Don’t offer poker!!!

Really. It’s that simple.

Most sports books offer poker to their customers as a way to keep players from discovering other poker sites. They understand the tendency for there to be cross-over players from sports betting to poker and they’ve attempted to keep their sports book players from wandering off to other sites for their poker playing.

That’s all fine and dandy but there’s an attitude in the industry that the sports book owns that customer or at least that customer’s betting action, which is an incorrect assumption. It’s sort of like your local cable company selling you bundled internet, cable television, and phone and then getting upset when you start canceling your premium cable channels because you’re spending too much time on the internet to watch as much television as you used to.

Rather than improving their cable channel lineup or providing you extra value, now the cable company wants to restrict your use of the internet in the hopes that you’ll spend more time watching television and move back up to your old package. They call their new internet offering, Enhanced Internet, and claim they are removing the internet’s clutter out of your way. Of course, Enhanced Internet involves blocking YouTube, Facebook, and downloading of movies and music.

That’s basically what’s happening right now with sports book customers. They’re being sold a bundle of gambling products but the sports book wants to control how and where the players lose their money and direct them to the products where they have the highest profit margin. This is an understandable business strategy but it’s not exactly honest when they say the changes are for the benefit of the player.

If the situation were reversed and the sports book’s customers were the sharks gobbling up the fish and then turning around and donking off their poker winnings in the sports book, there isn’t a single sports book that would be complaining about how unfair the game is. Not one.

I mean, you never hear sports books and/or online casinos lowering their sports or casino edges to help keep their customers gambling longer, do you? Do they handicap sports bets to make them more fair for customers who are bad at sports betting? Are there any casinos that will lower the house edge in their games in order to keep players gambling?

The problem with poker and sports books and casinos is that they’re two entirely different types of business. Yes, they’re all considered gambling, but games you play against the house and games like poker where you wager against other players are like night and day when it comes to how the room makes money.

Unfortunately, sports book operators think like sports book operators and casino operators think like casino operators. Neither thinks like a poker room operator.

That’s why I proposed that sports books and casinos should just get out of the poker room business unless they’re going to run their poker room like a poker room.

You can’t run a poker room with the same mentality that you run your sports book. It doesn’t work. Eventually the entire poker ecosystem will collapse under the weight of the sports book’s heavy handed attempts to make poker players act in a manner more agreeable to the sports book.

A lot of this tinkering the sports books want to do is based off the entirely false assumption that they are entitled to the player’s action. By that I mean that if ABC Sports Book sends a player to ABC’s skin on XYZ Poker Network, ABC falsely assumes they own the poker action. They view every dollar lost at the poker tables as a dollar lost from the sports book.

But if ABC didn’t offer poker there’s no guarantee that the money would have found its way to ABC. Let’s say that I have $200 to wager with every month. I put $100 on ABC and bet sports and I take the other $100 and put it on my favorite poker room and play poker.

Now ABC starts offering poker and my full $200 goes onto ABC. ABC is assuming that the $100 I spend on poker is money they are entitled to win from me in the sports book. They don’t understand that they gained whatever action they’re getting on my poker play as a bonus. That was money that was going elsewhere before.

But when you hear the sports books and even the poker networks talk about it, they speak in terms of owning the action. For instance, they say stuff like, “Our players are losing money to the sharks,” but the players don’t belong to the sports book. If the sports book didn’t offer poker the player would be playing on a different site losing that money. All they did was provide an incentive (convenience) for betting sports and playing poker under the same roof.

Or, what if I start off betting $200 a month on sports at ABC and really get into this poker thing. If I start spending $100 a month at their poker tables ABC views whatever money I lose to other players as money out the window for them. But in reality, if they didn’t offer poker I would have cut back my sports wagering by $100 anyway and been giving my poker business to someone else.

That’s why they’re trying to make poker behave more like games against the house. When they say that they want to handicap the game or even the playing field, what they’re really saying is that they want to figure out a way to make the players churn the money and generate more rake rather than losing it to players who are not going to give it back to them in the sports book or casino.

The big challenge for sports books and casinos is coming to grips with the fact that they need to treat their poker offering as a completely separate and independent entity. They have to quit thinking about them owning the customers and all of their action, and think about it as if they were building up a stand-alone poker business.

