#838 – 2009 WSOP Revisted #1 – An Interview with the Commissioner

After I busted from the Main Event, I had an opportunity to interview World Series of Poker commissioner Jeffrey Pollack. It had been a difficult week for Jeffrey. The demands on his time always escalate as the Series goes on, and by the Main Event, he has to work around the clock juggling responsibilities to sponsors, ESPN, tournament administration, players, and Harrah’s. Just a few days earlier, he had to weather the storm surrounding the sell-out of day 1-D of the Main Event, which locked hundreds of players out of the World Championship and forced a year-to-year decline in Main Event participation.

Nevertheless, despite the regrets over Day 1-D, Jeffrey Pollack had many reasons to feel good about the operation of the fortieth World Series of Poker. The incredible attendance throughout the Series can make us forget that we are in the midst of a global recession and this event was conducted in one of the hardest-hit areas. It was far from a foregone conclusion that poker would come through the World Series this strong.

There were plenty of reasons and constituencies encouraging Pollack to trim the Series for 2009. “With the collapse of the global economy,” he said, “there was a question of whether there would be a sharp drop. In addition, this could have given us an opportunity to reset the bracelet events by dialing things back. I rejected both of those. I rejected the notion that we should stage a ‘recession WSOP.’ We have an obligation to present the World Series as the broadest spectacle – and I mean that in the best sense of the term – possible.”

The 2008 World Series was the most successful ever, and Pollack wanted to pick up where he left off for 2009 and maintain that momentum. Although it involved some risks, he wanted Harrah’s to offer “a true World Series of Poker, no matter how many people showed up.”

The results speak for themselves. Even though Las Vegas, casinos, tourism, and travel have all been decimated by the global recession, the World Series did huge business from start to finish. “As bullish as we were, our expectations were absolutely exceeded. The economy had no effect.” When I asked Jeffrey for the story of the Series, he didn’t hesitate:   “Poker is alive and well and the World Series of Poker has never been more popular.”

These are some of the other things Pollack considered notable about the 2009 World Series of Poker:

• “The pros did very well,” with memorable performances from Jeffrey Lasandro, Phil Ivey, Vitaly Lunkin, Greg Mueller, Brock Parker, David Bach, and many others.

• The Series was an international triumph with bracelets won by players from thirteen nations: US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Russian Federation, Finland, Sweden, Mexico, Italy, Holland, Hungary, and Iran.

• “We had over 60,000 entrants in bracelet events, the most ever.”

• “We crossed the $1 billion threshhold for total prize money awarded, making this the richest competitive event on the planet.”

• “We created a moment of grace every day at 2:20pm when we did the bracelet presentation and played the recipient’s National Anthem.”

The one discordant note at the World Series was the decision to declare Day 1-D of the Main Event a sell-out. The tournament accommodated over 2,800 players that day, but turned away approximately 500 others. (The estimates of the number of additional players who would have played that day or the following day has varied from “a couple hundred” to “over a thousand”.) Jeffrey Pollack bore the brunt of the animosity that day.

“I was heartbroken on Monday,” he acknowledges, “as was anyone else who loves the World Series of Poker. I take the responsibility. Could we have better communicated our capacities to players? Absolutely. Could we have made more contingency plans? Yes.”

These are reasonable admissions and they were lapses in his – “his” meaning Jeffrey personally as well as the appropriate people on his WSOP staff and Harrah’s – responsibilities as planners and communicators. He won’t put any of the responsibility on the players … but I sure will. Players could register twenty-four-hours-a-day for the previous six weeks. They could register across state or international borders by combination of wire/e-mail/fax/post if they expected to be away from the Series until the moment they commenced play. Finally, the Series offered four starting days, easily accommodating 8,000 players and theoretically accommodating up to 11,400. Unless you also want to blame Pollack for being so flexible and accommodating in his registration procedures, you have to spread some responsibility the all the players who neglected opportunities to register and/or play before 2 PM  on Day 1-D.

Keep in mind that Pollack and Harrah’s were likely to be criticized no matter what they did. Read the old message boards to see all the complaints about eleven-handed tables, the seating of alternates, and spreading tables throughout the casino. In past years, Harrah’s was criticized for pumping up the entries to squeeze more money out of the World Series. Now, without any acknowledgement that they have somehow abandoned the profit motive, they are attacked for refusing entries.

So why didn’t Pollack and his team come up some on-the-spot accommodation? Jeffrey rejects the notion that with 2,800 players already in action that day, he could not, “from a regulatory standpoint or a practical standpoint” have instantly run a World Series-quality event for another 500-1,000 players.

Even if you can fault him for not preparing in advance for such a contingency, I’m inclined to take him at his word when he says it wasn’t possible to improvise such a thing. It had to kill Pollack to turn players away.  Do you think he liked to exclude T.J. Cloutier, Tom Franklin, Ted Forest, Brandon Adams, and Patrik Antonius? If Pollack could have somehow gotten those 500 or so players into the Main Event, he would have been able to cap off the 2009 Series with a strong year-to-year increase in the size of the Main Event. Instead, he had to preside over a modest decrease in players, and deal with the firestorm of criticism that erupted in its wake.

Beyond preventing a repeat of that single negative experience, what can we look forward to in 2010? Naturally, it’s too early for Jeffrey Pollack to disclose much, or anything specific. He did tell me, however, that he wanted 2010 to focus on “peoples’ poker.” He zeroed in on the $1K Stimulus Event: “We had 6,012 players, most of whom had never played in the World Series before. We could have had 9,000. I’d like to see an event like that every other weekend. If you can’t afford the Main Event but want the experience of playing in a very large event, I’d like us to provide that.”

With Las Vegas struggling and Harrah’s laying off employees, it takes chutzpah to make plans for 2010 that include, in Pollack’s words, “a bigger footprint inside the Rio.” But with Pollack bucking critics by planning and then pulling off a “growth” World Series in 2009, he is a difficult man to doubt.

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