Get It Quietly

Football, bollocks and a bit of poker if you're lucky.

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Location: Enfield, London, United Kingdom

Sunday, October 15, 2006

End Of An Era

This is no surprise : online qualifiers at the WSOP could become a thing of the past. We'll have to wait for the official word from Harrah's but it seems likely to me that they won't even accept online qualifiers from outside the US. I love the quote from the guy at the end when he says "If not, we just give the money to the player and they can pay." That guy can look forward to entering the twisted logic world of the satellite qualifier ...

When it comes to the event itself, it's a double edged sword. Chopping out 3/4 of the field cuts the variance of the Main Event down from "absolutely unmeasurably off the scale" to merely "stratospherically enormous". However there's no doubt that it will cut the EV down substantially as well. There will still be live satellite qualifiers but these will mostly be people who take the step of flying to Vegas without a seat. Perhaps some of the B+M casinos will fill the gap with land-based satellites to some extent, but it won't be the same. Perhaps single table satellites at the WSOP will not be affected too much, but again the completely clueless never-played-a-tournament-before players are going to be sat at home instead.

Perhaps the greatest downside of all is, as Jerrod Ankerman pointed out, that Jamie Gold is likely to hold the position of the biggest tournament winner in history for many, many years !

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

If they don't ban online qualifiers from outside the US, then the event will be dominated by Europeans.

If they do, then the live satellite scene there will burst back into life. Get Supersat training now!

PJ

4:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

surely, it makes some sense to hold the wsop outside the US. I'm sure most americans would still go and there should be vested interest in subsidising it heavily to keep momentum in the game going. Also, it would be very embarassing for the states, and ensure this recent debacle is more rectified more speedily.

maple leaf

4:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

most american on-line qualifiers anyway - at least they'd still try to.

maple leaf

4:48 PM  

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