Poker world begging for more variety at the WSOP

Posted by Steve Ruddock on Jun 16, 2013 Posted in Poker News | No Comments »

wsop 2013On Wednesday Matt Matros penned a column for Cardplayer Magazine where he lampooned the trend at the WSOP that has seen the number of No Limit Holdem events rising, while other formats get pushed to the backburner. I wrote my own column where I expanded on Matros’ points, and now it seems that some of poker’s biggest names have started speaking out about the No Limit Holdem-centric nature of the current incarnation of the World Series of Poker, and the lack of $10k tournaments as well.

On Wednesday night Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu stepped into the fray, offering up their thoughts on the current WSOP schedule:

@RealKidPoker

Something extremely sad to me about playing the ONLY stud tourney of the WSOP.The stud championship had amazing finals and now it is no more

The WSOP never used to be so heavily focused on numbers. It was a festival of various poker games. The trend is disheartening.

The WSOP used to be a place where people learned new games but now they don’t have to learn anything but NL holdem it’s offered daily.

WSOP schedule was fantastic when we had 11 $10k championship events in all forms of poker yet still accommodated the big field NLH events.

@philivey

I love the WSOP but agree with @realkidpoker about the schedule. We need to protect WSOP history and offer a balanced schedule

@phil_hellmuth

I LOVE #WSOP! It’s not about more Stud Hi events (2 is enough), rather its about balance, diversification, and $10K Championship events

No offense @Wsopsuitd and #WSOP staff, BUT we cannot have the schedule written by the execs, especially w/out having player council input

My last word on #WSOP: they are doing a great job year-to-year, and I believe if they changed a mere 4 events from Hold’em, then perfect!

The pushback has been/will-be coming from two fronts. The first is the online generation of poker players who see Stud and Draw poker as antiquated games played by card-carrying AARP members, and the other is the WSOP, who sees far more value in 2,000 player field No Limit Holdem events than a 200 player Stud 8 tournament.

Other players may not be jumping on the less No Limit Holdem bandwagon, but the suggestion that the WSOP needs to start bumping the buy-ins for some events back to $10,000:

@MattGlantz

@RealKidPoker @WSOPTD I skipped the $2500 Stud today. Doesn’t have the same allure. Would never consider skipping a $10k Stud event.

@shawnbuchanan1

@RealKidPoker we need some more 10ks back!! Less buzz now!

It will be interesting to see how hard these players (and others) want to fight for a better variety of formats and buy-ins, and whether the 2014 WSOP adopts what would likely be seen as radical changes, by decreasing the number of NLHE events and increasing buy-ins.

 



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