Speaking of circuit events, I think that whole thing was B.S. - Harrah's apparently had to pay for the rights to the "WSOP" brand-name, and like I said before, they're pimping it like there's going to be no tomorrow. In fact, that could be a self-fulfilled prophecy if Harrah's/ESPN/Etc. decide to just dump as much poker on the general populus as they can possibly squeeze in. Entertainment is an industry, people, hasn't anyone heard of "saturating the market?" Anyway, the WSOP circuit seemed to be a lame excuse for getting lots of easy PR for the various Harrah's owned casinos around the country.
Back to the point, I previously made a post entitled "The Rape of the World Series" which discussed my opinion that blowing up the fields to the thousands would produce watered-down final tables of satellite amateurs. I was speculating that even the top pros would not be able to endure the variance created by huge fields long enough to make the final tables, but the real point of the post was about how the name of the tournament is being cheapened by ridiculous over-marketing. So in one sense I still think I was spot on - have you seen the dog commercials? "I should have brought my sunglasses so they can't tell I have pocket aces."?? You gotta be kidding me.
However, on the other hand I seem to have been a little off. So far from the TV coverage as well as tourney results that haven't been aired it seems as if the pros are thriving this year, in lower buy-in tourneys if not the main event. Chris Ferguson* has been all over the place, not to mention Jennifer Harmon, Freddy Deeb, Josh Arieh*, Eric Seidel*, Cindy Violette, Phil Gordon (yep, Phil Gordon), Allan Cunningham*, Devil Fish, David Pham, Phil Ivey, Jeff Lisandro* - even Scott Fishman placed second in the Hold'em event he won last year. I'm not sure if Chad Brown is quite there yet, but he made two final tables in the circuit events (both times having to face Ferguson). Some other notable names so far in televised final tables: Erick Lindgren, Mimi Tran, Nick Frangos, Robert Williamson III, Joe Awada, Antonio Esfandiari, Layne Flack, Jim Meehan, Minh (not Men) Nguyen, Harry Demitriou, etc. Mark Seif won two events, Mike Gracz won the $1k NLH rebuy - not exactly in the most artful fashion, but it counts.
*Indicates a win
So I may have been a little hasty with predictions about huge amateur fields creating all-weak final tables. That being said, I still think that many of the final tables that have featured only one or two big-name pros have been uninteresting and sloppy in terms of the actual play. The reason I like watching pros play against each other is because of the learning opportunity. Watching eight lucky morons flail around while a solitary pro just sits there waiting for his bad beat is not exactly enlightening.
Speaking of not exactly enlightening, how silly is the blinds format on FSN's Poker Superstars II? The matches are all the same, if you lose a pot, any pot in the first two rounds you just shove with the first decent hand you pick up after that. Compound the silly-huge blinds with Michael Konik's flair for asinine commentary and you have some of the least compelling televised poker, despite the world-class status of the entire field. I should really address my issues with Superstars II in a separate post...maybe later.
9/14 Update (I know this stuff happened months ago, but I wasn't in Vegas so I couldn't watch it then). The final table for the $5k NLH event was pretty stacked: T.J. won it, John Bonetti came in 3rd, Johnny "World" Hennigan 6th, Todd Brunson 8th and Tony Ma went out 9th. Get there T.J.! He was starting to get cranky before that win. ESPN also televised the $5k PLH event last night - Allan Cunningham was there again, as was Cindy Violette. John Gale, is he a pro? Anyway, he won that WPT Aruba event or whatever it was and should have won this event as well. Instead the bracelet went to some loud-mouthed oaf named Brian Wilson (not that one). Only after the final card was dealt did he demonstrate some humility about how lucky he had been to get there. All of his previous behavior was more in the line of SCREAMING STUPID CRAP AT THE DEALER. Just stop with that stuff, people.