I mean, you don’t see Caesars Entertainment going around at the WSOP trying to get people over to the casino games, do you? Of course not. Caesars treats poker as a completely separate business unit. They realize that there’s money to be made building the WSOP brand. And while it may cannibalize some of their other gaming, it is also bringing in business they would have never had access to without poker.

On the other hand, you don’t see too many sports books known for their poker room offering. Nobody seems to be running their poker operations like they’re trying to be a market leader in poker.

Online sports books and casinos need to come to terms with the fact that as the popularity of poker increases that many of their players will divert some of their gambling money to poker. They can either accept that and try to offer the best poker playing experience for their players and keep some of that action (via the rake) or they should just abandon poker altogether.

It’s playing that middle that’s hurting the game. Forcing players to gamble on their terms rather than how players want to play has consequences. You can only force so much onto the players before the freedom, selection, and quality of games on other sites outweighs the convenience of doing all of their betting under one roof. And since that’s really the only thing holding most of these sports book poker rooms together, it could be a fatal mistake for them.

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I said I was going to cover what this all means on a few topics when I got home and as I start to write this it’s 6:07am and I’ve just spent a sleepless night on the bus from Phetchabun so I’ll probably just do a quick draft and finish up after I get a chance to sleep a bit.

First off, I want to clear up a widespread misconception. Although the people named in the indictment are being charged with violating the UIGEA they’re also being charged with bank fraud and money laundering. Those last two are serious enough to take down Stars and Tilt if they prove to be true. People like the PPA are making flawed statements like this:

“Millions of Americans across the country today are outraged over the U.S. Department of Justice’s clear attack on internet poker. While the government’s focus may be on the companieswho operate these games, this is plain and simple a declaration of war on poker players and poker players’ freedoms. Not only are the over 10 million online poker players left without a place to play the game they enjoy, and from which many earn their livelihood, but they also haveconcerns over the availability of their funds. The PPA believes that no players’ money should be jeopardized by this prosecution.”

Yeah, that’s all good and all but they’re being charged with bank fraud and money laundering. What should the DOJ do? Let them continue to take money from US players while engaging in a alleged crime because it might inconvenience some players? What if their companies were a front for drug smuggling or human trafficking? Should poker players’ “right” to play poker trump all else?

Don’t get me wrong, I wish this hadn’t happened as much as anybody else but you don’t help the cause by trying to gloss over the fact that they’re being accused of some pretty serious crimes. Yes, it is the position of the DOJ that they were also in violation of the UIGEA and offering illegal gambling BUT the DOJ probably would have never done what it did without the money laundering and bank fraud charges. If they did what they are accused of doing, it is Full Tilt, PokerStars, and Absolute/UB who are the ones who have taken away online poker from players via their illegal actions involving money laundering and bank fraud.

The PPA and poker players should be focused on the fact that the UIGEA forced these companies into taking such drastic measures and that a fully regulated and legal online poker scheme would eliminate the need for such activities. That’s the message they should be delivering to the media and to lawmakers. You can’t just ignore that they broke a bunch of laws (allegedly) because people want to play poker.

Another widely accepted opinion I disagree with is that Stars and Tilt might be able to walk away with this with a fine. I don’t think so. They might be able to buy themselves out like Party and Anarag Dikshit did but that was for offering illegal gaming in the US prior to the UIGEA. That’s a whole separate case. Plus, again, it doesn’t take into account that neither Party or Dikshit were indicted on money laundering or bank fraud charges.

Keep in mind that the DOJ is looking for “at least $3bn in civil money laundering penalties and forfeiture from the poker companies and the defendants.” “At least” is a pretty scary word because that’s the starting bid.

Anyway, with that out of my system . . .

Affiliates

I think Jeremy Enke said it best in his blog post about what the fallout will be for affiliates. In summary, affiliates probably shouldn’t be worried about criminal charges. We aren’t payment processors and that’s what the indictments were targeting.

Obviously, this is going to hit the revenue streams of a lot of people though. But just like any other market shakeup it will produce winners and losers. Some people will adapt and some people won’t.

The biggest issue is that few sites are going to pay for US players and that is the bulk of the earnings for many affiliates. Anybody who hasn’t at least been dabbling in non US-facing traffic is going to have a bit learning curve to get over.

