Here's a pointless hypothetical for the sake of debate.

You have access to a time machine and are allowed to go back in time and play in exactly one WSOP Main Event from any year prior to now. Your goal is simply to maximize the return on your $10k entry fee.

Which year would you pick?

For the sake of discussion, let's exclude the 1970 WSOP, which was really just a series of cash games, and count the official start date as 1972, which was the first WSOP to feature the $10k NLHE event.

An average low-mid stakes tourney player today would have a great chance in pretty much any tourney until the mid-2000s.

I think there are maybe two compelling answers here.

One strategy would be to go back to the early 70s when NLHE theory was in its infancy and even a lot of the "good" players of the era probably had a simplistic understanding of the game compared to modern players. However, these fields were dense with pros, so there probably weren't a lot of outright fish (unless you want to say that everyone was a fish back then).

The other obvious strategy would be to aim for the pinnacle of the poker boom, maybe somewhere around 2004-2006, when interest in the game had peaked, but theory hadn't yet caught up. These fields were very large and, with so many casual rec players and online qualifiers, probably some of the softest fields the WSOP has ever seen. Since these fields were much bigger than in the early days of the WSOP, there would be potentially a much bigger payout at the end of the rainbow.

In 1994 you would have won your weight in silver + 1st prize.

This is what got me thinking about it. PokerGo is rolling out WSOP classic and I'm watching some of these old shows for the first time in years. The level of play is pretty terrible overall. People are jumping into pots with K2 and Q6 from middle position in a full ring. Even some of the "name" players were employing a "when in doubt, shove" strategy post-flop in terrible situations.

It just makes you think, 'Wow, I wish I could play in this event.'

2006, height of the poker boom.
Your roi on 10k has to be higher against 8k bad players that year than the 25 best players in the world in the 70s.

Yeh, probably like 2004-2006. Before 2000, it was majority high stake regs, but NLHE MTT play has advanced so much since then. It is still pretty soft though.

IIRC correctly 2007 had an elite group of donkeys. It was the year Jesus took Jerry Yang to the promise land.

I would aim for 1987-2003/2004. In 1987 the field crossed 150 for the first time (152 entrants) and we all know what happened in 2003.

After 2004 the fields blew up in size so much that even with massive roi the variance would be huge and hence difficult to realise your edge.

2004 is somewhere on the border with 2576.

In the 70s and mid 80s 10k usd was a very big sum and most of the guys who could afford it were relatively tough cash game players and the fields were too small to include a lot of whales.

The 90s were the best chance to make a large score - soft fields ranging from 200 to 400 and 1 million up top.

Regarding the softest ft me - by far 2007. One the worst me winners in history - Jerry Young. The biggest meltdown by start of the day cl - Philip Hilm. The most forgotten and dissapearing runner up - Tuan Lam. The worst fold of any FT - Lee Childs QQ to Yang's JJ. And the most ******ed pray off in history of poker between Yand and Watkinson's gf.

Just a lot of very very silly things on that final, its hillarious to watch now. I think the only player who actually played well was Kravchenko, but he was short all the time and couldnt do much. A huge donkfest from start to finish.

In the 1970s they had just the best players playing and nobody knew anything beyond what the pros knew so they weren't soft fields per se. I'd have to say like it has been said in the thread before that in the mid-2000s they had the most fishes playing so prolly those years.

A lot of you guys keep saying that in the 1970's it was all pros so it wasn't soft but are forgetting that the pros back then knew about as much as a shitreg does today if not substantially less

**** poker, if I had a time machine I would be placing sports wagers all over town. Then after I was banned from everywhere for winning too much, putting that money in the stock market. I would be a Billionaire within a couple years.

About NLHE MTTs. Not about stud high or NL 2-7 single draw.

My favorite foreshadowing story about this is Russ Hamilton loading his pockets with extra weights to try to scam a bit more value out in case he won (which he did).

softest ME isnt going to necessarily be highest EV. softest is probably one in the late 70s or early 80s. highest EV...i'm going to guess the 2000 one where chris "jesus" ferguson won

I haven't played in one yet, so the softest ME is yet to happen.

I think 04-07 would be the most fun. Seems like people genuinely enjoyed the game then. More talking. No scarves and tanking to balance ranges.

You hit the same two points I thought of when I saw your thread title. If we took the knowledge we had today but inserted into the early 1970s, a good laggy MTT player would run over the table.

To be honest, the mid-2000s was my first choice. That's when I started playing. Some of the play back then (including my own, I'm sure) resembled what you still see in play money games or $60 local daily tourneys now.

