot from Ivey or Raymer...

With Ivey (people love wathcing Ivey), Raymer(defending champ run, always a great story) and Matasow (ever entertaing) at the top most of the way they are going to have great TV. Throw in the group of wildcards they have they have endless angles to shoot with Tiffany(amature woman, this has never happened before, only pro women have made this kind of run), Daneman (seems to be quite the character, kind of a Ellix Powers who uses unorthodox techniques to tilt his table).

[LetYouDown]

I'm from the Buffalo area as well...Amherst to be exact. They've mentioned him half a million times on local radio already. It would definitely make a good "hometown hero" kinda story. Granted, if he wins the whole thing, he'll have more money than all of Erie County.

[lemuri]

Sundial vs H-dog: this calls for a POLL. Both good ones

Let the people decide. This isnt Russia, Danny. Show em what we go to war to protect

[silversurfer]

[ QUOTE ]
This ME's pretty awesome. You've got your villians (Raymer), you're heroes (Matusow), and the best player in the world (Tiff, although Ivey could give her a run for the money).

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sorry, please tell me I'm a donk and my sarcasm meter is broken, or my head will explode trying to figure out if you really believe this.

[lemuri]

The truck/bus pulling thing is kinda cool.. and that weird monster-tire-flip thing.

I agree tho, would also be nice if ESPN provided a little more context -- how many hands played between actually televised ones.. Even the blinds/antes. General beef at all TV coverage

[medaugh]

[ QUOTE ]
but a Greg-Ivey-Mouth final would be unreal.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think I saw this match in the final episode of TILT. Just kidding but I hope this translate to TV the way all the updates and such have read.

[kiddj]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This ME's pretty awesome. You've got your villians (Raymer), you're heroes (Matusow), and the best player in the world (Tiff, although Ivey could give her a run for the money).

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sorry, please tell me I'm a donk and my sarcasm meter is broken, or my head will explode trying to figure out if you really believe this.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're a donk and your sarcasm meter is broken.

(Glad I could help.) [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Stephen H]

A lot of posts lately have talked about this person or that person winning and how it would be "good for poker" or "bad for poker" based on who it will draw into playing poker. I think that's the wrong way to look at it now. As far as I can tell, there's enough people playing poker already - does anyone here really have a hard time finding a game? What I am looking at now is how to bring more people into WATCHING poker, live or on TV (TV seems easier with holecams/etc). Look at how big the prize pool is for the WSOP - now imagine NBC dumps another $20million into the prize pool on top of that for TV rights. THAT is dead money. Imagine the WPT having an invite only freeroll for all the top table finishers from the season, with payouts bigger than the WPT events themselves. At the very least, the next TV deal for the WSOP should replace the juice paid out of each prize pool (it won't, but IMHO it *should* if it's anywhere near as big a deal as I suspect it will be).
How does this happen? Steadily improving coverage of poker events...and players that fans can root for. That means the top pros need to *win*. From that perspective, Ivey or Raymer winning would be the best. Of course, there will almost always be an unknown weekend warrior type that makes the final table and some serious $$, which keeps hope alive for all those thinking "that could be me someday." And I think the general impression of Raymer is that he's also just an "internet qualifier"; and don't realize the extensive poker background he really had before winning the WSOP, so he's still someone that the average joe can "aspire to become someday".
To me, significantly increased veiewship is the next level of the poker explosion. I doubt it will happen; poker isn't quite marketable enough for that. Nothing that can't be shown live is going to ever reach that kind of popularity, and IMHO tournament poker is just not watchable enough for the average joe live. I would compare it to the Tour De France; with Lance Armstrong's success, the Tour is extremely popular (at least in Austin, TX) right now...but almost no one wants to watch it live. 4-5 hours of riding a bike? That's not interesting. Who won the stage? How far ahead/behind is Lance now? Those are the questions people ask, and that's the end of the interest. Much like with poker...Who's still in? What's the chip counts? Who just busted? Then show the highlights later. No one is going to watch a 12 hour poker day, especially 12 days in a row. It's also tough not having any kind of idea of the time commitment to such an event - I think TV programmers hate that.
Although...people watch Nascar, and will sit around for a weekend watching a major golf event like the Masters. These are pretty long events; and I think racing has a few major moments and a lot of downtime. Maybe live coverage of the WSOP will someday happen; at least the final table. Perhaps other people have some ideas on how to make live poker watchable for the masses - I think the experiments with live poker so far are a good start to work out the kinks. I suspect the first live poker event on a major network will be a specifically designed for TV event, with some additional technology/process improvements to help deliver information on stack size/bet size/pot size/hole cards even more quickly and accurately.

Argh. This went from being a short post with a simple point to a rambling post with perhaps not so clear a point at all. Oh well.