In the meantime, I think the biggest question is what happens if I send a player to PokerStars.eu? Does it get tracked or do I need to set up a new affiliate account? Stuff like this is happening way too fast for sites like Stars and Tilt to respond but it needs to get cleared up soon so affiliates know.

WSOP

I saw someone on 2+2 (sorry, no link as it’s buried in a 5 zillion page thread) compare the impact on the WSOP to the impact that the UIGEA had on the WSOP. In other words, little or no real impact. I disagree. When Party left the market it was months prior to the WSOP (October 2006) giving the market time to respond. And when Party left Stars and Tilt were more than happy to step in and fill the void.

But who will fill the void now? I don’t see many people having the balls to try to send 500 or 1000 US players to the WSOP Main Event. Not when people expect a hospitality suite, onsite handling by the room, etc, etc.

I also don’t think Stars or Tilt are going to be very active trying to sign up final table players like they have been in the past. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t send anybody even remotely connected to the company to the WSOP. If nobody from either Stars or Tilt has been arrested or extradited by the WSOP the DOJ might just want to send a message about how serious they are by nabbing an employee to drive home the message that Stars and Tilt are finished in the US. I don’t think they can make much stick on a low level employee but it will send shivers up a few spines across the pond (and South of the border).

Players

Players are screwed. Everybody already knows how hard it was to get payments processed with US players and few operators are going to take the risk. There might be some fly by night operators thinking they can cruise under the radar but just like back in the early sports betting days you may never see a payout.

There are still a few sites like Cake and Merge that will handle US players and many US players will flock over there but I don’t necessarily think you’ll see non-US players following suit like they did when Party left the US market. I think many non-US players will gravitate towards quality and iPoker, Party, and other sites will see an increase in non-US players.

As always, even with Cake and Merge, the bottleneck is going to be payment processing. When you don’t do many payments you can fly under the radar but if players start flocking to those sites then a lot of money is going to start moving around the system and somebody is going to notice and, poof, there goes another payment option.

True professional players are going to need to leave US soil if they want to continue playing online. Thailand is great this time of year, folks.

Televised poker

Other than ESPN’s WSOP coverage look for a lot of this market to dry up too. Many of the programs we all love are what is called, advertiser funded programming (AFP). That means the online poker sites are basically funding the shows. Stars or Tilt either agrees to buy most of the advertising or pays to slap their name on it.

They may still be willing to continue this model in Europe and other markets but if they can’t sign up players from the US there’s no reason to purchase the advertising or brand the show so there won’t be much activity going on here.

Legalization

This may actually accelerate legalization and regulation of online poker. Yes, I know, I know, it’s not illegal now, blah, blah, blah. Well, guess what, the DOJ just fired a warning shot over the bow saying it is illegal so unless any of these guys wants to come to the US and fight it out in court it’s basically illegal whether a law exists or not.

And that may be what wakes up some lawmakers. When they see the magnitude of the industry and truly grasp how serious of a business this is it may influence them to act more quickly in getting a bill passed.

It may also clear the way for companies like Harrah’s or MGM to push for legalized gaming in the US now that the two biggest competitors in the poker space have effectively been banned.

It could also fire up poker players. Before it was, “Meh, as long as I have a place to play I don’t really care much whether it’s legal or not.” But now many professional players are out of a job and millions of others who enjoyed the game recreationally have had all/most of their options taken away.

On the other hand, if the allegations about money laundering and bank fraud are even remotely true it could well sink online poker in the US until people forget.

Poker news/media

I think Pot Committed says it best on this one. If you work in the poker news/media space . . . you probably don’t for much longer.

The vast majority of the poker news/media is funded by affiliate revenue the news/media sites generate. No US players means a huge cut in revenues which means . . . cutbacks.

Cashing out

Stars and Tilt have plenty of money and I’m sure they don’t want to make their problems worse by also having to deal with hundreds of thousands of players who have money tied up on the sites. They don’t need the class action lawsuits, bad press in the markets they can still operate in, and overall headache. They’ll find a way to pay out US players.

Should you keep your money on these sites? Should you cash out as soon as you can? I don’t know. I probably would cash out as soon as possible if I was a US player. They’re not going to let you play there so why leave your money there?

