The Showdown continues with WSOP tournament director Jack Effel.
Host Jon Friedberg begins this part of the interview by asking about how Effel puts together the tournament schedule. Specifically, is it made so No Limit Hold’em players get to play in all the No Limit Hold’em events and mixed players for mixed events and the like.
Effel responded, “Well, it’s not an exact science. What I try to do is offer the highly attended events as noon starts and then the smaller fields as the later starts which ends up being No Limit and Pot Limit events at noon and then the mixed variations at five o’clock. I try to spread the mixed events out so if you are a seven card stud player you can play the $1,500 and the $10,000. If you want to play HORSE you can play the $1,500 and the $10,000 … so you wouldn’t necessarily see a HORSE event backed up by another HORSE event.”
Effel continued, “You can put a mixed event any day of the week and the guys who play those events w3ill be there. But you can’t put a $1,500 event on a Tuesday because you will get bigger participation because you will get a much larger field on the weekend for that level of event.”
Friedberg then discusses the chatter about the huge buy-in events. Friedberg asked if the WSOP is going to integrate huge buy-in events and what Effel’s thoughts are on including those events in POY races.
Effel said, “Well I think that every buy-in is meaningful. At any byu-in level there is going to be a certain level of competition and skill, it’s not going to be a crapshoot or cakewalk. The higher the buy-in the tougher the field comes into effect. The field of 200 playing in a $10,000 Omaha event is probably a little tougher than let’s say an open $1,500 event. But they both have their level of skill needed to play those events.”
Responding to Friedberg’s question regarding events such as these at the WSOP, Effel stated, “There’s always the possibility for more buy-ins. We always try to find events that are exciting to players.”
You can follow Jack Effel on Twitter @WSOPTD if you want to hear more about the man in charge of the tournaments at the World Series of Poker.
Remember that Jon Friedberg wants to hear from you about Full Tilt Poker’s multi-entry poker tournaments, so send him a message on Twitter @JonFriedberg or via email at jonfriedberg@gmail.com.
Jon, another great interview, keep up the great work. I would like to make a point about the “diluting” comment you made. While I hate to disagree with Mr. Effel, he is an expert in his field, but I must disagree with his statement that adding bracelet events doesn’t “dilute” the importance of the bracelet. That is like saying that if the NFL put on a European based Super Bowl and claimed that it was equal to the real Super Bowl it wouldn’t somehow reduce the importance of the original. The concept of a European Super Bowl being equal to the original is ludicrous, and so is the concept that a WSOPE ME bracelet is equal to the WSOP ME bracelet.
Currently WSOPE bracelets represent 1.9% of the total bracelets awarded so far (not counting Casino Employee events there have been 862 bracelets given out in WSOP and 17 in WSOPE)
If you estimate, using the growth in number of events since 2007 (5.5% increase for WSOP, 36% for WSOPE) over the next 10 years WSOPE will represent 7.6% of the total bracelets, an increase of 5.7%
Now if you add in WSOP South America, WSOP Africa, WSOP China, WSOP Australia, and whatever other variations they come up with, and you say that they are all equal, it would truly dilute the value of existing and future WSOP bracelets.
Phil Hellmuth currently holds 1.25% of all bracelets awarded. If, in the next 10 years he is able to win the same number of bracelets as he has won in the past 10 years (5), but the number of bracelets offered continues to increase at the current rate and you don’t add any other WSOP brands, his percentage of total bracelets would drop to .9% (versus 1.05% if WSOPE events are not counted). If that is not diluting I don’t know what is.
My suggestion would be to keep WSOP exactly what it is, the “World” Series of Poker, and change the WSOPE to be more like the WSOP Circuit. Open as many Circuits in as many locations as you can, but don’t try to make them equal to the core WSOP here in Vegas. Otherwise the brand will eventually burn itself out.
~JediPoker
I agree with you Jedi! Great point, and very well said.
Jon