The problem with the huge buyin events like One Drop is that the pros are boring because they sell and swap too much actions, and the recs are boring because they’re too rich. Who cares if some hedge fund billionaire snags a seven figure score. Same reason Triton is boring, the recs are so rich and so degenerate somehow nosebleeds goes full circle to feeling small stakes.

And there’s 50 years of mindshare around the Main event being the Main event.

I would love to see time chips more as tanking is awful for everyone but the tanker.

With inflation the Main Event should be a 25k so I say split the difference and bump it to 15k, still in the realm of reasonable for a “one shot” for many hopefuls.

To reiterate my underlying point the players with the most interesting narratives are not total donkeys who got comped by their show business friends. It’s players like Moneymaker who was an amateur and maybe not highest level professional but had enough skill to final table and run “the bluff of the century”. And we all knew that money was extremely significant to him unlike the high roller recs.

So my brainstorming around qualifications for the tournament is basically around, how can we cull the huge donkeys and badregs hoping to exploit them, and reduce the field size a little bit so name brand pros FT more often, while still being an event thats mostly open to everyone who wants to play and makes sure some amateurs with a dream are still there. While I think the logistics of a qualification for the main would be too complicated to implement , I do personally think it would be good for the event to raise the skill floor of what’s supposed to be a championship event and slim the field down a bit.

The buy-in needs to be large enough to shrink the field such that marketing/branding the players becomes manageable so that modern stars can emerge. If a subset of players doesn't want to play the premier tournament in poker that's perfectly fine. The players that play can be branded, marketed and hyped and the players that don't wanna play don't have to. It's not like there is a shortage of highly talented and skilled poker players. Frankly, thanks to online poker, training sites, and poker solvers, highly skilled players are a dime a dozen. That's actually part of the problem when trying to market poker to the masses.

What, are you gonna have Jake Paul playing a freeroll and that's going to be the premier event of your "sport?" Anyway you cut it, freerolls are jokes. Didn't Gus call off vs Antonio with 10 high in a freeroll? It was a great hand to watch, but as an event it's a big joke. One of the greatest things about poker is that it is real money and real pressure.

The idea of leaning on other people's celebrity would be par for the course for the WSOP. Hey look, it's Ray Ramano playing poker..whoopdee frickin doo.

If you want to do it right, you build a great product. If you build a great product, stars will emerge. Then, when those stars leave or become less successful, new stars will emerge. This is not rocket science. Literally every other major spectator sport has been operating like this for decades. First though, you need a good product, which the WSOP definitely does not have. That is why no major network or streaming service is interested in the WSOP.

Modern stars have the personality of cardboard and tank over trivial decisions
They're not exactly marketable

How can one tank if they have 5 seconds to make a decision? Again, that is a game flaw. I promise you every single players has a personality and some redeeming or interesting qualities. Personality should be highlighted before and/or after the event in social medai and such.

The fact that people thinks personality needs to shine through during the event just highlights how terrible the product actually is. When I watch other competitions such as a football game or a fight, what's entertaining is the football game or fight itself, not the personalities. Getting to know the competitors personally makes the event more intriguing and draws us in and gets us invested in the event. However, if I'm watching a football game I'm not interested in the players talking to one another or making jokes with one another. I want to watch the game because the game is super ****ing interesting. This is not WWE and this is not broadway. Poker is a real competition, and the only reason to need players to talk to one another and make jokes is because the competition itself, the reason everyone should be watching, is boring as hell. That's certainly the case with WSOP poker.

This is what's needed. I'm not saying necessarily the 72 game or 3 blinds, but rather this sort of outside the box thinking on ways to make the game entertaining to watch (and play). WSOP has very little creativity when it comes to making their product more appealing. They've been shoveling the same **** product for 10+ years. Back in the aughts when prerecorded episodes were viable it was a pretty damn good product for TV. Times have changed significantly since then and WSOP has done very little to adapt.

Well, that's what poker is, a relatively boring card game.

If you want to re-invent the game to make it more suitable for TV, why don't you just start with a different game/sports that's more interesting to start with?

Not all poker is boring though, and poker is a very adaptable game.

If I'm the WSOP, I'd say I want to adapt it 1) to make more money and 2) to maintain the premier brand in the game.

It's not out of the question that someone other than the WSOP could develop a better product, get it on a major network or streaming service which could result in that event becoming the most important event in poker. Hell, it doesn't even necessarily have to be a tournament.

i'd love to see a large buyin event exclusively for people below a certain cashed amount - would be an epic tourney bringing in a good combo of cash players, new grinders and all the recs one could possibly fathom

Poker has a tradition of sharps vs. squares. Main Event capitalizes on that tradition of giving the casual player a chance to beat the best and win $ millions in the process.

One WSOP Silver bracelet each week of the year.

1k buy in. Satellites online.

This would be a lot of fun. Might have the adverse effect of brining in some online-only grinders.

