This article is just silly.

First of all: Hooray for ridiculous comparisons. We're not pausing so that people can change sponsorships. A more honest analogy would be "Can you imagine, not prohibiting NASCAR drivers who are not obligated to remain with their sponsors to look for more lucrative deals after doing really well throughout the Chase in the weeks before the last race that everybody will be watching to determine the championship?" But that sounds unremarkable as hell so he doesn't put it that way.

Second of all: Who is this a problem for? It's not the players. They can sign whatever contracts they want at any time during the series. It's the sites who suffer from having to pay fair value for exposure.

I'm not a lawyer, so I might be naive here: But how is there anything stopping sites from doing this right now? Write a legal contract with provisions in it for what happens given breach of contract. Isn't this what's done all the time?

That term...does not mean what you think it does. Are we really supposed to believe that you're in favor of changing the rules so that the total amount of money sites will have to pay to sponsor people will increase, when your initial argument is that the current system leads to a "costly financial arms race"?

I'm not an antitrust expert but when the policy was announced I thought it was suspect. IIRC I started a thread in Legislation about it but didn't get any useful responses.

I'm not sure how this statement goes with that quote, but the sites are free to contract this way, with limitations. The default remedy for a breach of contract is for the aggrieved party to recover what he/she/it would have gained had the other party performed according to the contract. The hard part would be for PokerStars or Full Tilt (or whomever) to prove what they would have gained (and subsequently lost) from the player wearing their gear, in monetary terms.

It's hard to imagine what a site could put in the contract as far as an effective remedy in the event of a breach, unless it's a liquidated damages penalty. Noncompete agreements are very hard to enforce, so I wouldn't expect anything like "In the event of breach, Player agrees not to sign any sponsorship agreement with any other online poker site..." or something to effect.

Sounds like a pretty good read to me.

So, the solution proposed by Lee Jones is what PS implemented this year?

Was the article written back in April and delayed by PokerNewsDaily for six months for some reason?

Lee Jones's solution favors exactly one tinier population, the poker sites. This is basically a zero sum game. Whatever the players lose, the sites gain. None of this benefits WSOP or TV viewers or any other group I can think of.

Actually Jones's solution my hurt online poker players in the case that an unsponsored player reached the final table. Some online site will have missed out on attracting new players. Of course stars having 2 sponsored players instead of 3 isn't going to make that much of a difference, but it does make some difference.

Jones's solution would cause sites to sponsor a ton of players for a small amount of money on day 1, maybe $100 each. But he correctly points out that online qualifiers already "blithely ignore the online sites’ terms and conditions regarding wearing the sites’ logo-wear, hoping to get a better deal in the Day 5 scrum." Under his proposal they will only be able to negotiate with one site, but the market rate has been set and players/agents aren't going to take less than the guy the year before.

Not to mention that the players wouldn't buy into a tournament if they didn't want to bet their money that they are better than everyone else. Forcing players to make a one-site deal on day 1 effectively forces them to hedge their bet on finishing in the money. Against the spirit of the game imo.

I like pretty much everything else Lee Jones has ever done/said.

Well, the PS VPP offer for 2009 - which Jones' article seems to based on - was worth at least a couple of $k to each player.

There are a few obvious points being missed here. Before I mention them, full disclosure - I worked with Lee at PokerStars for many years, and was peripherally involved in some of the player negotiations this year.

1. Lee's suggestion makes sense on both sides of the equation. From the site's POV, don't assume that money they don't spend on players just goes into PS, FTP, et al's pockets. If the sites had some assurance that players would remain "loyal" (defined as "wearing their gear") throughout the WSOP/WPT/whatever, they'd spend even more to get a ton of players there. Trust me on this - this was what I did when I worked for PokerStars (2002-2007).

2. There is some significant downside for players in these negotiations. If you saw the way it happened you would have a better sense of this. Imagine for a minute that you're an amateur and make a deep run in the WSOP and you're down to 50 players. You sit at a feature table and look around at the likes of Phil Ivey, Antonio Esfandiari, etc. There's 15 minutes to go before play starts for the day, and a bunch of guys are fitting your microphone, making sure you understand where the hole card cams are, dusting off your head (in my case) and so on. It's all unfamiliar and intimidating. Now, a bunch of agent types slither up to the table wielding money and contracts, often (not always) telling you things that aren't true to get you to take their $$,000 and wear their client's gear. You're already nervous, made worse by the presence of cameras, microphones, lighting and press, and now you have to deal with these guys, who pretty clearly aren't looking out for your best interests. And, of course, if you already have a deal with someone else, you really don't even have time to tell them what's happening and give them a chance to respond, and you definitely don't have time to get good legal advice, which would *really* help here. I've seen *many* crappy deals go down exactly like this.

