BEST OF THE BEST! Interesting to pick up on the gossip among the professionals at the World Series of Poker, currently in full swing out in Las Vegas. The Texas Hold’em Main Event $10,000 buy-in has always been regarded as the cream of the crop with over thirty Hold’em events in all taking place at the WSOP. However, the elite professionals all now apparently regard the Texas Hold’em Main Event as more of a lottery than an ultimate test of skill. This maybe an ego problem spreading among them caused by the fact that so many online amateurs have managed to make the final table and even lift the mega million top prize on several occasions in recent years. Professionals with real credibility like Daniel Negreanu however do have a point. Daniel claims that the H.O.R.S.E. (Hold’em-Omaha-Razz-Stud-Event) is a much more serious test of who is genuinely the Best Poker Player in the World rather than the guy or girl who takes home the most money. Any player who is not well up to speed on all the various forms of poker will very soon find themselves eliminated.
A COCKTAIL OF SKILLS Luck becomes much less of a factor in such a cocktail of required skills and the punishing, scrotum squeezing buy-in price is designed to produce a top quality, small number of elite players who more or less guarantee a celebrity top table the TV cameras will be forced to seize on. We’re talking here about a starting field of maybe only one hundred players for H.O.R.S.E. whereas the Hold’em Main Event’s player pool kicked off with well over eight thousand contestants this year.
GREED IS GOOD Personally, I’d sooner be one of eight thousand players attempting to reach a final table which more or less guarantees every player seated will become a millionaire, let alone a winner who will walk away with close on $10,000,000 in a wheelbarrow full of genuine $100 bills, than have the acknowledgement of my fellow professionals and a puny $50,000 at the end of it. I subscribe to the Gordon “Wall Street” Gekko mantra: “Greed is good!”
