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HORSE is HORSE

By Dan Katz - Oct 1st, 2009

I was cruising around the internet this week reading a number of poker blogs, as I am apt to do, when I queued up Daniel Negreanu’s. Never one to shy away from giving his opinion, he was adamant that No Limit Hold’em should be the only game played at the final table of the $50,000 HORSE event at the World Series of Poker, just as it was when Chip Reese won the first edition of it in 2006. As much as I am a fan of Negreanu’s, and as much as I respect him, I must disagree. First, let me say that I completely understand where he is coming from on this issue. For the first three years of the event, almost 150 players entered the tournament each time. This year, only 95 runners competed. Negreanu believes that the reason for this is that HORSE doesn’t deliver television ratings, so ESPN is not broadcasting the event. In turn, many of the players who would have played can no longer afford to, as their online poker room sponsors don’t want to pony up the buy-in if there is no chance for the players, and the poker room logos they would be wearing, ...

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2 Comments

Fifth Street Journal   October 2nd, 2009 at 2:11 pm

Daniel thinks poker is a TV show: he’s a talented player, but these days he makes most of his money from being famous, not from poker. HORSE shouldn’t be televised if it’s not HORSE. It won’t be a great tragedy. The tournament has problems anyway: the buyin is too high for an obscure mixed-games format. It’s not even a real all-around championship, since it only has five games.

Does the WSOP want to be a championship, or just a league where bracelets are the points system? If they want to be a championship, they should hand out one bracelet for each form of poker per year, in a tournament with the highest buyin and best structure of any tournament for that game. The buyin for the Main Event needs to rise.

In what sport is the most popular event made for TV? Not in any popular sport I can think of. If Harrah’s wants to be taken seriously, they need to be broadcasting a championship, not a TV show. If they want to go the way of NASCAR since the Chase for the Sprint Cup (down), just keep on moving from championship towards TV show.

James Guill   October 7th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

What many people fail to realize or remember is that luck factor in NL is what won Reese the title in 2006. Each time Bloch had Reese in, Reese was behind and caught lucky. In a limit tournament, these outdraws would have cost Bloch decent pots, but not allowed Reese to double up. With that being said, Reese may have still won since if the format was straight HORSE as he was probably one of the best stud players of all time. However, I think the outcome would not be based as much on luck.

The $10,000 mixed event is a good test of all around ability since it includes all the games. If they were to play that as the 50k and make the final NL, that would make more sense as it is at least a part of the rotation.

As much as the HORSE event failed to bring in ratings, the event has spawned a slew of other live HORSE events around the world. Sometimes the influence of an event should be measured more than just ratings.

Then again, heaven forbid we do anything to bring down Harrah’s bottom line. Harrah’s only cares about a profit and making money, not about poker.

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