Stock prices

I think overall this is going to be a plus for many of the publicly traded that were forced out of the US market (or were never in it). I see Party is up nearly 11% on the news and I would assume if they can follow through and get some of these customers that will be in play as Tilt and Stars lose some of their huge liquidity advantage they could perform quite well.

Regulated Markets

This might come back and bite Tilt and Stars in the European regulated markets. Some gaming regulators might not take too kindly to indicted figures at the helm of a regulated poker site. If it does become a problem you could see people stepping away and new management coming in.

And Then . . .

But all of this is sort of the short-term view. The long-term outlook is actually quite interesting. As Kim Lund says About Time! As Kim and I have both worked for companies that had to operate with one hand tied behind our backs I think there is an overall feeling amongst the non-US facing rooms that Tilt, Stars, and UB/Absolute finally have to compete on more even footing.

And that should not be taken to mean that I’m happy any of the people have been indicted. This is merely a statement about reality of online poker since Oct 2006. If Stars, Tilt, UB/Absolute, and everyone else left the US they would have had to battle it out with Party, iPoker, and the rest of the non-US facing operators. The market would be much more even and there would be more competition. And, I believe, we would already have legalized poker in the US since Stars and Tilt wouldn’t be shipping so much money to politicians to oppose bills that don’t suit their fancy. They would have jumped on board the first chance to get back in the US regardless of the terms.

Yes, I know many people will lose their jobs. I feel for those people. Believe me, as someone who derives their income from the same pool they drink from I know I’m going to take an income hit as well.

But for five long years Party, bwin, 888, iPoker, and everyone else has been playing by the rules and every quarter they report declining poker revenues because Tilt and Stars keep pouring the high profits they’re making in the US market into other markets and driving out the competition. Believe me, there’s a lot of celebrating going on in Gibraltar and Malta right now. Not that people have been indicted but that Stars and Tilt are going to have to play by the rules like everyone else.

I don’t feel great about what is going to happen but you can certainly understand why many people are pleased to see Stars and Tilt forced to operate on the same level playing ground as they’ve had to. Though I know that doesn’t bring comfort for those who will be out of work.

I know. I’ve been there. I started at Party in Sept of 2006, the week the UIGEA was passed by Congress. And I was in Hyderabad, India on a company-wide conference call when Mitch Garber announced that they were shaving hundreds of jobs. I got lucky. Many others didn’t. And the same happened at 888 and many other companies.

The same will happen again. It might be painful for individuals but I think overall it will be good for poker. Having two sites dominate the entire industry was never good for the overall poker market. Players certainly weren’t benefitting from the economies of scale.

For all of the hundreds of millions (or even billions) Stars and Tilt hardly made a single innovation (other than Rush Poker) in the five years they owned the worldwide poker market. That’s a pretty sad record for all of the money they raked in (pun intended).

My hope is that this fast tracks legalization in the US and puts some innovative companies into the mix on a playing field that allows people to have a fair shot at competing. More competition will breed innovations that will benefit the players. Sucks for Tilt, Stars, and all of the people who have come to rely on their money to employ people but, in the end, it’s probably the best thing that could happen for poker players if you’re taking the longer term view.

As Kim Lund says:

The US market did not just die. It rebooted. CTRL. ALT. DELETE. And it will reboot much faster now. The void left by this raid is too juicy for the government not to want to taste. Tomorrow. Hopefully some of the ridiculous lobbying is now silenced and things can proceed in the quickest possible manner. Dear PPA, shut the hell up.

Sometimes you need a shakeup to move forward.

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“A Mexican, a Jew and a colored fellow walk into a bar… The bartender looks up and says… Get the f*** out of here.”

Some of you might recognize that as one of the many racist comments made by Clint Eastwood’s character in the film Grand Torino. It is also what Victory Poker pro player Dan Bilzeria tweeted and subsequently caused Joy Miller to lose her freakin’ mind.

According to Bilzeria, “Joy Miller read this and lost her mind… She told the CEO from victory poker that neither myself or any of the 20 sponsored pros would get any ESPN coverage until I gave a formal apology. I explained to her that it was a quote from a movie. She flipped out and started swearing and screaming at me about using the word colored. She sent me a bunch of angry texts, yelled at the CEO, and you can hear the voicemail she left swearing and yelling at me in the link below.”

Here is the link he references.

