Conflict Between Players and Tournament Directors Association Settled

Past days have been, among other things, marked by a conflict between a great number of players and the Tournament Directors Association (TDA). The conflict was started when the TDA announced their decision to hold the summit at the Venetian, the venue owned by Sheldon Adelson, a very unpopular person amongst poker players, especially in the ranks of those advocating restoration of online poker in the States.

This conflict has finally been resolved as the summit will take place at a different location, as announced by Matt Savage during the weekend.

The 2015 @PokerTDA Summit will be held June 26-27 @ARIAPoker Las Vegas. Registration details to follow shortly. Send your local TD please.
— Matt Savage (@SavagePoker) April 4, 2015

Adelson in a nutshell

Wealthy casino owner has been a very vocal opponent of online poker since the plans to bring it back to the U.S. were first introduced, mostly under the pretense that online gambling represents a serious threat for an average American, bringing all the perils of gambling right into their homes.

This rhetoric, although rather transparent, has found decent amount of support in the ranks of the general public while, naturally, creating a lot of tension between him and proponents of online gambling.

Tournament Directors Summit

The summit, which has been taking place every two years since 2001, is open to tournament directors from across the globe. It is a place to meet, talk and exchange ideas about how the game can be improved, what new rules can and should be introduced, what should be changed etc.

The only small flaw in the otherwise great idea (as is often the case) is that it costs money to organize. Guests at the summit are not required to pay anything, which is done to attract the greatest number of those interested to participate, but somebody still has to pay the bill.

Venetian makes an offer

On March 27, Matt Savage made an announcement on his Twitter feed that the Venetian will be hosting this year’s Tournament Directors Summit. Immediately after this announcement had been made, great number of players openly expressed their dissatisfaction and even anger that a venue owned and operated by Sheldon Adelson would host such an event.

The discussion continued in a thread that soon appeared on the 2+2 forums, with most people agreeing that having TDA Summit at the Venetians would be very disappointing. While some expressed their opinion that TDA is not too connected with online poker, the majority maintained that online and live poker are inseparable and without online, live games will suffer as well.

Linda Johnson chimed in the thread, explaining that costs of such an event are simply quite high and they cannot cover them out of the pocket. The first time the Venetian offered to host the summit, covering everything, from equipment and personal to snacks was in 2013, and on that occasion, in Johnson’s words, everybody was treated like royalty. Due to these facts, and also since there weren’t many alternatives, apart from cancelling it, they decided to accept Venetian’s offer.

The alternative

Following the pressure from the community, putting TDA representatives in quite an uncomfortable spot, the alternative did appear. Alex Dreyfus, owner of the Global Poker Index, offered to cover the costs if the summit is moved to an alternative location.

As it turned out, the pressure from the community was so strong that this offer came as a welcome relief for Matt Savage and the others on the Board of Directors of the TDA. In the end, however, the TDA ended up making arrangements directly with the Aria as the casino offered to host the event for free and made everybody’s lives little easier.

In a yet another 2+2 thread, players gathered to extend their congratulations to the TDA for doing the right thing and not ‘getting in bed with the devil’, as some have put it. Matt Savage himself came into the thread to express his gratitude to everybody who made this possible, also mentioning people from Bellagio and Planet Hollywood.

Crisis averted!