#489 - My Rendezvous with Full Tilt’s Final Table Trio, Part III - Letter to Messrs. Pollack & Stewart

After spending Saturday, August 16, with Kelly Kim, Craig Marquis, and Scott Montgomery, I returned to my room to mull it all over. Apart from really liking the three of them - all three are very nice guys - I was struck by how skilled they all seemed. It goes without saying that you have to do a lot of things right to make the final table, but these guys had all paid a lot of dues. None of them were casual players who played the Main Event on a whim. In fact, based on their discussions about the other players at the final table, I learned that almost all nine were serious professionals.

Scott Montgomery had already made a WPT final table. Kelly Kim, who I regarded as tough and distant, is an economics-major brainiac who has been devoting his professional energies to gambling for several years. And Craig Marquis, just 23, has been schooled by two of the world’s most successful online players and estimated that he played a million hands in the last year.

Exhausted after the exhiliarating day, I retreated to my room at the Wynn to make sense of it all. I had apparently dozed off when, at 1:34 AM, I got a call from Jo Anne. She was in the emergency room. Ellie had woken her up complaining of severe abdominal pains. Jo Anne turned down my first plan, which was to throw my possessions into a bag and high-tail it home.

“Let’s just see what it is first.”

So while I waited by the phone - it turned out NOT to be anything immediate or serious - I focused on my helplessness by doing something I greatly enjoy: telling other people what to do.

I devided that Jeffrey Pollack and Ty Stewart, the top dogs of the World Series of Poker, needed me to tell them of the potential bounty they were about to receive. This is, unedited, the e-mail I sent them at 2:18 AM:

Jeffrey & Ty:
 
I just spent a very long day with three of the players who made the Main Event final table - Scott Montgomery, Craig Marquis, and Kelly Kim. (They are wearing the Full Tilt colors and the site asked me to interview them for the blog and so the site could use the information to promote the coming final table.)
 
Something occurred to me, which has probably occurred to you, but I wanted to clue you in if it hadn’t. Or I wanted to emphasize it if you already noticed it.
 
It’s this: I am seeing indications that the quality of players at the final table is higher than in the past few years. I’m basing this just on talking with three players (and on their conversations about the other players) but it’s clear to me that these otherwise-unheralded players are overall much more experienced and battle-tested than the collective final tables of 2005, 2006, and 2007. (We could have a discussion about whether this is, either subjectively or objectively, true but I strongly believe it based on the three players I spoke with and their descriptions of [most of] the other six.)
 
This could have several consequences:
 
(1) Most important: everything that suggests the World Championship is contested in the end by highly skilled players is great for the World Series and great for poker. The world at large can say, “obviously these guys aren’t as good as _________.” (_________ being Phil Ivey or Patrik Antonius or Chris Ferguson or Phil Hellmuth or whoever the conception of the names is at the top of the pyramid.) But it’s a given that the MOST FAMOUS great players couldn’t possibly monopolize the final table of a competition so big. The last few years, however, have produced such a wide range of players - and enough purely recreational players - that a lot of people have already discounted the Main Event as a real “world championship barometer.” Although there is great appeal in Everyman winning (Jamie Gold, Jerry Yang) or finishing runner-up (Steve Dannenman), a final table composed mostly of highly skilled - even though not well-known - players will restore some credibility to the event. With a huge range of playing skill and experience, the Main Event has become more like the Running of the Bulls and less like the Boston Marathon. And this year’s final table clearly isn’t devoid of Everyman characters. But I hope you can help everyone reach the conclusion, based on the overall composition of these players, that Skill Does Matter.
 
(2) Next most important: you’re going to get better quality play from the final table. I would defend the proposition to my last breath that the actual quality of final table play has not been especially high the last few years. There have been some great hands and some great moments, of course, but people who really know poker would agree with me that, especially in 2007, the game was played in a manner to reduce the level of skill. I don’t think - though I could be entirely wrong - that this final table is NOT, like last year, going to see players with 75-100 big blinds regularly reraising with medium strength hands and getting all their chips in with mediocre hands after the flop. There will be some audacious plays - and I know those are the ones that play best on TV and among casual fans - but there will also be plays that encourage people to Understand Poker Better. (e.g., the Big Read, the Big Laydown, strategies dictated by table position and stack size.) I’m not talking about boring technical things but simply the next level of poker understanding. I hope this becomes an experience that INCREASES the appreciation by the audience of poker skill and strategy, and that ESPN moves with this, taking a step forward in familiarizing viewers with the skills of the competitors.
 
(3) The final table is not hurt by the absence of a “name.” Last year, Lee Watkinson made the final table. In 2006, Alan Cunningham made it. In 2005, it was Mike Matusow. In 2004, it was Dan Harrington. I think among people who don’t know anything about the players, they might think 2008 is a step backward, as if having one well-known professional assured everyone that it really was a championship but a field of “nobodies” means it’s just an exhibition of unknowns. I hope if there is a perception like this that you emphasize the collective skill and playing experience of these players, because I think the product will prove me right, that this will be the best final table of the “internet age.”
 
I don’t have any particular motivation for writing this. I’ll probably post these observations as a blog over the next few days, but there was no concrete reason for me directing this to you. Promoting these guys isn’t really part of my job at Full Tilt. I don’t get anything based on how these players do or how they are perceived or how much publicity Full Tilt gets. In fact, it’s not even my claim that “the Full Tilt players are the most skilled” - it’s just that I learned about the depth of their skills and experience and, just as significant, their observations about the depth of skills and experience of most of the other final table players. I simply want to see you succeed and see this November experiment succeed and see THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER succeed. I believe this final table gives you ways of getting there, but not in ways that might be immediately obvious, like if Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth had made the final table.
 
If you want to discuss any aspect of this, I’d be happy to engage in the discussion. Otherwise, it’s just a preview of I blog I’m writing and I took advantage of having your e-mail addresses.
 
I look forward to seeing you in London in September.
 
Michael Craig