3. Lee's suggestion was, in fact, the way the WSOP handled logos in 2003 and 2004 (I believe this was actually dictated by ESPN), and was formerly the way the WPT worked once they started allowing logos (not sure of their current policy). While it doesn't allow for an unknown amateur to win a lottery-size prize deep in an event, it provides incentive for the sites to get as many of their players in their gear prior to the event as is humanly possible. This distributes incentive money more broadly, which ultimately helps the whole industry - this money is more likely to be pumped back into the poker economy.

There - so fire away.

...dan

I wasn't aware of the PokerStars VPP offer for 2009 - I had my plate plenty full with other things. But yes, this is the point that I was trying to get across. And which my friend and former colleague Dan elucidated nicely.

We're living in a fairly surreal world at the WSOP right now because the players are (as eastern_motors correctly quoted me) blithely ignoring the T&Cs under which they got seats in the first place. That is my exact point - that the great majority of players are losing out because the sites have no hope of retaining them through duration of the event. The sites have no hope of retaining them through the duration of the event because the WSOP doesn't enforce a rule that prevents the Day 4 (or whatever) scrum.

As Dan said,
If the sites had some assurance that players would remain "loyal" (defined as "wearing their gear") throughout the WSOP/WPT/whatever, they'd spend even more to get a ton of players there.

Dan and I were there for the discussions, the planning, etc for multiple years. It's totally a sperm/egg problem. You have one "egg", defined as the final table. Your job is to get your DNA on as many possible of the sperm swimming toward it. By not enforcing any kind of loyalty provision, the WSOP allows the sites to treat almost all of the spe^H^H^Hplayers as non-participants until the final few tables.

I can promise you that your online-sponsor EV, as a WSOP participant, would be higher under the protocol that my article proposed. Now, if you'd prefer to give up some EV for a high-variance lottery ticket, you're certainly welcome to that opinion. Frankly, I think this is a classic case of 75% of the poker players believing that they're better than the other 75% of the players and all thinking that they've got more EV by targeting Day 5. And I certainly understand the theory that says you have to believe you're a lock for Day 5 if you're ever going to get there.

But my proposal is actually intended to put more money in the players' pockets.

Regards, Lee

P.S. I'm speaking here as an individual member of the poker community; I don't know what Cake Poker thinks about all this and I'm definitely not speaking for them. Or Mason Malmuth.

Wait, you want the WSOP to enforce the sites' contracts with the players for them because the sites can't enforce them because they won't set foot in the US? No thanks. And frankly I think that would be crossing a legal line that the WSOP doesn't want to cross -- they don't accept buy-ins from online sites for a reason, they're not about to enact policies to help those sites enforce their contracts.

Also, who is going to enforce the contracts for the players like Eric Buchman when the sites don't hold up their end of the bargain?

And what about the many players (like me for example) who don't qualify for the WSOP online and don't have sponsorship deals? How is this proposal better for them?

No, I don't expect the WSOP to enforce the sites' contracts for them. I want the WSOP to establish and enforce a rule that prohibits all the insane horse trading that goes on toward the end of the event. IMHO, it would be better for all concerned, modulo the tiny number of player who make it to the last few tables. This is not about enforcing the sites' T&Cs; it's about improving the whole sponsorship process at the WSOP and similar events.


Also, who is going to enforce the contracts for the players like Eric Buchman when the sites don't hold up their end of the bargain?

I don't want the WSOP acting as a contract enforcer for either side. That said, your statement begs the question of who was at fault in the Buchman/FTP dispute. I don't know the details of what happened and I'd argue that very few people really do. But if forced to bet, I know where I'd put my money.

And what about the many players (like me for example) who don't qualify for the WSOP online and don't have sponsorship deals? How is this proposal better for them?