Now, first off, I think Bilzeria has a lot to learn about public relations if he’s going to be a public representative of a company. Second, I think Bilzeria demonstrates a shockingly ignorant understanding of the history of the NAACP which he later tries to use as justification for using the word “colored.”

In other words, I think the guy exercised some extremely poor judgment.

But Joy Miller has no right to threaten anybody. At best she should have taken the matter up with him personally, explained to him why it might be inappropriate, and moved on. She is not ESPN and according to Poker News Daily ESPN told them “She is not an employee of ESPN and, as such, does not speak for us in any capacity.”

So who is Joy Miller? Well, first off she’s the psycho who went ballistic when Terrence Chan posted on his blog how her decision to shortcut the end of a tournament for time reasons and allowing Annie Duke to openly coach one of his opponents during a hand cost him a prize.

She seems to be a rather unstable person with a mouth like a sailor and a habit of using the power of whatever position she has to threaten people who do things she doesn’t like or agree with.

Here’s some photos of Joy Miller when she isn’t acting outraged.

And though I hate to give this guy any exposure, I really had to point out the poor reporting that passes for journalism at Gambling911. Gambling911 covered this story and Jagajeet Chiba seems to get it all wrong. First off, he completely focuses on Bilzeria’s joke and says nothing about Joy Miller’s behavior. While I think what Bilzeria said was stupid, saying things like “Miller is the poker equivalent of Gretta van Sustern,” is beyond logic.

He also displays his ignorance of the topic in general when he says that the film Grand Torino “features a rape by young Hispanic gang bangers seeking revenge.” Uh, dude, they’re Hmong.

Who the f*ck proofreads over there?

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I want to start off by saying that I am not bitter that I’m not in Las Vegas right now. Okay, a little disappointed that the Rini Inc. private jet doesn’t have enough fuel to get to Sin City but not bitter.

That being said, this time of year seems so contrived to me. You have about two months of journalists/bloggers, PR people, poker rooms, etc, all trying to make something out of what is usually nothing. Day after day everyone has to come up with some reason to make it seem as if something exciting is going on regardless of the lack of anything exciting actually going on.

Listen, I don’t want to take away anything from the winner of the $1000 WSOP Tiddlywinks bracelet but the vast majority of events during the WSOP are barely even newsworthy. Unless Phil Ivey or some other big name pro is at the final table (which in most events, they’re not) then for the vast majority of the poker world the event never even took place.

The biggest online poker rooms pay out a bigger prize every Sunday than some of the WSOP events. While I’m quick to give a congrats to winners, is anybody really impressed if you won the $1000 buy-in hold’em event? Will anybody remember your name the next day? Yet, nearly the entire poker journalism/blogging world is there covering every boring detail.

And don’t get me wrong . . . I know many of these bloggers/journalists quite well. I know they put in long hours, have pretty much thankless jobs, and put up with a lot of crap. I’ve had many private conversations with them where they’ve told me that after the first few weeks they can barely even muster up the creative juices to write. But they have to or they don’t get paid (or they get fired). And out of that need to write comes some rather predictable outcomes.

The Angle

The first, and most obvious outcome, is that they desperately try to find some interesting angle to write about. Even the most mundane factoids about players becomes the talk of the town. What, the winner collects coins? Yep. Wow, so even a coin collector can come to Las Vegas and win a WSOP bracelet. Isn’t that great, folks?

Copycats

The second predictable outcome is that the above mundane fact will become the focus of every journalist/blogger covering the WSOP. One journalist/blogger might have overheard the eventual winner talking about his coin collection at a dinner break the day before and then he tells one of his journalist/bogging buddies who is also looking for a reason why this event is of any interest to anybody other than the players and then he tells two friends and so on and so on and so on.

Writing About Writing About Poker

When all else fails journalists and bloggers can write about writing about the WSOP. They can write about their hotel rooms, running into other journalists/bloggers, what time they get home, whether they’re tired from partying the night before, or pretty much anything but poker. That’s fine if you run a personal blog but if you’re supposed to be writing poker news it’s not really what the readers signed up for.

Doing Anything to Get Attention

OMG, if I see one more talentless poker hack making a prop bet or trying to do something outlandish in order to get media attention I’m going to call Dr. Pauly and bet him I can’t stick 30 Twinkies up my nose in under 10 minutes. Just my own humble personal opinion but every effort should be made not to write about this kind of stuff. First of all, it presents poker players as sick, degenerate gamblers who will bet on anything. And secondly it only encourages other idiots.

