May 28, 2008
World Series of Poker kicks off Friday in
Las Vegas
By Steve Friess
Last May, Jerry Yang was just a 39-year-old social
worker from Temecula with six kids, a hefty mortgage and a wife
who worked at night to make ends meet. Poker was a recently
acquired, TV-inspired hobby he indulged in at the nearby Pechanga
Casino.
But as this year's 55-event, six-week World Series of Poker
season kicks off Friday, Yang is a millionaire who is gunning
to defend his title as 2007 winner of the $10,000 World Championship
No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em, a.k.a. the Main Event.
The promise embedded in Yang's story is precisely why Commissioner
Jeffrey Pollack believes more than 30,000 people will play and
why more than 100,000 people will come to the Rio All-Suites
Hotel-Casino just to watch for free. "You can't buy your way
onto an NBA court, but you can buy your way into the World Series
of Poker and walk away as a world champion," Pollack said.
Indeed, anyone can play in the events, which have entry fees
from $1,000 to $50,000. Some don't even have to; Yang won his
Main Event entry in a satellite tournament. That cost $225;
in two weeks in July he outlasted 6,358 players to win $8.25
million.
Likewise, thousands appear to watch their favorite poker pros.
Still, poker's white-hot popularity may be leveling off. The
WSOP's ratings on ESPN fell in 2007, and the number of entrants
in the Main Event dropped from an all-time high of 8,773 in
2006.
That may explain a dramatic change for the 2008 Main Event:
Once the final table of nine players is settled in July, the
tournament will halt until November, when the finalists will
duke it out on TV. In the past, the entire tournament was completed
in July and aired in November, by which time the results had
been widely reported.
"Whereas traditionally, the Main Event resulted in one superstar,
the champion, now the Main Event is going to result in nine
superstars, one of which will receive our championship bracelet,"
Pollack said. "We think in the four months in between when we
stop play and finish playing, those nine players will become
household names."
Some poker veterans, including two-time Main Event champ Doyle
Brunson, have said they're uneasy with halting play, but Yang,
who now runs his own small-stakes eponymous poker event at Pechanga,
supported Pollack's plan as "something that will be very good
for the sport."
Though Yang faces long odds in his quest for a repeat -- the
last time that happened was in 1987-88, when fewer than 170
people competed -- he's excited to return.
"I'm just trying to be a good ambassador for the World Series,"
said Yang, who gave 10% of his prize to charity. "I'm not nervous
at all. I'm ready."
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