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Borgata Summer Poker Open Starts July 7

The New Jersey summer series features 20 main tournaments with $3.3 million in guarantees plus 20 additional secondary events.

Just as one major series begins to wind down (WSOP) another one (on the opposite coast) gets its start. It’s time one again for the Borgata Summer Poker Open. For East Coast grinders, it’s the ultimate summer poker series set in the heart of Atlantic City.

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It’s A Full House! WSOP Main Event Second-Largest In History

A huge turnout for its third and final starting flight on Independence Day in the US has helped make the 2018 World Series of Poker Main Event the second biggest WSOP Main Event in history.

In fact, a whopping 4,571 entries on the Fourth of July’s 2018 WSOP Main Event Day 1C made it the largest starting flight in WSOP Main Event history. The 2017 WSOP set the previous starting-flight record of 4,262 on Day 1C last year. The WSOP has run annually in Las Vegas, Nevada since 1970.

The event’s first starting flight is traditionally its smallest and drew 925 entries on July 2 this year. On July 3, the 2018 WSOP Main Event’s Day 1B drew another 2,378 players. However, the huge crowd on July 4 brought the total field up to an outstanding 7,874 players, making the 2018 WSOP Main Event the second-largest in history, behind only the 2006 WSOP Main Event and its 8,773 players.

The 2006 WSOP Main Event remains the largest tournament in the game’s history. The prize pool reached an incredible $82,512,162 and champion Jamie Gold walked away with a $12 million first-place prize.

A $74 million prize pool

The 7,874 players in this year’s Main Event helped create a $74,015,600 prize pool that will go to the top 1,181 finishers.

All nine players to make the official final table will earn a minimum of $1 million. The 2018 WSOP Main Event Champion will collect an $8.8 million first-place prize and the runner-up will have to settle for $5 million.

A minimum cash is worth $15,000.

The WSOP Main Event transitioned away from a format with four starting days to three in 2012. Speculation was all over the map, with many predicting the holiday would create a huge turnout. Others believing traditional picnics and fireworks would keep players away. In the end, those taking the over came out ahead.

A total of 2,453 players (659 + 1,794) survived the first two starting flights to make the event’s second day. They will return to play Day 2A/B July 5. The 3,480 survivors from Day 1C will get the day off and return to play Day 2C July 6. The 2018 WSOP Main Event will play down to a champion on July 14 with no further days off scheduled.

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Main Event coverage on ESPN and PokerGO

ESPN and online subscription-based poker content service PokerGO are providing tag team television and live-streaming coverage of the 2018 WSOP Main Event.

ESPN and ESPN2 are trading days, broadcasting live coverage on a 30-minute delay during prime time hours. PokerGO picks up the slack with similar coverage built around the ESPN and ESPN2 broadcasts.

Live updates are also available on the WSOP.com website.

New Jersey player Scott Blumstein won the 2017 WSOP Main Event, getting the best of a 7,221-player field that created a $67,877,400 prize pool. Blumstein’s first-place prize was $8.15 million.

More WSOP action to come

The 2018 WSOP is a bit different from previous years in that the Main Event is not the final event on the schedule. In fact, there are 13 WSOP bracelet events remaining, including the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop beginning July 15.

Through the first 65 events on the 78-event schedule, the 2018 WSOP has seen a total of 109,463 entries with $213,425,143 in prize money won. The 2017 WSOP set records in both categories with 120,995 total entries and $231,010,874 in prize money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Biggest Snub For The Poker Hall Of Fame Isn’t Isai Scheinberg

The 10 finalists for the Poker Hall of Fame have been announced. And as is the case almost every year, who wasn’t included is a bigger story than who was.

Isai Scheinberg is certainly deserving of consideration, but he’s far from the only person whose resume isn’t getting a second look. And unlike Isai, there are a lot of forgotten poker players and contributors that don’t have public sentiment behind on their side.

Unless the induction policies of the Poker Hall of Fame are corrected, there will always be a long list of deserving people left out in the cold.