The Year of the _______________

Every year all of the bloggers/journalists try to find a theme to sum up the entire WSOP. Year of the Woman, Year of the Europeans, Year of the Brits, Year of the Amateurs, Year of the Pros. Okay, we get it. You’ve worn this one out, guys.

Trying to Link Everything to Poker

This year the poker press has been trying to tie Joran van der Sloot (the guy who confessed to killing that woman in Peru and was a suspect in the Natalee Holloway murder) to poker. I’ve seen/read this story in all sorts of various non-poker media outlets and while some make a passing mention to him playing in a poker tournament in South America only the poker press is playing him up as a professional poker player. Why? Do you really want to keep associating people like that to a game already under intense scrutiny? Why associate ourselves with scumbags?

It’s good for maybe one mention. If you’re writing your fifth update on the van der Sloot case, you’re really reaching for something to write about. Gambling911, at this moment, has four spots on its homepage about the van der Sloot. What does that tell you?

Focus on Gadgetry / Technology

Last year all the talk was about smart phones and Twittering. Now, everybody is talking about the iPad. What will it mean for poker? Who’s got an iPad? What are pro players using their iPads for?

Better yet, who cares?

You can’t run poker software on them (maybe you can in the no-download version – depending on the site). You can’t use them at the table. They’re basically a really large enhanced iPhone.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love one myself and may end up getting one at some point but it has NOTHING to do with poker. Unless Daniel Negreanu or Andy Bloch are paid spokesmen for Apple do we really need multiple video segments on them using an iPad?

Conclusion??

The guys out there writing about the WSOP know I love them. Many are guys/girls I’ve had the pleasure of swapping chips with in Vegas or even in home games. My respect for what they do is not a question here.

But there is some sort of flaw in the system. When one looks at events like the Olympics or the World Cup which also span a considerable period of time you don’t see the same problems.

Maybe the WSOP has too many events. Maybe Harrah’s needs to handle reporting and sell access to the feed like AP or Reuters. I’m not close enough to the problem to know all of the root causes and best possible solutions but last year I wrote another post complaining about WSOP coverage and nothing has been improved. In fact, if some of my friends are to be believed, it’s gotten worse. As a consumer, I see it as worse.

When are we going to get better results?

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Well, to my surprise, the US did not lose to England this weekend. I guess I should have been smoking vulture brains.

It looks like the WSOP is starting to get into full swing. Some bloggers/journalists are already running out of things to write about. :-)

It should be interesting how the WSOP and the World Cup come together. Although attendance at the WSOP seems to be pretty decent so far, the World Cup is such a huge sporting event that one has to imagine that many players skipped the WSOP (or at least parts of it) for a chance to cheer their teams in South Africa.

I think an interesting stat will be how player numbers fare at the online poker rooms during this period. Sure, we always get a bit of a dropoff for the WSOP but will be amplified by fans who may be out at their local pubs supporting their favorite teams?

Bill’s Poker Blog

Bpauk Daeng – Thailand’s Gambling Game
PokerStars Twitter FAIL
Could Legalized Poker in the US Kills the Affiliate Business Model?
Porker Face
Poker During the World Cup in South Africa
World Cup gamblers ’smoking vulture brains’
Poker Player Montel Williams Told to Spark One Up by Cop

Poker Job Search

Finnish Customer Service Representative – Online Poker
Director of Poker Marketing
Global TV Production Manager – Poker
Italian Poker Room Manager
French Poker Room Manager
PR Manager – Poker

Link Dump

Profile piece on Ty Stewart, WSOP VP
Phil Laak gives up on the WSOP and tries to set world record for grinding
Wicked Chops discusses how boring the WSOP is
72 poker tips
California Fast-tracks Intrastate Internet Poker Bill
Beginner’s Guide to Heads Up Displays (HUD)
John Stossel Takes Up Poker / Online Gambling Fight

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Recently Pokerati Dan posted the following on Twitter:

@Pokerati: the (temporary) lack of inspiration and passion in poker media’s coverage of late (guilty) makes me giggle.

His Tweet struck me because I have long been on the verge of writing something about my disappointment every year with the WSOP coverage.

