A brief observation about the WSOP

I think I must be the only poker blogger who has not yet had anything to say about the controversial decision to delay the World Series of Poker main event final table until November. My silence is mainly because I just don't care. The whole thing makes my shoulders shrug and my eyes glaze over. The WSOP just isn't of much importance in my life.

But yesterday something occurred to me that I haven't seen mentioned in the pros-and-cons debates. (Perhaps it has been and I just missed it.) And that is this*: If it fails as an experiment, and thus only happens one time, and next year they go back to things as they were, this year's winner will have the shortest reign as world champion on record (something like nine months).

Even more peculiar, and possibly a greater perversion of justice, is that last year's winner, Jerry Yang, would then end up as the longest-reigning one-time winner (i.e., excluding the four back-to-back winners: Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Stu Ungar, and Johnny Chan).

This is not merely of symbolic importance--there's real money on the line. As I understand it (it's not like I have a whole lot of personal experience as world champ), whoever is the current title holder tends to get swamped with offers to attend tournaments, with entry fees and travel expenses all covered by the sponsoring facilities, plus the various endorsement deals, etc. I don't know that cutting the duration of holding the title from 12 months to 9 months would mean an actual 25% cut in those side benefits, but there would almost certainly be some reduction in such perks.

That may be among the least compelling arguments that have been made on the decision. But if I were the winner, I think I would experience at least a bit of annoyance that I got cheated out of a quarter of my time as the champ, and that that time was given to Jerry Yang.

I'm just sayin'.



*For some reason, typing that sentence gave me a chills-inducing flashback to Richard M. Nixon saying "Let me say this about that."