Why the Poker Hall of Fame is broken

Enshrinement in the Poker Hall of Fame is considered the ultimate honor. A scant 54 people have been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame, and only 22 are still with us.

But it wasn’t always the high honor it is today. When it was conceived by the Binions in 1979 it was a marketing gimmick. A way to grab a little more press for the decade-old World Series of Poker.

Along with legendary gamblers like Johnny Moss and Nick ‘The Greek’ Dandalos, the inaugural class also included Wild Bill Hickok and Edmund Hoyle, which provides a glimpse into the Binions’ motives for the Poker Hall of Fame.

Wild Bill was the Wild West version of a degenerate gambler and widely considered to be a losing poker player. His claim to poker fame? Being shot dead at a poker table.

Hoyle’s treatises on card games gave birth to the phrase “according to Hoyle” but he lived a couple hundred years before poker was invented.

Also inducted in 1979 was Red Winn, whose single sentence Wikipedia entry basically says, “he was good at poker.” And there was Felton “Corky” McCorquodale, who is credited (by the Poker Hall of Fame) as having introduced Texas hold ’em to Las Vegas.

The Poker Hall of Fame followed a similar trajectory until the 2000’s. From 1980-1997 the Hall would induct one person every year. Usually, but not always, the inductee was a deserving poker player chosen by the Binions.

Following the induction of Roger Moore (not the James Bond actor) in 1997, the Poker Hall of Fame went on a three-year hiatus. It returned in 2001 to induct Stu Ungar. Around this time the Poker Hall of Fame started to become a legitimate honor. It continued inducting one person every year until the current voting system (that typically inducts two people per year) was put in place in 2010.

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Naturally, there is a large backlog of players

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Poker Hall of Fame was inducting the legendary road gamblers of the 60’s and 70’s. By the time the Hall was resurrected in 2001, the deserving players of the 80’s and 90’s were already forming a very large queue. It’s a line that the policy of one inductee per year, and now two, is never going to catch up with.

Once the poker boom era players started to become eligible the players and contributors from the 80s and 90s are effectively SOL. As successful as they were in their era, their stats can’t compare. And since they weren’t major presences on TV, the nominating public is largely unaware they even exist.

Because of its exclusivity (which is a byproduct of the Hall being a gimmick for most of its existence), the Poker Hall of Fame has some glaring omissions.

None more so than Mike Caro.

The case for Caro

For those that don’t know, Mike Caro was a poker player, an author, and at the forefront of several major technological advances in poker.

A solid player during his heyday, Caro has also worked on the industry side as a consultant and manager for card rooms, with a specific interest in fair rules and game integrity. He was also heavily involved in promoting the game through writing. And he was a prolific writer.

Whether it was articles for Gambling Times or Poker Player Magazine (where he was editor in chief), or from his vast catalogs of books that include two of poker’s seminal works:

  • Caro’s Book of Poker Tells.
  • Doyle Brunson’s Super System – Caro authored the Five Card Draw section in addition to contributing statistical tables.

What most people don’t know about Caro is the “Mad Genius” was already tinkering with AI way back in 1984, when he pitted his poker playing computer ORAC against players at the World Series of Poker. He went on to create the first commercial poker AI program, called Poker Probe.

Caro was already messing around with PioSolver 30-plus years ago.

Caro was also one of the first poker players to realize what the internet and computers meant for poker. An early advocate for online poker, long before the first site became a reality, Caro was at the forefront of pre-poker boom online poker, and was even a sponsored ambassador for the first online poker site, Planet Poker.

Caro has worn many hats over the years, and has done as much as anyone in the history of the game to promote and advance poker.

If the absence of Isai Scheinberg is a mockery, then Mike Caro’s absence is an absolute travesty.

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One Week In, How Are Hard Rock And Ocean Resort Measuring Up?

The official openings of New Jersey’s two newest casinos, Hard Rock Casino and Ocean Resort Casino produced the kind of entertainment extravaganzas that the casino industry is famous for—celebrities, live music, fireworks, and hype laid on top of hype.

A fantastic experience for all the players and visitors to New Jersey. But what comes next?

