The "New" Generation of Poker and a Tournament Winner's Elevated Status

Hello,

In last week's Poker After Dark: The Cash Game, David "Viffer" Peat value bet Phil Hellmuth on the river with a straight. Hellmuth called with top pair kings with the ace kicker (Hellmuth played the hand terribly). Peat then said to Hellmuth "welcome to value city. Population, you." While Hellmuth has done well in the Internet age, even winning his record breaking 11th bracelet in a large field at the 2007 WSOP, he needs to better adjust to the new, younger, more aggressive players. While Peat isn't a young gun, Hellmuth doesn't understand why people raise with Q-10s from the button and call a re-raise in position. Maybe it isn't the greatest play but the young guns are making it and he needs to understand that "that" is poker now. What he needs to further understand is that that same Q-10s can be 6-4o and he can be four bet from the button. The game has changed. Players realize that 6-4o isn't a huge underdog pre-flop to A-K and are willing to play for a flop to either hit big or just outplay their opponents in position with pure, unadulterated aggression. They also realize that the older generation of poker players is more readily willing to lay down big hands pre-flop because they tend to be much better post-flop players. Hellmuth says it all the time. He is constantly telling others at the table how he keeps laying down big hands pre-flop.

What is interesting, as was clearly demonstrated by the massive number of pros to win bracelets this year, is that many of the pros are adjusting. One way in which the pros have been able to do this was to have the structure changed to benefit deep play. The WSOP tournaments were restructured this year to allow for more play, not just by doubling the starting stacks and the blinds like they did last year. Levels were extended and added to allow for more patient players to not have to be forced into a shove-or-fold match with Internet young guns. The Internet has allowed the younger players (read Kill Phil) to use a brute force method of play. If you take the poker out of poker it becomes a completely different game. I'm not saying it's one void of skill but it certainly takes away the post-flop play where most old school pros have the edge (or at least that is the theory). So when the WSOP restructured their tournaments they didn't do it alone. They had a player's association of sorts to help them with the task. This association consisted of "old school" players who help design the structure not simply to benefit them, but to put the poker back into poker. If tournaments become a game in which people play poker the first two or three levels and then just start shoving and praying the rest of the tournament then the skill doesn't favor the post-flop player. Two card poker (and unfortunately I am referring to hold 'em here) isn't poker. There is a certain amount of skill in understanding when to push and with what cards to do it. It also helps to understand escalating blinds and antes, position and player tendencies. So when deep stacks and lots of post-flop play is added to the equation, poker becomes a game of tremendous skill and that's why more of the skilled pros, both young and old, took down so many bracelets this year.

As for the Main Event, well, that's another story. With so many players and so many days of playing there is way too much of a luck factor to put too much stock into the person who wins. For the winner, it's great. He makes a ton of money. But winning one poker tournament, no matter how big and how important, does not make a player great (think Varkonyi, Moneymaker, Gold and Yang). Let's take Moneymaker, for example. He is seriously a terrible player. I mean absolutely terrible. He won a single tournament. That's it. Granted the affect it had on the world of poker was tremendous to say the least but as an individual player he is terrible. Without endorsements his entire $2.5 million win would be gone. With his skill level he should be playing penny ante games. With the exception of his second place finish in the 2004 Shooting Star event (WPT Season 2), Moneymaker has done absolutely nothing. Other than these two tournaments he has ~$80,000 in tournament cashes (with an approximate buy-in amount of over $20,000 just for those tournaments). If you add up the fact that he has been playing tournaments for the last five years with nothing to show for it he could easily kiss that money goodbye. I mean, what should be said about a professional poker player who makes no money? Seriously. This guy is technically a pro (according to the WSOP a professional poker player makes his entire living off of poker). Is he really a pro? There is no way that he makes enough money playing poker to even eat, let own earn a living. So what is a professional? Is it a guy who wins one tournament? Am I somehow supposed to be in awe of this guy for some reason? He won one tournament with 839 players in it. It's not like he has won that in addition to other tournaments and is feared within the poker community. When he sits down at a high stakes game people run to play with him because he is the fish. Yes, that's right. A fish. That's what he is. That's what Gold is. That's what Yang is. That's what Varkonyi is.

