The Biggest (Friendly) Game in Town

I’m trying to remember just how many Cirque du Soleil shows Vera Valmore and I have seen.

Having spent a number of summers in Las Vegas with the WSOP -- with Vera coming out to visit each time -- I know we saw a few. I believe O was the first, then Mystère. And of course Love, the Beatles one. There might have been one or two others in there, but I forget.

Was thinking about those shows again today while reading the story of Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté announcing this new “Big One for One Drop”-branded festival of cash games and tournaments scheduled to happen in October, called the Monte Carlo One Drop Extravaganza.

The marquee event will be a third “Big One,” albeit this time the tournament will sport a €1 million buy-in (even more the the $1 million buy-ins for the first two). Again a big chunk of each buy-in (€111,111) will go to the One Drop charity, and once again the entries will be capped (at 48 players).

A key difference, though, is that professionals won’t be allowed to enter the event, with the plan being instead to reserve all spots for “recreational” players -- i.e., the businesspersons and philanthropists who have made up a percentage of the previous “Big One” fields.

“Right now there is no poker tournament in the world of this magnitude that is strictly for recreational players,” Laliberté told PokerNews, using a decent-sized magnitude of understatement. The pros will be welcome to play the side events and cash games, but the main event will be strictly for amateurs.

It’s curious to think whether such an event will be as interesting to follow with no “name” pros in the field (although there will be some familiar folks in there, for sure).

Again, I think back to those Cirque du Soleil shows. All were highly entertaining, although to be honest I don’t recall coming close to being “moved” at all at any of them. Each had somewhat abstract themes and/or messages (with “Love” being the most obvious example), but each was also more or less overwhelmed by spectacle -- thrillingly so, mind you, but in an ephemeral way, at least for me.

This rec-only million-euro tournament seems like it’ll be a similar spectacle, without too much deeper meaning in terms of its place in poker’s story and developing culture. About that I could be wrong, though. And of course, the charity component ensures it will have meaning beyond poker, for certain.

Will be curious when it comes around. Laliberté usually does put on a good show.

(EDIT (7/13/16): Looks like the schedule for the sucker is out now -- you can see it here.)

Image: Laliberté during a press conference at the Johnson Space Center, public domain.

The Big One for One Drop One Month Away

Am settling in after the big trip, looking to relax a bit here over the next two-and-a-half weeks before heading Vegasward. Was able yesterday to catch up with some of the World Series of Poker coverage going on, including checking out updates on PokerNews.

Last night I had a chance to join Lou Krieger and Shari Geller on their podcast, Keep Flopping Aces, which has recently moved over to the newly-relaunched Hold’em Radio network. We talked some about my trip to Uruguay, but mostly about the WSOP. The show is being replayed all week and will be available for download.

I also last night had a chance to enjoy some of the live streaming from the WSOP.com site I mentioned last post. Saw a bit of the end of Event No. 3, the $3,000 Heads-Up NLHE/PLO event won by Leif Force, plus a good stretch of Event No. 4, the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud Hi-Low event won by Cory Zeidman. Couldn’t stay up for the end of the latter as it went until after 3:30 a.m. or so Vegas time, dawn here on the east coast.

After some glitches early on, the live streams appeared to be in working order. David Tuchman led the commentary on Event No. 3, with Steve Gross and Doc Sands helping out. The other feed had no commentary, but the cards and bets were announced well enough to follow the action.

Here’s that page again for the live streams. The next one starts at 2 p.m. today, I believe, as that stacked final table of Event No. 5 gets underway, the $1,500 pot-limit hold’em event with Bryan Pellegrino, Jon Aguiar, Tommy Vedes, John Eames, and Daniel Negreanu among the last nine.

For those looking for daily recaps and highlights from the WSOP, let me recommend “The WSOP Daily Shuffle” that WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla is putting out each day. You can find those on the “News” page on the site amid other articles, including Dalla’s initial wraps from each event. For more then go over to the individual pages for each tourney and find Nolan’s “Official Report” from each event for all sorts of facts about each.

By the way, the WSOP made another good move this week by hiring Jess Welman as the new Managing Editor of the website. As we’ve come to know via her work with various other outlets, Jess makes everyone with whom she works better, and it’s great to see her teaming up with Nolan and the rest of the WSOP folks in this way.

One of the stories Dalla, Welman, and others are going to be reporting on more and more as the Series goes will be the $1,000,000 buy-in tournament scheduled to begin one month from today (July 1st), a.k.a., “The Big One for One Drop” (Event No. 55).