Politicians and press have touted the new casinos as being a force for regeneration in Atlantic City, bringing in thousands of jobs and millions of visitors. Estimates expected over a million visitors to AC over the opening weekend.

The success or otherwise of the new casinos will be judged not by the hype, but by the hard numbers. For example, the revenue figures for the casinos produced each month by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).

Reality is that the number of casinos in Atlantic City just went up from seven to nine. That is a 28-percent increase in market supply. The DGE numbers will tell the tale of whether demand has increased in line with the extra supply, or whether the demand is not as elastic as everyone hopes.

Aficionados of The Wire may remember Stringer Bell’s hilarious attempts to explain macroeconomics to his drug dealing subordinates:

The Hard Rock and Ocean Resort Casinos are operating on the belief that they can succeed where their predecessors, The Revel and Trump Taj Mahal failed.

The rest of the AC casinos also have skin in the game. Will they lose market share to the new kids on the block or will the whole market grow for everyone?

At this stage, all we can go on is the initial reactions from the people who will really decide the issue, the punters themselves.

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Initial public reactions to Hard Rock and Ocean Resort

A first cut looking at the Twittersphere suggests that optimism may be in order.

Now that’s the reaction the casinos want. People posting positively to their social circle even though they didn’t win any money.

The Hard Rock caused much amusement with a spelling mistake, since corrected, on the huge guitar which adorns the entrance to the casino:

According to CBS local, Julie Herron, from Galloway Township, New Jersey, was “awestruck when she walked inside the Hard Rock.” After the spelling mistake, her comment took on a delicious irony.

“It’s beautiful, just fantastic. It’s really uplifting. The music is awesome, just the rhythm. Sometimes all you need is rhythm.”

Sports betting may provide the growth AC needs

Now that sports betting is legal in New Jersey, both online and offline operators are expecting to see some significant revenue growth. So are the New Jersey politicians:

Ocean Resort put its sports betting service right in the center of the casino floor. Initial indications are that it has attracted a lot of action.

The Hard Rock Casino launched without a sports book, so its revenue figures for the next few months won’t be directly comparable to Ocean Resort.

At the opening ceremony, Hard Rock International Chairman Jim Allen did finally confirm that sports betting would be available, although some technical, regulatory and contractual issues will have to be resolved first.

“I know we have had quite a few questions over the last month or so in regards to our ability to offer a sportsbook and the answer is “yes.” The media is probably aware that we are involved in the frankly now world-famous Hard Rock Stadium in South Florida. We are the host of the 100-year anniversary of the NFL and the 2020 Super Bowl. The events there have exceed even our expectations. But there are some restrictions in our agreement there which we want to comply with in accordance with our relationship with Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins and obviously the NFL.”

The Hard Rock’s music theme could provide a tipping point

The potential is certainly there, but the execution will need to be coordinated citywide.

Some commentators noticed that although billed by the casino as a sellout, Carrie Underwood’s opening night concert at the Hard Rock was notable for large numbers of empty seats—presumably allocated to people who didn’t turn up. Underwood still had a great time:

Online gambling will add to the revenues

Both Hard Rock and Ocean Resort are taking their casino offerings online, but it will be some time before both are truly up and running. Meanwhile, players who want the online casino games can find plenty of New Jersey options from the other AC casinos.

And to go back to the Stringer Bell video, therein lies the rub. What Ocean Resort and The Hard Rock offer is only a variation on a theme; tweaks here and there, like the Ocean Resort’s Exhale Spa and the Top Golf or Hard Rock’s rock star memorabilia.

There’s very little the casinos can do to make themselves radically different from each other. Price, customer service, and customers’ individual preferences will play a major role in what market share each casino can sustain in the market.

Meanwhile, when supply increases, price usually drops, so customers can expect the next twelve months to present a cornucopia of new marketing promotions and special offers. Customer loyalty schemes will be even more valuable to both players and casinos.

On the other hand, the hype should not be written off. Hype works, glitz and glamour do attract customers from out of state.

The market can grow for everyone, and if it doesn’t, then the US is still an entrepreneurial economy where survival of the fittest is the market rule.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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