Hello from Texas! This is not where the WSOP is. That’s in Vegas. But I was just there and now I have some thoughts to share from my couch in my current home! If you wanted Andrew’s Thoughts on the WSOP, you are in exactly the right place. Congratulations.
Alright so here’s the deal (poker pun not intended but it’s pretty cute). If you’re a fan of poker, the WSOP is pretty dope. And I suspect that essentially everyone reading this likes poker because it’s what basically every single one of you knows me from. And there is nothing like the WSOP: 7 straight weeks of poker events every single day, multiple events a day, with massive prizes at stake, and with poker fans from across the globe congregating in order to take part.
A man once said, “We’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over.” That man was Conor McGregor, UFC champion and frequent enjoyer of cocaine, probably. But what makes Conor different from the average WSOP enjoyer is not the stimulant ingestion, nay. It is that the WSOP is so unique, and dare I say… special, that there are so many poker fans that are just happy to take part even if the dream of taking over remains forever lofty.
Now before you start to worry that this is a sponsored post, let me tell you that I am a free agent, and it is not. In fact I will happily tell you some negative things about the WSOP, just now.
The Horseshoe casino, where half of the event takes place and where you often have to walk through to get to the poker tables, is disgustingly smoky. The low-ceiling design of an older casino—which was originally opened in 1973—traps the smoke of a thousand degen poker players puffing away.
The parking garage can take forever to exit. This isn’t 1973 anymore and parking in Vegas ain’t free. Unless you’ve got an upgraded players card. Which also isn’t free. Anyway, you have hundreds of players all bagging up their tournament chips at the same time at night, attempting to either pay the parking fee or get their damn players card to swipe at the exit gates.
No food delivery to the tables. You made a dinner break? Great, run your ass to Martha Stewart’s place for her $60 salmon.
And while we’re talking about prices. My god. The Vegas Strip is completely cooked on this front. There are some great neighborhoods with awesome food at a very reasonable price—the Arts District and Chinatown being the two best, imo. But everything is absurd expensive on the Strip and everyone is talking about it now.
Rookie dealers. I can’t fault the WSOP for this too much, because it’s such a massive event, and my guess is that there simply aren’t 1800 experienced dealers or whatever who can just leave their regular gigs for 7 weeks. It’s just a part of the experience, and players need to be helpful and mindful.
Chairs in the tournament ballrooms are pretty mid.
It’s absolute hot as balls in Vegas. So you’re either in casinos all day or… I mean you’re just not gonna be outside really. So it’s a lot of time in casinos before and after busting tournaments, unless you get an AirBnB type of rental which I strongly recommend but most people don’t do.
Right. With that out of the way, let’s circle back to what the WSOP has and what nobody else has:
History.
This is important because the WSOP is now waging war against the WPT. That latter company recently launched a “sweepstakes-model” gambling site in the US, and is doing everything in its power to get attention on that fact, even if it means disruption to the WSOP events themselves. But disruption and attention are not the end goal. The WPT knows all this attention leads to the holy grail of the gambling industry: The sacred and revered F. T. D. And not just any First Time Depositor… AMERICAN FTD’s. The citizens of the wealthiest and 3rd most populous country in the world, who have been mostly starved of the online version of the game they created, hold the key to an absolute treasure trove of online rake.
The WSOP is after the same trove. It’s a vehicle that is now owned by GGPoker, which recently bought the live poker event brand from Caesars for the small sum of $500 million. The transaction provides GG with its own strategic entry point into what is arguably the most valuable market for the biggest online poker room.
The WPT itself was purchased not all that long ago, too. In 2021, an unknown entity named Element Partners spent $105 million for the pleasure of slapping the legacy brand on their own gaming software—first on a platform called WPT Global for non-Americans, and now the “sweepstakes” site.
The WPT has some history—many of us watched Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patton narrate some of the first televised poker we ever saw. It was a simpler time, and it was exciting and it was magical. But it was also this century.
The first World Series of Poker took place in 1970. Guys with names like Sailor Roberts, Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim Preston, Puggy Pearson, Crandell Addington, Carl Cannon, and Doyle Fucking Brunson gathered around a table and battled it out. Instead of one man left standing with a trophy, at the end of the game, they held a vote for who was the best player. Johnny Moss took it down. That was 55 years ago, and when you go play in the World Series of Poker today, you play under the banners of a lot of those guys who started it all.
You can never take away the history from the WSOP. And for a lot of people who come to play in the event, especially the Main Event, it’s an absolute thrill to officially be a part of it. A true bucket list item. I told the story of a doctor from New Hampshire in my most recent vlog. He works in the NICU back home, and while we were on the money bubble, after apologizing for his stalling, he said he felt as if he was under more pressure to cash this tournament than he is at times when making life or death decisions in the hospital. Now, of course, he’s being a bit facetious. I don’t think he would trade any young person’s life for checking the bucket list. But it genuinely meant SO MUCH to him to be able to say that he cashed the Main, forever.
The WSOP Main Event is the only tournament in the world that matters. It matters to people and to poker players as a whole. If you are lucky enough to win a tournament somewhere in the world, that tournament will always matter to you. But it will never matter to people the way the ME does. No WPT tourney, no EPT tourney, not even our biggest tournament at The Lodge, unfortunately, can hold a candle to it.1 In fact, the WSOP even matters to the people who fill the ranks of their competition, as they are seen playing those very tournaments day in, day out!
The WSOP, in my personal opinion, should not worry about prestige. They have no competitor on that front. They should worry less about the sanctity of the bracelet, because the history of the event and of the game itself is forever locked inside the brand. Focus less on the bracelet itself and more on making players happy.
They should allow and facilitate final table chops. I believe they don’t want to because they want to protect the trophy and its glory. Again, I believe that’s an unnecessary defensive stance in the war they currently find themselves in. They now have the most recognizable face in the industry on their roster: GGPoker-sponsored Daniel Negreanu. Ask him and a handful of other tournament experts how much of the remaining prizepool the WSOP should make players leave to play for (25% and the bracelet?) and make the players happy.
The new WSOP+ app is a massive upgrade to the tournament experience... Take it a step further and figure out how to let players order food to their table through the app. Make the players happy.
Open the parking gates for one hour after a tournament completes for the night. Make the players happy. (I know but it’s worth a shot 😛)
Build a smoking deck on the backside of the building and make the back half of the Horseshoe casino nonsmoking. Hire young content creators to host evening Meet Up Games in the cash game section of the Paris ballroom for a lighter vibe. Create a VIP lounge where only players who’ve won online rings and bracelets can access it. Build a room onsite to sweat final table livestreams with a dedicated bar and special guest poker analysts/commentators. Stream super high stakes cash games on the final table set during nights there are no tournament streams. Maybe those players can vote on who played best!
The WSOP is special but there are also endless ways to make it better. Maybe the new app is only a first step in year one of an exciting new ownership situation with deeper pockets. We’ll see where poker’s most historical and meaningful event goes from here, but there is no denying where it has come from, who’s been around the longest, and how much that means to a lot of poker fans and players.
Perhaps the only other tournament that matters is the $50,000 Poker Players’ Championship. But that just so happens to take place at the WSOP, also, so. Yeah.
Such thoughtful writing love! You forgot to include; better food options for wives and girlfriends who want to come for dinner break. 😉
Congrats on your 2025 WSOP main event cash!
Seems the WSOP could use an ambassador. Someone with ideas, vision, respect in the industry. Someone who knows content creation, building and growing a business AND a brand. Maybe someone whose home state resembles a mitten? Just a thought...