You notice that I haven't included Raymer and Hachem in the mix here. They have proven themselves. Hachem has come close a couple of times to winning both WSOP tournaments and WSOP Circuit tournaments (he finished runner-up to Boyd in 2007). He has also won a WPT event, no easy task. Raymer went very deep the year after he won the Main Event, making the final three tables. In addition, it is clear that Raymer can play. When he first won the Main Even I must admit I was upset. I thought he was just another fish who got lucky. But as I watched him more and more in other tournaments I realized I could not have been more wrong. He doesn't just play well but he plays very well and he plays all the games well. So can a pro win the Main Event again? In my opinion two pros have in the last six years. But the bigger question is does it matter? Do I really care if a so-called pro wins one tournament? Not really. It's nice for TV but so is the rest of the Main Event. I like watching it on TV. For the record I have never watched the 2006 Main Event on in reruns as I can't stand Gold and I won't watch the final table with Yang because it was just plain terrible. I give him a lot of credit for doing what it took to win and he picked the right time to do it. The rest of the table just seemed to fold (no pun intended) under the pressure.

To put some perspective on it, the $10,000 buy-in is really not as big a deal as it once was. In 1971, the first Main Event had a 10k but in today's dollars that is equivalent to a ~$56,400 buy-in, give or take. And that was when putting of that kind of money was insane. People put up 10k for a tournament today like they are buying a pack of gum. It's not as though everyone in the world and his grandmother was playing poker. These were the elite few who had an idea to play each other for what is still considered a nice amount of money (it is well over the average annual household income). Doyle's $340,000 first prize for the 1977 Main Event may not sound like a lot but once again, we need perspective. That is equivalent to over $1,227,000 which was a nice payday. Even Stu Ungar's 1980 Main Event victory was not his first "million dollar" victory (he made $1 million for in 1997 Main Event win). His $375,000 first place prize money is worth just about a million in today's dollars (amazingly, he won a bracelet the day before his Main Event win in NL Deuce to Seven Lowball). So, although the money in poker has changed, it has not changed as much people think. The thing that really changed is the number of players playing.

In comes the HORSE Event. That is really similar to the first WSOP Main Event in terms of buy-in and, relatively speaking, in number of entrants. Although it dwarfs the number of entrants from the 1971 WSOP Main Event (which was six), compared with the number of entrants in today's Main Event the number of entrants in the 50k HORSE is pretty low. Only the elite can afford it. The Main Event was originally showcased as a high stakes showdown. If players, as Sam Farha has said, enter a tournament through a satellite for $50, what do they really have at stake? Although I think anyone who wins a 10k entry and actually uses it is insane the reality is he only has his satellite entry at risk. Let that same player take his $50,000 in savings and put it in a poker tournament. He would have to be certifiably insane to do something like that. I think that in order for the Main Event to mean something many things have to happen. The first thing is that the buy-in needs to be adjusted for inflation. Imagine we could still buy things for 1971 prices. Why should the WSOP be any different? What else needs to happen is up for debate. But to keep the buy in at 20% of the original 1971 buy-in seems a little strange.

Alright. I think I rambled enough about pretty much anything and everything that popped into my head for the last twenty minutes. I could probably go on for many more pages on this subject but I will spare those who read this blog the pain of reading any more of this. On the poker front, I have been playing a ton of PLO which I will talk about in another post in the next few days. I'll leave you with this: GO METS! who as of tonight/last night are the owners of first place in the NL East. But this is a poker blog so that's all I'll say on the subject. Forgive any spelling and gramatical errors. I am lazy and haven't read back what I just wrote.

See you on the felt,