It is sounding more and more like the field for that one may exceed 40 entrants, perhaps even reaching the announced “cap” of 48. At present at least 30 have confirmed they’ll play, and when I spoke to Seth Palansky not too long ago he sounded confident they’ll get several more.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had some nice email exchanges with some of those involved with promoting both the event and the One Drop charity, and agreed to make Hard-Boiled Poker a “media partner” for All in for One Drop. There’s a website with lots of information about the tournament and One Drop, now the official charity of the WSOP.

Unlike some charities with dubious organization and/or handling of resources, the One Drop charity, initiated by Guy Laliberté in 2007, seems especially well run and devoted to an unmistakably worthwhile cause to increase access to clean drinking water in countries presently lacking such a basic need to sustain health and life. If 40-plus do participate, with $111,111.11 taken from each entry for One Drop, that’ll translate to around $4.5 million or perhaps $5 million raised.

Was glad to get involved when asked, happy to help folks like 2010 WSOP ME champ Jonathan Duhamel (pictured above with Laliberté) and others looking to promote the tournament and the charity. Besides, I’m as intrigued as anyone by the prospect of a poker tournament with a $1 million buy-in... and, perhaps, a first prize of more than $15 million (or even more than $17 million).

A ton happening at the WSOP between now and then, of course. Looking forward to a little time to enjoy being a fan before heading out to help report on it all.

One Million Dollars

Not a lot of time for scribbling this morning, though I did want to share a brief reaction to yesterday’s announcement at the World Series of Poker of “The Big One,” that $1 million buy-in WSOP bracelet event scheduled to take place in 2012. If you haven’t heard about The Big One, you can head over to Betfair Poker where I wrote a bit about it today.

Besides making history as the largest-ever buy-in poker tournament -- WSOP or otherwise -- The Big One will also mark the first time (to my knowledge) that part of the prize pool for a WSOP event will be taken out to be given to a charity. A little over 11% of the players’ entry fees will go to One Drop, a charity started by Guy Laliberté who no doubt was a driving force behind the creation of the WSOP event.

A million dollars. Evokes Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. As does the bald-headed Laliberté, although I think it is safe to say the Cirque du Soleil founder is clearly on the side of good here.

A number of big names have already indicated their intentions to play in the event, including Patrik Antonius, Bobby Baldwin, Johnny Chan, Tom Dwan, Tony G, Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, and Laliberté. A special platiunum bracelet will go to the winner, and the payout structure will be flattened a bit so that the top 20% of finishers get paid.

I mentioned at the end of the Betfair piece how the whole idea of having a $1 million event seemed to turn tournament poker upside-down. Rather than offering a chance to risk a little to win a lot, here we have an event where the buy-in will exceed the first-place prize money for the great majority of the events. At the 2010 WSOP, only three events saw the winners make seven-figure scores: the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship (Event No. 2), won by Michael Mizrachi ($1,559,046); the $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event (Event No. 52), won by Dan Kelly ($1,315,518); and of course the Main Event (Event No. 57), won by Jonathan Duhamel ($8,944,310).

I also noted there at the end of the Betfair piece how all of the other drama from the first week of the WSOP had made it so The Big One wasn’t even “the big one” when it came to this week’s stories. Probably not what WSOP organizers expected a week ago when preparing to make the announcement yesterday.

I don’t think anyone was particularly surprised by the announcement of a million-dollar event. The $250,000 buy-in “Super High Roller” tournament that was added to the Aussie Millions schedule earlier this year in a way signaled the possibility that such an event was coming, perhaps sooner than later.

I wrote about that one back in January in a post titled “Hard to Relate: On the $250K Aussie Millions Super High Roller.” Obviously The Big One will be similarly hard for most of us to relate to, never mind the way it will be impossible to “relate” the bracelet won in that event to the several hundreds won in other WSOP events over the last 40-plus years.

Although I tend to lean toward the “purist” way of thinking and thus often instinctively resist massive innovations or changes to the WSOP, I do recognize that one element making the WSOP special is the way it accommodates such a wide variety of games and buy-ins. So I actually don’t mind this new event being added, despite the fact that The Big One is going to throw everything out-of-whack records-wise. Will also be highly interested to see who ultimately ends up participating, much more so, probably, than how the tourney actually plays out.

All of which is to say I’m intrigued by this million-dollar buy-in WSOP event. Meanwhile, I’ll go back to trying to build further upon that one dollar I won over on Carbon Poker a while back, which I’ve currently run up to a handsome $2.28.

Perhaps by the time The Big One goes off next summer I’ll have written my book on how to beat $0.11 Turbo short-handed sit-n-gos.