It's Day 3 of what's billed as "the most prestigious" tournament in the history of poker, and the consensus is that's it's already a crapshoot.  The betting limits at the start of play were 10k-20k with a 2k ante (with a 3k bring-in for the stud games).

The average stack was 286,900.

That’s 14 big bets per average stack. The biggest stack has only 30 big bets—which should be closer to the average.  

I’ve written enough (Part 1 Part 2) about the problematic betting structures during this WSOP, but up to this point nothing has been done.  Can we expect tournament officials to make the needed changes?  They are offering a “Player’s Forum” tomorrow morning at 10:30 AM in Amazon Room 1.  

Hopefully, like the NBA, they can listen to the people playing the game and improve the betting structure.

I hesitate to say I agree with anything that comes out of “The Mouth,” but the outspoken pros are right—the new structure offers more play in the first few levels but turns the late stages into a shove-fest. Players have the freedom to splash around a bit more in the early going, but have little room to maneuver when the chips matter the most.  

The levels that have been removed in the $5,000 No Limit Holdem event were: 25-25, 2.5k-5k, 12k-24k, and 25k-50k.  The smaller events have other levels missing.

The problems with taking the levels out really begin to show on Day 2. By the time they are down to four tables a standard raise usually pot-commits the average stack. If you want to see where the greatest discrepancies lie, look no farther than any final table.

After writing about Mike Binger’s quick start to this year’s WSOP, I began following his play through the final sixty players of the $5,000 No-Limit Holdem event. By the end of the night, Mike had made the final table (albeit as the short stack) along with several other good players.  

The next day I found a seat outside the media center at the Rio to watch the one-hour delayed final table on the big-screen TV. I was anticipating a final table that would demonstrate some great end game play. 

If I were a betting man, I would’ve placed money on Nick Schulman to win. It’s a good thing I’m not, because Nick made an appearance by the TV while he was still on it. Confused? So was I, because Nick had a ton of chips on the big screen, and it was only a one hour delay. As it turns out, play was an all-in fest from the time the cards were in the air.

Last year’s $5,000 event had a field of 622 and a star-studded final table (Phil Hellmuth, Marcel Luske, and Eugene Todd, bro to name a few). Play began just after 2:00 PM and lasted until just after midnight. Take out the dinner break and they played for 8.5 hours.  

As a spectator and poker fan, I was horrified by the rapidity of eliminations at this year’s final table. After whittling down the field of 640, it only took James Mackey 48 hands to claim his bracelet. They played for about 2.5 hours. In no way do I want to take away from the bracelet-winning efforts of “mig.com”, but the disparity in times must be pointed out.

Second place finisher Stuart Fox played exactly one hand before he was heads-up with Mackey. One hand. He then folded the next three before he was all-in and lost. Two hands equals second place. 

When Jon Friedberg captured the $1,000 No Limit Holdem bracelet in the 2006 WSOP, it took him 122 hands. With double the starting stack, this year’s first $1,500 No-Limit event took less than half that many hands to finish—only 59. Brandon Cantu’s victory in event #2 last year lasted nearly 10 hours; Ciarin O'Leary’s took less than 5.  The final blind level for Cantu was 20k-40k-5k, for O'Leary 60k-120k-15k. 

After two and a half hours, the final blind level was 30k-60k-5k for Mackey.  After ten hours, Cabinillas defeated Hellmuth with blinds at 25k-50k.  Even though the average stack for the final 9 may be doubled, the missing levels have clearly impacted late stage play.  While it's possible that some players may be playing faster, almost every no-limit holdem final table has finished in half of the time.  I find it hard to imagine that the difference lies in the players and not the structure.

WSOP officials have shown a bit more willingness to make changes on the fly this year, and I hope they can see a problem when players begin describing the end of tournaments as a “crap-shoot.” I’m not sure what changes the Nevada Gaming Commission allow to structures once they have been posted, but something needs to be done about the late stages of these events.  

An immediate solution would be rolling back the blinds once players reach the final table. Officials could make an easy decision based on X# of big blinds for the average chip stack (50 would be ideal; 35 seems more likely). Yes, events would last several hours longer, putting that much more of a strain on tournament staff and the media…but we’re not the ones playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the words of the not-always-articulate-but-usually-insightful Mike Matusow, “We can fix it.”