Once a year every poker website and/or blog sends an army of journalists to Las Vegas to cover the biggest event in poker. And every year the vast majority of reporting is mediocre at best.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m friends with a lot of these writers (or was before I wrote this post) and I really don’t blame them. I blame the way the system is set up. It’s a meat grinder that chews people up for six weeks and drains them of all their creative juices.

First off, the people footing the bill for all this want something in return. Writers are forced to crank out X number of articles a day to prove their worth whether or not there is anything meaningful to report or not. So sites that might have been posting 2 or 3 articles a day before the WSOP are suddenly cranking out 15 or more posts a day covering some $3000 buy-in event that nobody really cares about. I’m sure the guys going deep care but most of us don’t need several updates a day on an event especially when every other site out there is also posting multiple updates a day. A good dinner break and end of day summary is fine unless there’s actually something newsworthy.

If you really want to go hog wild then provide a feed of how people finish in the tournament but don’t make that part of the reporting. If you’ve got a friend who’s deep in a tournament and you want that info then watch the live updates feed. There’s no reason to try and write a story every 10 minutes and post it on your regular feed. It’s too much noise.

It’s sort of the 24 hour news network effect. You have to fill the space. So every rumor, every bathroom break, every inside joke is reported on as if it has the same journalistic weight as discovering that Mars has condo colonies and little green men walking around.

Even ESPN has caught on to this and has radically scaled down coverage of the smaller events to feature the invitational, the Ante Up For Africa charity event, and the Main Event. Viewers simply wanted to see more Main Event so ESPN is giving it to them.

Second, you take all these writers and you throw them into 12 – 14 hour day grinds for 6 weeks and by the time the Main Event rolls around most of them have exhausted any sort of creativity or inspiration they might have had. Sure they wrote eloquently about the $1500 Go Fish One Eyed Jacks Are Wild Event #3 but go read their Twits by the Main Event and most of them are moaning and groaning about how they wish it would all be over and they could go home.

Here’s a quote from my good friend and poker journalist F-Train:

The last few days of the Main Event all I could think was, “Three more days of this nonsense.” “Two more days til it’s over.” And it has literally taken me a week to feel some semblance of normal again.

Here’s a suggestion – I have no journalistic background other than this blog so it may be FOS, but bear with me – why not save your best tournament reporters for the big events and send the junior writers to cover all the smaller events? Or better yet, have your best writers direct a small group of junior people who spend all day sitting on the rails doing chip counts and such and they feed all of that information back to a senior writer who compiles it all up and puts together one or two really solid pieces every day?

Third, a lot of what passes as journalism is simply PR. Along with all the major news sites every poker room that sends players to the WSOP also sends down their team of bloggers who narrowly focus on how players from their site are doing in each event.

To be fair, they do a decent job of covering the entire event but there is a distinct focus on specific players who are either affiliated with the site and/or qualified via that site. That’s nice and all but after awhile it starts to read a bit like propaganda. The tournament coverage and the writing about how the site’s players are doing seem like they should be completely separate things. Mixing the two just cheapens the reporting.

And it’s not what they write it’s also what they don’t write. Big name players being sponsored by other poker rooms get downplayed compared to their players. In the end, it’s simply not reporting. It’s PR.

So now that we have a year to think about how next year’s WSOP will be covered I hope that any poker writers who are still my friends after this post will figure out a better way to report. Maybe they take my suggestion on how to distribute the workload or perhaps they create different feeds so people can tune into summaries rather than a constant stream of updates. Whatever it is there is room for improvement and it only benefits everyone if coverage becomes better suited for the readers.

Photo cred to eliazar

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I ran across this on Bluff Magazine’s Europe site:

I could understand if they used a headline saying that someone was offering to pay Obama’s way into the WSOP main event but to imply this is even realistic is pretty sensationalistic journalism. Since when did Bluff Magazine become Gambling911?

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Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!

Wow! What a great response. Sorry for all of those who sent me a response but were beaten to the punch by Cardgrrl from Raise or Fold: A Year of Risky Business. She is the winner of the gift card. Congrats Cardgrrl.

Just to review:

• The question only appears in the RSS or email version of the post. So if you want to get in on future contests make sure you subscribe to either one of those.
• First person to send the correct answer wins da prize!

