Football is the most popular sport in the world, feeding the souls of billions of people worldwide. That didn’t stop Europe’s governing body UEFA from cancelling all international fixtures scheduled for June, including the Euro 2020 play-offs.
At club level, UEFA also postponed the Champions League and Europa League with the possibility of restarting in July or August. The English Premier League (EPL) used the word ‘optimistic’ in suggesting a June kickstart.
So why hasn’t the World Series of Poker (WSOP) cancelled an event due to start on Tuesday, May 26?
The WSOP at the Heart of the Pandemic
On Saturday, April 4, the United States counted 277,965 cases of COVID-19, making it the epicentre of the current pandemic by quite some margin.
The state of Nevada, the home of the WSOP, has confirmed 1,742 cases of COVID-19 and 46 deaths, leaving it slap, bang in the middle of the state-by-state doom charts.
But the WSOP is not merely for Nevadans; it’s a global phenomenon; poker’s Christmas Day. It’s the most significant period in the poker calendar, bar none, and it would be a disaster if it were not to go ahead.
Still, we have to add a dose of realism.
Given the reaction to other sporting bodies around the world, and the increasing spread and death toll. It’s highly unlikely that the WSOP will go ahead given the health and safety nightmare that a live poker tournament provides its organisers. This morning, I went to Sprouts to buy some food, and if a store full of people refuse to partake in social distancing protocols, what chance do you have when hundreds of thousands of people turn up to toss dirty chips and cards around tables full of people rubbing elbows.
When weighing up the pros and cons, I don’t think the WSOP is doing anything wrong by waiting until the last minute. There are so many people for whom the WSOP is a significant income source, and for them, every day that passes without the shutters coming down provides hope.
If the series goes ahead, the choice to attend rests with the individual. Many will choose to skip it over safety fears. Most would have already made tother plans irrespective of the nod from the WSOP.
What Are The Alternatives
The most obvious decision is to hold it at a later date. It’s not going to be easy to find a suitable location for eight weeks, but with some thinking outside of the box? Who would have thought a live poker tournament would have happened in Wembley Stadium?
Outside of shifting dates, the only other alternative outside of cancelling it is to host it online at WSOP.com. The 2020 series planned to hand out a record 101 bracelets, and you can’t replicate that online. WSOP.com doesn’t offer the full variety of games, and payment processing rules are too stringent with $500 daily and $1,000 weekly caps.
The other issue is liquidity with WSOP.com only able to serve people living within the borders of Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware, throwing up the question of ‘fairness.’ For many professionals, winning a gold bracelet is a bucket list goal, and I’m not sure how well it would go down, within the community if the WSOP offered the people in those states the chance to win a myriad of bracelets within the $400 to $1,500 price range.
If the officials do cancel the 2020 WSOP, what will happen to the 14 scheduled online bracelets already in situ? If they do go ahead, then the WSOP will surely add to them although you could also see them cancelled with the rest of the series.
WSOP Suffering; WSOP.com Thriving
Whatever the WSOP do, there is an appetite for online games within the three states served by the WSOP.
The new 18 gold ring WSOP.comOnline Super Circuit, that ran between March 14 – 31, guaranteed $1.24m in prize money, and pulled in more than 3-times that amount with an average prize pool of $219,186. The $525 Main Event attracted 1,134 entrants (763-unique), and Champie Douglas won the $130,410 first prize. Matt Stout will join him at the season-ending Global Casino Championships after winning the Casino Championship title, cashing six times, making three final tables and winning two rings (if that event goes ahead).
The WSOP reacted immediately to that fantastic turnout by creating another event. The WSOP.com Spring Online Championships runs April 1 through May 3, and guarantees more than $4m in GTD prize money throughout more than 100 games with buy-ins ranging between $10 to $1,000.
Highlights include the Sunday Special Edition: $215 or $320 buy-in, $100k GTD NLHE events, the $525 buy-in, $300k GTD NLHE Main Event, a $1000 buy-in, $40k GTD NLHE High Roller, and a $500 buy-in, $40k GTD Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) High Roller.
Whether the WSOP does go the way of the UEFA Champions League remains a mystery, but unlike football, poker players will still get their fix, even in a place as restricted as the US – it’s just never going to be the same.