Sorry, I guess I’m kind of dragging this into a hijack. It’s not necesarily the time per level, so much as the design of the levels. You could still give tournaments the same time to finish by making the earlier levels shallower and making the later levels deeper - and this would actually work out better for most people since they’d bust earlier and not waste so much time. Although, I guess, if you’re a player who looks at the time spent at a tournament as a benefit in itself, rather than a cost, you’d see it differently.
But combining a top-heavy structure with a structure that’s designed to have lots of play early and very little late makes it as lottery-like as you can manage. The ways to fix this are flattening the payouts (which has happened slowly) and structure the tournaments to have more play towards the end.
I mean - don’t you find it silly that subtle, skilled 200+ bet deep poker can happen when there are 5000 people in it and no money is yet really at stake, and yet when we’re down to 20 or 30 and all the money is being determined we’re now playing a simplified 15 bet preflop pushfest?
Edit: Seeing the numbers in the post above, that’s flatter than I thought, so my criticisms are partially out of place. I guess I just don’t keep up with tournaments anymore. The M number you detail doesn’t necesarily indicate everything there is about the depth of play though - the stack sizes relative to BB plays a somewhat different role in how deeply the hand can play, and hence, the complexity of the decisions involved.
IMO, I think your proposal over values the the last stages of the tournament at the expense of the early stages. IMO, Day 1 should count every bit as days 8 and 9.
Why? If the dropoff between first and 5th place is 9m vs 1.5m (estimating), that’s a significant portion of the tournament being determined when play is 5 handed. Yet 5 handed will be less complex and hence less conducive to actual poker skill than any previous point in the tournament. They played all these days to make it this far, only to have the majority of the money determined during the least skillful part of the play. Combining top-heavy structures with shallow stacks at the end is exactly what you’d do if you wanted to seperate poker skill from winning money. Why is that desirable by anyone who’s serious about poker?
Edit: And in any case, defending the status quo is not saying that Day 1 should be equally important to the FT. It’s saying that it should be more important. The status quo favors complex, real poker early and some crippled half-assed poker late.
Are you implying TPTB of the WSoP aren’t “serious” about poker. I believe that they receive a lot of input from the “serious” poker players who play in many of the events. I think they know what they are doing.
It is not all about the final table. There is 68.8 Million purse for the ME of WSoP. 58% of that has already been won by players who did not make it to the final table.
I think they’re trying to sell a product to people whose interest in poker aren’t necesarily related to the quality of poker being played. The poker watching audience, and hence ESPN, is a significant factor in designing these things - and for reasons that baffle me, the poker watching audience is completely uninterested in interesting, skilled poker. Every time ESPN shows a non-hold em game that could be interesting, or one of the networks tries to show a game that has deep, non-crapshoot play, the show fails. I mean, there are exceptions like High Stakes Poker on GSN, but I’m guessing its ratings are still dwarfed by the major network coverage, just that GSN is satisfied with those ratings.
For whatever reason, the TV audience wants to see people pushing all in preflop because they only have 8BB to work with and other people calling because their push range is huge, and then watching the cards slowly and dramatically dealt. Poker after dark is actually an interesting example of this - once a season they’ll have a cash game which is as interesting and good as any poker that’s ever been on tv, yet they still spend 95% of the season playing these crappy little sit and go tournaments with boring poker. I can only guess that’s what the audience wants.
I only bring up the FT because it’s the most extreme and obvious example. In general, the tournament becomes more crapshooty as time goes on - so those people who are busting near the bubble too have less room for play than the people starting on day 1. It’s still the same problem, just a different matter of degree.
Odds to win the main event.
Chip leader is 11/4. Short stack is 16/1.
Phil Helmuth issues a bad beat to the beef jerky Sasquatch - bad idea. “It’s just a bad beat. Show a little class, buddy.” LOL
SenorBeef, I defer to your experience as a poker player and commentator (which is much greater than my own), but I’m not sure it’s so related to the TV audience as you think. For one thing, I am part of that audience and I agree with you - I am not interested in watching all-in shoves followed by 50-50 races. Granted, it may well be that this represents a small proportion of the TV audience, but I don’t believe it’s an insignificant one.
