Wednesday, June 20, 2007
2007 WSOP Observations
I have a few observations from the World Series of Poker this year.
1. Where are all the young internet Pros? Remember over the last 2 years, the 21 to 25 years olds that were just killing the NLHE WPT and WSOP events (Patrick Antonius, Joe Cassidy, John D’Agastino, Michael Gracz, Arron Kantor, and David Williams). Well, check out this year’s WSOP leaderboard. Through about 26 events, there are 8 people with 4 cashes. 6 of these 8 players are clearly over 25 years old. 0 out of the 8 are clearly under 25. 2 are questionable. I think the new face of poker is represented by people like Tom Schneider, Thor Hansen, Chris Rezlock, and Humberto Brenes.
2. What are all of these strange new games? Check out the line up from this year’s WSOP. Out of the 55 events, only 26 are NLHE or PLHE. This means that the majority of the events are poker games other than big bet Texas Hold’em. Plus, there are 6 mixed game events. Compare this to the last few years. This shift in lineup is the result of the influence of the professionals on the WSOP lineup and the expanding popularity of games other than NLHE – due largely to the ease of access to these other games made possible by online poker. Also, it seems to me that there has been a shift within the poker community in the definition of WSOP world champion away from the $10k buyin NLHE event and more towards the $50k HORSE event. Check out the line up one such event - Limit Razz. Is there a more complete list of who’s who in professional poker than the top of this leaderboard? This roster is just sick. I’ve never seen such a stacked roster.
3. Bankroll Requirements – I’ve read various poker authors talk about the importance of bankroll management (i.e., don’t bet your mortgage on a single hand of poker – even if you are a 4:1 favorite, etc…). The most recent reading was from Chris Ferguson talking about how he is attempting to turn $0 into $10k on Full Tilt. He explains that he’ll do this by disciplined bankroll management. Basically, he never risks more than 5% of his bankroll. If you extend this logic to the WSOP events, a guy playing in a $2000 buyin event should probably have about $40,000 in poker bankroll. This may be a little conservative, but a bankroll of 10x the amount of money you are risking in a single session or single tournament buy-in seems reasonable. This would put a guy’s poker bankroll requirement at around $20K to pay into a $2K event at the WSOP
Now there are a lot of very good amateur, home-game, poker players entering into the WSOP events, but I’m pretty sure that many (maybe most) do not have this kind of bankroll overlay. I know of a few examples personally. I’m sure they are big fans of the game, may want to “take a shot” at the big one, and also happen to be very good poker players. What I can’t understand is how they can justify spending 30%, 50%, or even 100% of their bankroll on a single tournament where the competition is as tough as it gets. This type of over commitment of their bankroll seems like a real bad poker play – regardless of how well they actually play at the table.
Not to mention, if you invest 75% of your poker bankroll to buy into one of these events (i.e., $2000), and you find yourself close to the bubble (which pays around $4000), your decision making at that point has got to be influenced by the opportunity to nearly double your bankroll. You might reason, “should I re-raise with pocket Qs? Am I willing to risk the $4000 that I would win by getting into the money on this one hand?”. This pits you as a serious underdog to the well funded pros that will take this opportunity to exploit your tight, ‘scared money’ mentality to build their stacks so that they can go deep into the tourney – where the real money is. Your thoughts?
1. Where are all the young internet Pros? Remember over the last 2 years, the 21 to 25 years olds that were just killing the NLHE WPT and WSOP events (Patrick Antonius, Joe Cassidy, John D’Agastino, Michael Gracz, Arron Kantor, and David Williams). Well, check out this year’s WSOP leaderboard. Through about 26 events, there are 8 people with 4 cashes. 6 of these 8 players are clearly over 25 years old. 0 out of the 8 are clearly under 25. 2 are questionable. I think the new face of poker is represented by people like Tom Schneider, Thor Hansen, Chris Rezlock, and Humberto Brenes.
2. What are all of these strange new games? Check out the line up from this year’s WSOP. Out of the 55 events, only 26 are NLHE or PLHE. This means that the majority of the events are poker games other than big bet Texas Hold’em. Plus, there are 6 mixed game events. Compare this to the last few years. This shift in lineup is the result of the influence of the professionals on the WSOP lineup and the expanding popularity of games other than NLHE – due largely to the ease of access to these other games made possible by online poker. Also, it seems to me that there has been a shift within the poker community in the definition of WSOP world champion away from the $10k buyin NLHE event and more towards the $50k HORSE event. Check out the line up one such event - Limit Razz. Is there a more complete list of who’s who in professional poker than the top of this leaderboard? This roster is just sick. I’ve never seen such a stacked roster.
3. Bankroll Requirements – I’ve read various poker authors talk about the importance of bankroll management (i.e., don’t bet your mortgage on a single hand of poker – even if you are a 4:1 favorite, etc…). The most recent reading was from Chris Ferguson talking about how he is attempting to turn $0 into $10k on Full Tilt. He explains that he’ll do this by disciplined bankroll management. Basically, he never risks more than 5% of his bankroll. If you extend this logic to the WSOP events, a guy playing in a $2000 buyin event should probably have about $40,000 in poker bankroll. This may be a little conservative, but a bankroll of 10x the amount of money you are risking in a single session or single tournament buy-in seems reasonable. This would put a guy’s poker bankroll requirement at around $20K to pay into a $2K event at the WSOP
Now there are a lot of very good amateur, home-game, poker players entering into the WSOP events, but I’m pretty sure that many (maybe most) do not have this kind of bankroll overlay. I know of a few examples personally. I’m sure they are big fans of the game, may want to “take a shot” at the big one, and also happen to be very good poker players. What I can’t understand is how they can justify spending 30%, 50%, or even 100% of their bankroll on a single tournament where the competition is as tough as it gets. This type of over commitment of their bankroll seems like a real bad poker play – regardless of how well they actually play at the table.
Not to mention, if you invest 75% of your poker bankroll to buy into one of these events (i.e., $2000), and you find yourself close to the bubble (which pays around $4000), your decision making at that point has got to be influenced by the opportunity to nearly double your bankroll. You might reason, “should I re-raise with pocket Qs? Am I willing to risk the $4000 that I would win by getting into the money on this one hand?”. This pits you as a serious underdog to the well funded pros that will take this opportunity to exploit your tight, ‘scared money’ mentality to build their stacks so that they can go deep into the tourney – where the real money is. Your thoughts?
