poker championship, was Re: [ba-poker] multiple rivers

["James Kittock" <james(deleted the rest)>]

mph:
> Its important that poker games and tournaments are not conclusive.  It
> would really suck if the fish _thought_ they had little chance to win. 
> Hope is needed if the game is to flourish.  Its absolutely great that in
> the first season of the WPT Mike S. must have called somebody the best
> mumble poker player in the world on every episode including several
> where mumble was the same on different episodes and the people were
> different.  And I'm fairly sure the majority of those lost.  Now thats
> something to cheer about.

Don't get me wrong--I totally understand the need for
randomness.  After all, "any two cards can win!".  And
we (or at least I), most certainly don't want poker to
become chess.  I am not suggesting we plug each all-in
situation into pokenum [1] and divide the pot according
to the %EV of the hands involved [2].

I guess what I am reacting to, in part, is the WSOP big
event.  While it is a long, grueling competition, the
supposed World Championship of poker is ultimately decided
by the turn of relatively few cards.  Since anyone can buy
or win their way into the tournament, it is quite possible
for a mediocre poker player to have a longish run of good
luck and be crowned Champion (whether or not this has already
happened is up to your interpretation of recent events).

I think the situation is somewhat similar in sporting
championships like the Super Bowl, where there is a
pretty rigorous playoff schedule (think of it as the
first 3 or so days of the WSOP big event), but then it
all comes down to one game, in which any number of
variable factors (some of which, like the luck of the
cards, are outside the teams' control). [3]

To me, this sort of high-variance championship has
a lot less meaning than it might otherwise.  I'm not
saying that multiple rivers or whatever is a way to
fix the problem--I was just pondering the prospect.

I do think that the WPT has gone a long ways towards
making poker more like individual sports such as
golf and tennis.  Notice that neither of those sports
has a "World Champion", although they *do* have a
distinguished tier of most highly regarded events.

I realize that poker-as-an-organized-sport is relatively
young, and maybe what will happen is that the WSOP will
get rolled into the WPT (especially now that it will be
"going corporate" with the Harrah's takeover).  Perhaps
the WSOP will become the Wimbledon of poker.

And maybe the poker world does need an event that looks
like a kind of lottery ticket to the fishy masses:
"wow! I can play $40 online and win $2.5 million if
I just get lucky!" (and, indeed, this is probably 
*more* likely than winning millions in the lottery,
especially if you have a basic grasp of tournament
play, or use Sklansky's system, or whatnot).

However, I worry that this sort of "thrill ride" will
get old pretty quickly.  Look at how a game show like
"Who Wants to be a Millionaire" burned out, despite
the large sums of money involved.  I'm sure there
were many contributing factors, but I believe that one
of them is that ultimately the game seemed to be too
luck-driven ("Gee, Regis just happened to ask that
physicist about atoms... huh, how lucky...").

I think the WPT helps here, because it is allowing
poker celebrities to develop.  Again, think of golf or
tennis--the fans love whoever wins Wimbledon in the moment,
but in the long run, the fans especially love the people
who keep showing up in the finals and keep winning events.
In large measure, fans are what separates a sport from
a hobby, and if poker wants to be popular for more than
a few years, the community needs to think about long-term
cultivation of the fan base. [4]  And, I don't think I have
all the answers, by any means, I'm just exploring the issues,
as both a fan and an amateur player.

--james



[1] See www.twodimes.net/poker  if you are not familiar
with pokenum.

[2] Although I think that purely as an experiment, it would
be kind of fun to try this in a home game -- a single-table
shootout where once people are all-in, pokenum is used
to divide the pot.  If you are AA vs 55, are you sad or
happy that you will always win 80% of the pot?  Hmm.

[3] Contrast baseball, basketball, or hockey, where the
championship is decided by a series of games.  I realize
in football this is not practical due to the frailty of
the human body.  And this is not some sort of sour grapes
over the recent Super Bowl; I had no financial or emotional
stake in that event.

[4] Unlike professional sports, poker does not need fans
to survive.  After all, we play for each others' money,
not for sponsors' money.  Sponsorship is nice, but not
required.  So maybe the goal should be to keep poker just
popular enough to keep new players coming in, and to just
punt on the whole "make it like the PGA" concept.  My
guess is that poker players, who are human beings with
egos, are starting to enjoy the limelight enough to actually
want to keep the ball rolling on this new phase in the
history of poker.