The question that was attached to the Breath Taking post by the always excellent Tommy Angelo was:

Okay boys and girls . . . HERE IS YOUR TRIVIA QUESTION WORTH A $30 GIFT CARD

What are the last names of all the WSOP Main Event winners that have a last name that begins with the letter “M” and in what years did they win the WSOP Main Event?

First person to email xxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx with the correct answer(s) gets the gift card. I will be going by when the email shows up in my inbox so any delays in the inter-tubes are beyond my control.

And the correct answer was:

• 1970 Moss
• 1971 Moss
• 1974 Moss
• 1983 McEvoy
• 1990 Matloubi
• 2001 Mortensen
• 2003 Moneymaker

I also received quite a few incorrect responses. The most common incorrect responses were either forgetting Moss’ 1974 win or forgetting about Mortensen completely (poor Carlos).

It looks like I’ll try to get some sponsors for future quizzes. I’ve already received a few offers so hopefully I can arrange something with someone fairly soon.

Some things I took away from this first experiment:

1. I should have set up an auto-responder to thank everyone who entered. I wasn’t expecting so many responses.

2. I forgot to HTML-up the quiz itself. Bad habit based on using WordPress that normally handles paragraphs and such.

April asked how I was able to power this and what I did was take Yoast’s very excellent RSS Footer plugin and make some custom mods to it.

photo by .A.A.

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I was reading this post from super poker affiliate Jeremy Enke about the fact that your average affiliate stands to gain more from his affiliate related activities than he does from playing poker. I’m not sure I completely agree with that but he said something that got my big old head nodding in agreement.

I think it’s probably because we’re right in the middle of the WSOP main event, and everybody is caught up in the thrill of poker and big cashes. This is the 6th year that I have really followed the WSOP, and unfortunately I have to tell you; every year the wsop and poker in general bores me more and more.

I find the excitement around the WSOP to be a complete fabrication. Either you’re in Vegas playing or why do you care?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of drama. I have a slight interest in whether or not Hellmuth wins another bracelet or if there’s an unbelievable hand but I really don’t care if some no-name guy finishes first in Event #23423 Deuce to 7 Triple Draw, One Eyed Jacks and Six of Clubs are Wild $11 Buy-in.

Simply put there are things which are exciting and things that aren’t. But the poker media invests so much time and money into the WSOP that they crank out article after article of results from events that have no drama or excitement. Think about it, a big poker news site probably sends three or four journalists to the event. Count up the cost of travel, room, food, expenses and other stuff and the poker site is making a sizeable investment. In return they expect lots of content. But what if there isn’t anything to write about?

It’s a thankless job to be sure and some are better than others at being able to add drama to what would otherwise be one of the most boring jobs around. Wicked Chops Poker deserves kudos for spinning an angle on everything from Vinny Vinh’s chair to mis-focused photos of the pros.

Whenever I talk with people in the poker press they always seem so bored out of their skulls after the first few days. They strain to find anything worth getting excited about.

Because, let’s face it, reading about poker tournaments is pretty boring stuff. That’s especially true since the journalists can’t see hole cards. There’s a reason poker on television didn’t take off until the hold card cam was invented; poker is boring to watch much less read about if you have no idea what any of the players have.

Yet you have dozens of journalists sent down to the WSOP and ordered to crank out 2 – 3 stories a day so they look for anything even remotely of interest and report on it as if they were breaking the Watergate scandal. ZOMG!!! Phil Ivey may or may not have made a $2 million bet on the Lakers in the NBA Finals?!?!

It may sound like I’m trashing the journalists but I’m not. I know they have a job to do and I also know that their employers expect to be getting a certain amount of content for their investment of a couple of grand a day (hotels, salaries, per diems, etc). All I’m saying is that there’s something broke in the system that Harrah’s or the poker press needs to fix.

At the moment I don’t have the answer on how to fix it but some smart people who have an actual financial interest in the solution should probably start putting their heads to the problem.

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Over at the Las Vegas Escort Blog the Las Vegas Courtesan sees the bright side of the WSOP and poker players.

Of course I am still hearing girls moaning and complaining about how slow slow slow it is, but I am still praising the poker players here for WSOP. Thanks guys! You save me at 7am when I think there is no one left in town looking for some fun!

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