When I was younger I used to be a fan of American wrestling and when I think back to those early years the coverage that the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) produced, outside of the pay-per-view events, was terrible.
As a resident of the UK you didn’t get to see the pay-per-view events in those early years. So instead of Wrestlemania, Summerslam and the Royal Rumble we got the Saturday Night Main Event.
The format was pretty simple.
You would watch 55-minutes of the superstars of wrestling knocking ten bells out of complete unknowns, and then settle down to watch a 5-minute main event between two superstars with a very predictable ending.
It wasn’t very good, but at least you knew who was starring in the main event. It’s the same with boxing and with UFC, and to some degree with pop concerts.
Nobody cares about the undercard.
Everyone is in the bar.
People pay their money to see the main event.
Nothing else matters.
So when it comes to poker’s time to put on a show – when should we be in the bar and when should we be sat riveted to our seat? What is the main event in poker?
Well at the recent 2014 Aussie Millions the event billed as the piece de resistance was the A$10,600 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) event. The two Canadians Amir Barer and Sorel Mizzi squared off in the heads-up action for the A$1,600,000 first prize…but nobody cared.
You see at the same time these two were pulling on their sunglasses and hoodies, Daniel Negreanu and Isaac Haxton were going rebuy crazy in the $100,000 & $250,000 Challenges. Money was flying around like pieces of the Honky Tonk’s guitar after it had been wrapped around the head of Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake, and the poker world was mesmerized.
The channel was turned over.
Instead of pictures of Barer winning A$1.6m we wanted to see if Negreanu and Haxton could get out of their own self-dug hole, and who was going to win the A$2m and A$4m first prizes? It wasn’t the A$10,600 NLHE event that contained the star cast – it was the other two mighty beasts.
It was like casting Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep in some random advert pushed onto our screens in the midst of a movie containing a cast of plumbers and electricians from down the road.
But what about the World Series of Poker?
The most prestigious organization in the world.
Surely they have got this right?
Not for long.
This year sees the return of the $1m buy-in. The biggest buy-in tournament in the history of poker. Two years ago this show was spectacular. This year it will be even bigger.
And in the future?
It will get EVEN BIGGER.
The WSOP will be under tremendous pressure to turn this every other year event into an annual feast of mass madness as whales and poker players alike start throwing a million bucks around like it’s dirt off the bottom of your shoe.
Re entry is coming and it’s going to take some pretty strong people to stop it. I am thinking Sisyphus and The Big Show is standing on the boulder.
The Main Event is not what is used to be. It’s a shame, but I guess that’s the price of fame.
Onwards and upwards poker…onwards and upwards.