If I were king, players such as you who came into the tournament as free agents could negotiate with anybody for the best deal possible before the tournament began. I imagine a vibrant and competitive market would spring up, with various sponsors wanting to grab you before you went in. Again, these sponsors would have the assurance of the hosting venue (Harrah's and the WSOP) that once you signed with M&M you wouldn't switch to Cadbury halfway through. That would make you much more valuable and drive your price up.

Regards, Lee

Wouldn't part of the issue be that since FTP had 4 of the final 9 wearing their logo, and with the WSOP rules stating they can only have 3 logoed players at the final table, someone was going to be shut out? It certainly wasn't going to be Ivey, and they had made a deal already with Akenhead, leaving it a coinflip between Begleiter and Buchman.

Yeah, but then the UIGEA happened! Once PokerStars doesn't directly put people into the tournament, the rules you speak of are out the window. You have to play by new rules, and money talks.

From an advertising standpoint, days 1-8 are a completely different tournament from the November 9, the way I see it. I think it would be a good idea to somehow promote the idea among agents that it's smarter for people to wear consistent logos between days 1 and 8. The November 9 though, I think it's just an entirely different entity. I'm speaking as someone that played the main event and did not satty in online.

To align with Lee's ideals is to deny a free-market. And may I remind you that the sanctity we're speaking of relates to poker, a game where you outplay people to take their money. If there was ever a spot to promote this bastardization of logo-wearing, poker's your game. It's great if you work with a site like Cake Poker, because then you have a better shot at final-table representation where you don't get outbid by the 1-ton gorrillas, but beyond that I'd love to see some proof that the value would be more for players under Lee's plan, because I really don't see it at all.

And I say this as someone who chose to wear Doyle's (a Cake skin), so please dont hate me Lee

Have no fear, I don't hate anybody for disagreeing with me. But your statement above is silly, IMHO. The reason that people can get sponsorship deals anywhere, for anything, (even in a free market) is because the sponsor has an expectation that its deal will be honored. If the deal isn't honored in one way or another, then traditionally the civil courts provide relief to the aggrieved party. But it is that protection that causes the sponsor to be willing to part with money in the first place.

I think the poker players have screwed themselves by ignoring their original obligation to the sites. Since the sites have no protection for their sponsorship dollars, they don't spend them.

So in that sense, yes, I'm arguing for protection of the sites' investment in the players. But I'm only doing that because the sites will spend more money on more players if their investment is protected.

But please, don't throw a "free market" argument at me. The free market depends greatly on the reliability and enforceability of the deals made in it. Right now, that enforcement component is missing and it's preventing the market from functioning efficiently. The players are the victims of that inefficiency.

Regards, Lee

Lee sort of beat me to the punch here, but he missed one important component of this. I agree that his suggestion does NOT deny a free-market economy. All it does is move the negotiating component to the pre-tournament stage. This has many benefits, among them:

- distributes the wealth in a way that's good for the poker economy
- makes the sponsorship deals make more sense for the sponsors and the viewers (since you won't see Eric Buchman wearing FTP on Day 7 and PokerStars on Day 8)
- removes the panicked 15-min-before-play-starts negotiating frenzy

As I said earlier, the sites would put up the same amount of money - maybe more. And this isn't, as someone stated earlier, asking the WSOP or ESPN to enforce player contracts - it's setting forth a reasonable set of rules and requiring EVERYONE to comply. M&Ms could conceivably someday decide they want to steal an FTP player. Or a Bud Light player. It's really just a NASCAR model without Velcro patches.

...dan

Dan/Lee,

How much of the blame do you place on the poker agents themselves for these problems?

Do you believe there's a need for regulating poker agents?

Lee,

I feel you're being disingenuous (or ignorant) about the term "EV" when you frame it in terms of the enemy being a "high variance lottery ticket". For the players to gain EV from this proposal, it must mean that sites would spend a greater amount of money in total on sponsoring players. Is this what you are suggesting would happen in this case?

Poker agents aren't the problem, although they certainly make it worse. If players had to declare their allegiances prior to the event, agents wouldn't really have much to do except to help sites make bets on the players they think are going to outperform the field.