This is what I was thinking. Something with higher stakes. Not only a huge monetary prize which would be the initial draw, but something bigger at stake if you lose. Maybe something like the risk of death.

To make it relatable have them compete in games the general population would be familiar with. Childhood games like hop scotch, jacks and tag.

Could scout people that are heavily in debt and other life problems so they feel they don't have much to lose and where money would be a high motivation to participate.

Haven't landed on a name but was thinking something simple yet memorable. Maybe something to do with the ocean. Like a squid. We could call it Squid Game.

That would be stupid and illegal

Whoosh.

Why do you pose as a female? It's just weird.

Please don't talk to me or I'll put you on ignore. It's hard enough being a woman on a poker forum.

Wow ffs.
So Money, Conor, fake Paul bros, Kambosis don't draw viewers to their fights. Well obviously not you as it is all about the contest.
Foozballers personalities don't bring fans to watch Tom Brady get smashed by the Pats or Lebron playing against KD etc

Ok well even Darts have Fierce rivalries watching Gerwin Price play Garry Anderson or any! Of the top 10 and it is always personal.

I Love watching Fallon & Lisa beat the guys or play each other as great rivals.

Entertainment is obviously different for you as I love watching SOO each year as club team mates bash **** out of each other.
Queenslander 😁

You literally didn't even read my posts. I've posted that personalities draw fans to the event.

The vast majority of showmanship by Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr happens BEFORE the event, not during the fight. We don't need to listen to a conversation between Lebron James and other players in order to be entertained by his play. Jake and Logan Paul are hardly showman at all inside the boxing ring but they are still able to sell their events based on their personalities. If you disagree with any of this then I question whether you watch these sports whatsoever.

The fact that fans need poker players to talk to one another DURING the game and crack jokes with one another DURING the game really emphasizes what a terrible product is being delivered.

Imagine you have a huge Conor McGregor type personality. If you want to showcase that player, would it be more advantageous to do so in a 100 person field or an 8000 person field? Daniel Negreanu was knocked out before the TV table on day 1, ffs.

The UFC has less than 1,000 signed fighters. If you had him in a pool of 8k fighters, Conor wouldn't just be with fighters from UFC, Bellator, Rizin, One FC, LFA, and Cage Warriors, he'd also be lumped in with bums from King of the Cage and Alaska Fighting Championships.

Again, the Main Event is the Main Event, and that's fine but it definitely shouldn't be the face of poker on TV in 2022 and beyond. Hell, if the WSOP had a more exclusive event where players could really be showcased that could be used as a vehicle to get even more players to enter the main event. I'm not familiar with the WSOP's international TV deals, but its media deals in the US are crap. Next to nobody watches CBS Sports and far less than that have PokerGo.

You realize that niche sports actually pay money to be somewhere on TV?

FWIW, I don't think anyone disagrees with you that the WSOP doesn't do a good job with its product. But changing that would cost a decent amount of money that the WSOP is clearly not interested in spending. I'm just curious why you think that TV networks / streamers would be interested in pouring money into poker coverage instead of a different sports that's more interesting to start with. If you have 10 million to drop on something, why don't you make a huge Curling World Championship event and market the crap out of those people? Or bring Wok Racing to the US; that drew a bigger TV audience in Germany than any other winters sports event outside of the Olympics. Because it had celebrities.

This might be a stupid idea, but I think there is room for a poker product which is more POV-oriented, meaning we watch the tournament from the perspective of one or more heroes. There are various ways to do his, including actually using the hero's POV via a head or chest camera, similar to what many vloggers do. We only know the hole cards of our hero. I think the relative success of poker vlogs, and to some extent streaming, shows there is some appetite for following a particular hero's (or set of heroes') journey rather than the typical, omniscient, top-down view of the entire tournament or table that WSOP/PokerGo typically uses.

You could have the hero narrate in "real time" (recorded after play for the purpose of the broadcast) and/or cut to confessional-style clips where the hero discusses the hand, various villains, the stage of the tournament/cash game, etc. You can jump between multiple heroes in an episode, or each episode could focus on a different hero, or you can follow a single player until they are eliminated and then join a new player or they just recap what happened subsequent to the bustout. You could do an entire season following one player or a set of players through multiple tournaments.

I think this format creates opportunities for suspense not present in the typical all-cards-up format, namely that when our hero is facing a big decision we do not know what he or she is up against. And by taking a narrative POV, the viewer can feel more invested in a particular character instead of maybe just rooting for their favorite personality at the table.

Edit: And I am not necessarily proposing the entire show be first person, which might get tiring. You can switch between first and third person cameras, as appropriate.

Brilliant!!!

This is the next step.

ROTFLMAO "Boy" I'm sure it is specially when you alias is SEXKITTEN

Real McCoy, this is just your sexism showing. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the username sex kitten.

Bally's already hosts a large privately run chess tournament every year.


www.chesstour.com/nao21.htm