FULL TILT POKER BLOG

Posted by Storms | Filed under Uncategorized

I leave tomorrow. Perfect timing as far as I am concerned, as what seems like the entire world has set up camp inside the Rio. For the last three weeks the media room has been a ghost town. It now more closely resembles present-day Beirut. The diehard poker writers who have been following this year’s Series since it kicked off in late June are about to get kicked aside in favor of bigger names from bigger news outlets. I expect to see Bill Simmons (who I believe is entering the main event with the intention of using the experience as fodder for his Sports Guy column with ESPN) any second and after him Rick Reilly, and when I do I will know with absolute certainty that it’s time to hit the road.

The World Series is much more than the main event although very few people know that. To me, it’s the camaraderie that’s fostered amongst the pros in the smaller, less well known, events like the 2-7 Lowball event that is now down to its final two tables. You won’t find any made-for-television stars at either of these two tables because these players’ stories have already been written. No one outside of the poker world is going to stand up and cheer if Layne Flack or Allen Cunningham walks away with the bracelet. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Anything less is failure.

No, what the national media types who have elbowed their way into what was my space are looking for are more Jeff Madsens and Bill Chens, guys who waited for the biggest poker tournament of the year to get hot. No doubt, next year both players will be decked out in the gear of the online poker sites that sponsor them. Because that’s the new game inside the game. There’s as much money (if not more) in the selling of poker as there is in the winning at it, and everyone involved is now madly scrambling for his and her piece of the pie.

It must sound disingenuous of me to be lamenting the selling-out of a game that’s all about making money. None of the aging titans, such as Doyle Brunson or T.J. Cloutier, are complaining very much about the newer sleeker version of the game they first played in smoky back rooms when not getting shot was priority number one. To them, this must simply look like progress. To me, it feels like a crowded convention that could just as well be espousing the virtues of synthetic roofing supplies as housing the greatest poker tournament on earth. Evolution never comes easy.

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