In the 2004 WSOP at least one million dollars was won by a lucky caller. Many players dream about this moment but without the right attitude. Without the right poker strategy the poker dream is just that, a dream. Read this article to find out why the Top Poker Players lost to the WSOP.
Why did the Top Poker Players lose to the WSOP? Let me answer this question. Let’s start with the 2004 WSOP Main Event Season with the winner Phil Hellmuth as the winner. If you follow poker on the web, you may have heard some of his comments where he describes how the play was different in the live event than what he had expected.
While it’s true that Hellmuth was the early favorite in the event but speed was the key word. Phil found himself being an aggressive player in the beginning while the field was slower. While the poker chips were cheap, their game was more of a science than an art. As the tables got smaller and the field got smaller, Hellmuth found himself taking more chances to succeed. He was coming into the event with around $30,000 in chips while the field was down to around half a million.
Knowing that, poker fans were not going to be giving away free money at the end of the event. As the event went on he started to chip away at his opponent’s stacks. Phil was constantly in hand, meaning he was creating a lot of mistakes. This was the element that made his opponents hate him. As a result of his aggressive play, he became known as one of the best players in the world.
Another popular game in 2004 was heads-up play. While the 2004 WSOP saw a rise in the number of heads-up poker games on the WSOP, the 2004 WSOP Heads-Up Poker Championship wasn’t especially compensated for. A typical game would see between 20 and 30 players in the final. Of these, the thousands that didn’t make the final table probably did not make the event much better.
The final table in 2004 had a little bit of everything. It was full of predictable players. Many of the players played fairly predictable poker. The two main players were Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey. The table was split between them with Ivey taking onbert Bodine and Brunson taking on Erik Seidel.
Once the games picked up, the players started to play more like professionals. Seidel got aggressive and played back at his old style, while Bodine got more hands and won with psychological pressure. Ivey came out at the end as the most dominant player of the final. The game was on the edge all the way, with only about $11,800 between the two players. The final hand was the ultimate showdown. Ivey called Bodine’s all-in bet, with the pair of aces on the board. The two players flipped over the cards and Bodine’s hand was a straight. Ivey had the two pairs and power of aces. He was assured of winning the hand and the tournament.
The other players thought this was the correct outcome for the match, with Ivey somehow holding off a win. The news quickly spread around Betfair that the World Champion had been eliminated. The forums were full of discussions about the ways of eliminating players and the one that most deserved to be knocked out was Phil Ivey.
The demise of publicity
One of the reasons publicity is so important is that it can attract players to a poker site. Online poker was gaining popularity at a tremendous rate and this was not Cheltenham Fairs big enough of a tournament to get players to move onto Betfair. It had a reputation of being too hard and the draw of the tournament close to the television audience and media hype. Many of the professional players may have felt that the draw of a Celebrity Poker Showdown on TV would cope with the extra draw of folding the cards and watching the pros in action. TV ratings for poker dealt a huge number of audiences as the game of poker was increased to a level which was not rarely shown, making the tournament attractive to watch.
However, the poker tournament did not last long. With the general opinion being that it was harder to manipulate the one on one poker game as opposed to the round of poker on a card table. Even the professional players were not entirely sure how to play poker online and were finding it more difficult than ever to acquire the necessary skills and one on one match.
The poker banners had almost no presence on the internet and their absence was going to be a long time. The internet provided a number of poker sites and the one was what was going to attract the players. Party Poker was the first to have a large scale Poker Tournament hosted by them and at a time when almost every online poker room was offering a large scale poker tournament. This tournament occurred in 2003.