Winning the World Series of Poker championship is every poker player's dream. When you have outplayed over 6,000 players, you are, if only until the next tournament, "the world's best." Unlike soon-to-be-anonymous lottery winners, the WSOP champion is guaranteed a life-altering series of financial arrangements, ranging from online poker site endorsements that have paid millions per year, to $50,000-a-day corporate guest appearances, to a free Las Vegas penthouse condominium in return for plastering one's face on Vegas airport billboards. Tournament-winning players like the notoriously self-marketing Phil Hellmuth have become household names, hustling everything from poker video games to instructional DVDs on how to beat other players selling similar DVDs. In the few years since poker has been prominently televised, major U.S. poker tournaments have become the third most-watched "sport" on TV, trailing football and NASCAR.
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The massive popularity of tournament poker has irreparably altered the tenor of the game by introducing the lottery aspect of the big win. Unlike cash games in which you can quit whenever you want, in tournament poker, all entrants pay a single entry fee. You cash out only by beating at least 90 percent of the field; only the top 1 percent of participants get a significant payout. To create exciting megaprizes, tournaments are structured to pay huge sums to the top few finishers, while leaving the rest empty-handed -- a sharp contrast with traditional poker games, in which a single table can host multiple winners.
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In his book, "Tournament Poker for Advanced Players," David Sklansky wrote that a novice could essentially negate many of the attributes of the skilled tournament player by going "all in" (betting all his chips) with any decent hand. Counter to what was once considered good poker, this all-in strategy has been become one of the most successful methods for negating the superior playing skills of the best players. Watch any TV tournament and you will see "all-in fests." Players find a playable hand and shove in all their chips. This isn't poker as once played, but tournament poker as it is now played.
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Until recently, most tournament players believed that they had an edge over other players and could overcome the vigorish through skillful play. But this was before optimal game strategy became more universally employed. As poker moves from seat-of-the-pants play to easily available complex mathematical strategies, the likelihood of great players emerging from the mass of entrants will dramatically decline. More and more tournaments will be decided by a succession of "coin flips" (competition between two hands of nearly equal value), with results becoming increasingly random. Given that tournament poker is a zero-sum game (all the money comes from the entrants), and the casinos take 6 to 10 percent (or more) for hosting the events, the likelihood of being a long-term consistent winner is quite low. Unlike golf or tennis, where skill is a major factor and the best players inevitably rise to the top, it is now unusual to see a poker player, no matter how skilled, booking repeated wins.
And yet poker is being presented as a potentially life-changing opportunity. A generation of young kids is being seduced into believing in the easy life. Many drop out of school to pursue a misrepresented dream. In the process, they ignore productive careers in order to chase a mirage, an illusion that is in the process of unraveling. Meanwhile, cloistered in their virtual worlds, they are becoming social misfits. Walter Matthau once said that poker combined all the worst aspects of the capitalism that made America great. Perhaps his quip should be amended to say that poker now combines all the worst aspects of virtual existence that threaten American culture. Too bad. For those with a good memory, poker will have been a great pastime. For those who are new to the game, it will be a sorry disappointment.