More importantly, though, I think that the WSOP wants people to feel like they are getting value for money from the main event. It is, after all, only the biggest event in poker because people want to play in it, and the majority of entrants are not poker pros. While many of these no doubt get in cheaply through internet sites, a large number must stump up the full $10k. If the structure were reversed (to go to the other extreme) so that you had 20 orbits at the start and 200 orbits at the final table, this would result in many more people busting early. These people would not feel like they had had a reasonable amount of play for their $10,000, and would be less likely to enter next year (IMO). So I think the WSOP is catering for the majority of their players, not the majority of the TV audience (though this probably plays a part as well).
Additonally, as others have said, I’m not sure that it is possible to solve this problem except by making the event unacceptably long. Just out of interest, what sort of structure would you propose for the WSOP ME?
And now he goes after the sweet Jennifer Harman.
Courtesy Bump, to let everyone know that the final table for the “November Nine” happens a week from tomorrow.
Here are the participants, chip counts, and Ladbrokes odds on who will win: (Spoiled in case you want to watch the poker telecasts on ESPN next week.
Jonathan Duhamel (65,975,000 chips) … 2/1
John Dolan (46,250,000 chips) … 3/1
Joseph Cheong (23,525,000 chips) … 8/1
John Racener (19,050,000 chips) … 8/1
Matthew Jarvis (16,700,000 chips) … 12/1
Filippo Candio (16,400,000 chips) … 12/1
Michael Mizrachi (14,450,000 chips) … 6/1
Soi Nguyen (9,650,000 chips) … 20/1
Jason Senti (7,625,000 chips) … 20/1
Interesting, the most well known name in the final table is 7th in chips, but is the third favorite to win.
Click here, if you want to see an ESPN article on the November Nine.
Awesome! Thanks for the heads-up, I had completely forgotten that the final table was coming up.
No problem, CIB, the final 18 get to the November Nine tonight on ESPN.
9 PM Eastern for two hours.
I’ve gotten robocalls from Dennis Phillips on my cellphone each of the last two days asking me to vote for the Democrat in the Colorado Senate race. I have no idea how he got my cell number and how anyone knew I’d even know who he was. I haven’t played poker for several years, although I used to.
Preview article on the November Nine.
Shuffle and Deal happened a few minutes ago.
Here is live reporting from Pokernews
Dinner break: If they started at noon local time, they played 90 hands in 7 hours. with breaks, 90 hands in 6 hours. 15 hands per hour. 4 minutes per hand. Most hands do not get to the flop.
The problem is not the blinds escalate quickly. The problem is the slow play.
two players have been eliminated, Nguyen in 9th and Jarvis in 8th
Are they going to play through the night until it’s down to two? Or will they stop at a certain level/time of night/morning and restart sometime Sunday?
No, they were going into the final two, no matter what last night. (good thing time “fell back” last night.
It took 219 hands, but they got down to the final two. It took about 14 hours (12 hours net?) to play the 219 hands. Or an average of 17 hands per hour.
Results to the final two:
Jonathon Duhamel (~189 Million) and John Racener (~30 Million) are the final two. It is an overwhelming chip lead for the Canadian. antes/Blinds are 200K/600K/1.2M. Very good chance that head-up play will only last a few hands.
Joseph Cheong lost the biggest pot in WSoP history (Hand #213) when he win all-in with A-7 Off and Duhamel called with pocket Queens. Duhamel was at risk and winning this pot put him in the overwhelming chip lead.
Candio was 4th. eliminated on hand #188
Mizarchi (Grinder) was 5th, eliminated on hand #185
Dolan was 6th, Hand #129
Senti was 7th, Hand #116
Jarvis was 8th Hand #43
Nguyen was 9th Hand , Hand 28
A lot hands between 7th and 8th, and 6th and 7th.
The final two go at it Monday night, and ESPN’s coverage of the final table will be Tuesday night. heavily edited of course.
So which one is the asshole and which one is the good guy? 
Well, Duhamel is Canadian…