Reports of the Death of Poker are Greatly Exaggerated

Poker seems to be alive and well.  Last week the World Series of Poker held a tournament marketed to the masses. They called it The Colossus. At $565 it was the lowest entry fee of any event the WSOP has ever held where the winner receives one of the coveted gold bracelets in addition to the prize money. The result was the largest field ever for a live poker tournament. 22,374 entries were sold with multiple starting times over two days with the stipulation that if you busted out of one flight you could enter again into one of the later flights.  Unknown how many re-entries were logged. First prize was the bracelet and $638,880 of the over $11 million prize pool.

The popularity of the event also boosted the success of poker at other venues. WSOP's own 3PM Deepstack tournament set a record with 2149 entries. Planet Hollywood and the Golden Nugget were scrambling for dealers for their tournaments that run simultaneously with the WSOP. At the Wynn Poker Room their tournament was sold out and for the seven or eight tables of $1-$3 No Limit Hold'em there were 91 people on the waiting list to get a seat.

As the tournament was marketed to more recreational players, it was not without controversy. When the prize pool payouts were announced Twitter exploded. Many were incensed that the winner wouldn't come close to winning a million dollars. The structure that was used, like all other bracelet events, paid out to all who made it into the top 10%. Spreading out $11 million to over 2200 winners looked nice to the guy that finished in 1000th place but many were still disappointed that it works out that the winner would "only" get about 6% of the total prize pool.

The other controversy is with the dealer pay. A portion of the dealer's pay is determined by a small percentage of the entry fee, known as "tokes", divided up by all the dealers according to how much time they spent dealing. Looking at the small fee and the slow structure of the tournament, many dealers were worried that the toke rate would be very low. In fact when it was announced, dealers were in an uproar over the smallest toke rate in the history of the WSOP. It was about 30% lower than previous rates. One of the best paid dealer jobs in town had become one of the worst. The upside was that there was a lot of work. Many dealers were able to work double shifts with overtime making less per hour than elsewhere but logging many more hours. All in all if the toke rate goes back up next week, it will be an anomaly.

Seeing the WSOP set records and seeing poker rooms all over town overflowing with poker players makes me feel pretty good about the state of poker these days.