At least, he tried. Whoever weighed him emptied his pockets before he could step on the scale, but his actual body weight was more than enough to gain a little bonus money. But yeah, certainly shows how his mind worked, trying to find any way to game the system. (Which, let's be fair, is a notion applied to most poker players.)

Here is an excerpt from Ryan Lucchesi's 2008 retrospective of the 1994 Main:

Which is funny... seems like if you want to put on actual pounds on the day of, just drink a lot of water. The heavy dinners and desserts can be done during the weeks leading up, but it doesn't strike me as having much of an effect on the scale leading up to the final table.

Pretty funny. Never knew that stuff about Hamilton before. Classy guy!

For those who go back far enough, how much of this comes from the TV coverage? I have the same memories of that span, but in reality, I think it might simply be the way ESPN presented it.

The WSOP telecasts of that era featured a lot of characters: Jamie Gold vs. Eric Molina, Mike Matusow vs. Shawn Sheikhan, Prahlad Friedman vs. Jeff Lisandro. It was Micon doing his Thriller dance, Hevad Khan and his Red Bull-induced "bullllldooooozzzer" cheers, Raymer literally bringing Matusow to tears.

441 Productions seemed to actively seek that stuff out, and since the days and days of poker were digested to a few hours of coverage, we got to see it. Makes sense, too – the poker viewership was still relatively new to the game, the names weren't yet as familiar, so the focus was on the players rather than the play.

Move forward 10 years, and the WSOP Main telecasts began showing the event in real time – at least, that's how most of us see it. A 20-second staredown that would have been edited out (or edited down) during the 2005 highlight reel shows became a frequent, awkward moment of poker TV in 2018. If a player tanks before folding nine high to a shove, we have to time to get another beer, then come back to watch 10 more seconds of it.

And not for nothing, but the scarves? One of the first players to become known on TV for the Harry Potter cosplay was none other than Dario Minieri, who famously wore it throughout his coverage... in 2007.

As a more hardcore fan/player, I like the extended telecasts and live streams, but I think the shorter packaged shows are definitely more watchable for the casual ESPN viewer.

Even the edited telecasts themselves were stretched really thin around 2010-2012 when ESPN were seemingly looking to get a high amount of programming for a low cost, and the quality suffered. It went from something like 6-7 episodes in 2003 to something like 20-25 a few years later. The more you extend the coverage, the more diluted it becomes. Slower pace and fewer big events/memorable hands per minute. There was a sweet spot around 2004-2005 when they provided a lot of coverage without overdoing it.

It seems like a simple solution would be to have a comprehensive live stream with people like Nejad/Shulman doing more serious analysis, and then edited nightly or daily shows with Lon and Norm doing highlights with more emphasis on personality and characters. I think the casual ESPN viewer is going to be more engaged by the human interest stories, bad beats, and dramatic all-ins than deep analysis about blockers and constructing a 5-bet bluffing range.

You also have to question some of the rule changes, which discourage Jamie Gold and Will Kassouf types from "speech play" and the Hevad Khan-like celebrations. A lot of purists hate that stuff, but like you said, you can argue that it's overall good for the entertainment value.

Nice post !

Oh good points here... these were changes that took place after the height of the online boom, and certainly ones that arguably made the WSOP less enjoyable for certain people.

Still, I guess what I'm asking is if the WSOP was truly more fun in that 2005-07 span, or if just seems like it because ESPN chose to present it that way? And similarly, did tanking and the whole sunglasses-and-hoodie image became from prevalent in the 2010s, or does it just seems like it because of what is shown on TV? Only those who frequented the Rio in both eras could answer that for sure.

Another aside: I still remember how much the TV coverage affected play at the micro stakes, particularly the all-in move. Stuff like 100 BB preflop shoves, or 7x pot ships on the flop. (And I'm sure I was guilty of all of this myself. Sure, you can still find people who do this, but it was rampant back then, which is another reason avid players look back on that era so fondly.)

My hypothesis is that many people learned to play by watching WPT or WSOP coverage and imitating what they saw: a high percentage of all-in moves either pre or on the flop. They didn't understand that a) the average stacks at many of these tables were often as low as 20x, and b) the telecast was edited such to emphasize these plays.

Hahah wow, lots of reasons to be nostalgic about that era.

how many players have there been at main event final table (2003 and onwards) who have no clue? like a chronic loser at your local casino.

doesn't seem like there's been one for awhile..... and i'm guessing players with no clue ("playing bingo") have become much more rare anywhere.......

fallsview niagara 2006: older european woman calling with 88 on river, 3-way pot, KQT93 board. that's a hyper-extreme case though

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