26
A Dreadful Payout Structure
I spotted a friend in the hallway yesterday, and he told me about his adventures in a recent tournament. He outlasted over 2,000 players for a top 20 finish. “Great work,” I offered, as I realized what an accomplishment it is to make it through a field of that size. I asked about his payday: just over $8,000.
“Oh, God,” I said, “that’s awful.”
“Yeah,” was all he could manage.
The payouts for the smaller WSOP events ($2500 and under) make little sense to me. The tournament directors have two goals when devising payouts. First is to have a massive first place prize, and the second is to payout a large number of people. The first goal is reasonable as the eye-popping first place awards feed general interest. But the second goal – to pay out lots of people – serves the poker community poorly.
Sure, there are some people who will be happy to simply cash in a WSOP event. But is anyone really all that pleased with a minimal return on a small buy-in event?
In the first $1,500 no-limit event, 2,776 players bought in; 277 cashed. Of those, 78 made $300 in profit or less; 167 made less than $3,000 in profit. In all, over $500,000 went to players who cleared less than $3,000. I can’t imagine that any of these players were ecstatic with their payday. If that $500,000 were re-distributed to players who went deep in the tournaments, the WSOP would be doing a better job of awarding players in proportion to their accomplishment.
In the $1,500 event, Bill Gazes finished fortieth. He managed to outlast 2,736 players – over 98 percent of the field. He earned $7,594 in profit. That can’t be fair.
There’s a lot that needs to change for next year, I hope the payout structure is among the things that players and management address.