...dan

I'm sure Lee will add his own perspective here, but I mentioned in an earlier message that sites might in fact put up more money. Back when I was running marketing at PokerStars, I would certainly have advocated spending at least as much, and probably more, under this plan than under the frantic auctioning system that exists now. Note also that the final amount of money received by players would be greater using Lee's suggestion in any case, because the agents would be cut out of the process for the most part (SOMEONE pays their fees, whether the sites or the players).

What I took from Lee's EV comment was that the EV would be more widely distributed, which is a good thing.

...dan

Anything that restricts the ability of people to enter into contracts whenever they want is an impediment to the free market. That isn't debatable, and that is what you are proposing. It's really that simple.

There are plenty of people, I'm definitely one of them, who would have no interest in signing a pre-main event deal for a piddling amount of money but would potentially be interested in a much larger deal if they went deep in the Main Event. You are proposing taking away our ability to do that. And LOL @ using "high-variance lottery ticket", that what the people who play the World Series Main Event are signing up for, is it not?

In terms of deals entered into prior to the tournament not being honored, you seem to be laying the entirety of the blame at the feet of the players. If sites weren't willing to pursue and sign players who were breaking deals with other sites, which is known as tortious interference with a contractual relationship and is legally actionable, this wouldn't be an issue. It takes two to tango. It is simply not the job of the WSOP to enforce contracts (what are they going to do when there is a dispute, have panels issue rulings?), and it seems like you're only interested in having them enforce them one way. (As an aside, my money's on Eric Buchman's side of the story, but there's no way to ascertain the facts). Let me just say I'm not encouraging people not to honor pre-tournament deals with the sites, if I were to enter into one I would.

I'm also extremely skeptical that representatives of the sites are proposing something that will cause the sites to lay out more money than they are under the current system, why would they do that?

smalltalkdan/lee,

one component of your argument seems to be that the wealth is more evenly spread at the beginning of the tournament. correct me where i'm wrong.

you want everyone getting 1x (where x is the base payment) before the tournament as opposed to random qualifiers getting, I dunno, say 100x with some kind of multiplier if they get on a feature/side table or go deep in the tournament. my math could be sketchy, but whatever. the major point is that you want it distributed evenly before the tournament so as to better impact the poker economy.

well as a professional, and i suppose a professional who has gone deep in the ME my first 2 eligible years, i'd object to this level of reasoning just on pure market sense. if you're going to assess the value of x at the beginning of the tournament, i'd say my value pre-tournament is way higher than the average satty qualifier. furthermore there isn't really a good way to ascertain one's pre-tournament value, and if you were able to come up with such a system i'd pat you on the back.

you can counter that i suppose with "equal distribution better benefits the poker economy", but I can't help but be selfish when I look at the figures/bonuses associated with going deep/getting on TV. I'd much rather take the gamble. and a lot of poker players, i think, would rather gamble on the extra money you can get in the current system. it adds more potential excitement to going deep, and a broader incentive towards performing well.

I'm assuming your system is assessing some kind of equal value amongst all partipicants in the tournament before it starts when, let's face it, a good deal of the satty qualifiers have a very slim chance of ever making it to day 6. Feel free to counter this argument whenever, b/c that's how I see it.

Actually my assessment is much simpler than all of this. If you are, as you say, "way better" than the typical qualifier, make your case to the appropriate site and the chances are better than even that you'll get a decent deal. For example, if you can show [fill in your site here] that you have cashed in 30% of the big events you've played in, or earned $250k in a year in tournament wins, or have achieved some other reasonable metric, you probably deserve some sort of deal.

If I were still with PokerStars and you had this kind of record, I'd be willing to do a performance-based deal with you. You wear our gear, and when you make televised final tables I'll give you a very reasonable incentive. If your record is good enough, there might also be money up front or tournament buy-ins.

...dan

Forget my situation, there's gonna be dozens, if not hundreds of people that are going to claim the same thing. "Why am I getting the same rate up front as a guy who is drawing dead pre-registration?" they will ask.

I'm pretty sure poker players hate commies (JOKE)

Anyways, regardless of how much sense my points make, I feel like Todd hammered down the key points.

I just remembered something else. The primary selling point to the players after the WSOP adopted the perversion of tournament poker that is the ME final table delay was the ability of the players to use the delay to maximize endorsement revenue. Lee's proposal would take that away.

Of the two sets of November Nine participants, has anyone received any "mainstream" (outside of WSOP sponsors) endorsements?