With the 2010 World Series of Poker now officially wrapped up, we here at the Cardplayerlifestyle.com poker blog thought it would be interesting to serve our readers up some fun tidbits about the WSOP.
Here you go, in no particular order:
As some of you might be aware, the WSOP Player of the Year gets a personalized gift of approximately $25,000-$30,000 in value. This year’s winner, Frank Kassela opted to have Harrah’s cover his buy-ins for the next 3 Main Events – maybe he’s worried he’ll run bad and won’t be able to afford it? 🙂
Since the inception of the November 9 idea, play at the World Series of Poker Main Event stops for 4 months when play gets down to the last 9 players. That means there’s still approximately $30 million in prize money that hasn’t been distributed. So what happens to all those millions of dollars during the 4 month wait? Apparently Harrah’s puts them in T-bills and adds the interest to the prize pool. The grand total of interest accrued on $30 million for 4 months – a whopping $450. Pretty sad if you ask me…
And finally, some strange numbers about TV viewership at the WSOP – ratings indicate that just 1.5 million people watched this year’s final table broadcast, versus 2.1 million last year, a decrease of about 25%. While some might say last year’s numbers were influenced by Phil Ivey making the final table, I contend that having the Grinder among the November 9 would’ve pulled in just as strong ratings. What’s probably to blame is the later starting time for broadcasts, as ESPN aired the final episodes of its coverage at 10 p.m., rather than 9 p.m., like last year. Or, perhaps, some people decided to just wait and watch on the “Tube” Internet sites, rather than watch live on TV (like me :-)).
Whatever the cause, it never ceases to amaze me that the ESPN crew manages to put together an entire episode (the climactic episode of their entire event coverage no less!) in just a couple days. Great work guys!
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