WSOP Brings Back Team Play

First, there was Alexandre Dreyfus and his dream of sportifying poker. Soon enough, the Global Poker League was born, a unique league comprised of 12 teams/franchises led by 12 managers from all around the world. Those 12 managers will have the unique opportunity on Thursday to rewrite poker history and select their roster of three drafted players and two ‘Wildcards.’ This would be something never seen before: teams competing with each other in poker tournaments.

But wait: is it really the first time the poker world has ever seen a team play? Well, if we dig deep enough and take the World Series of Poker history book in our hands, we will eventually notice something called the Mixed Doubles Event played at the end of the 70s and early 80s.

Mixed Doubles Event?

And indeed, it was not Alex Dreyfus who invented this new, amazing concept of team play in poker. Between 1979 and 1983, the WSOP organized a special event called the Mixed Doubles. In this tournament, a man and a woman would join forces and play as one to compete for a gold bracelet. Sounds like fun right? Well, it was, in the beginning at least.

In four of the five events, Seven Card Stud was played and in only one (1980), No Limit Texas Holdem was king. The first pair to win this unique events was legendary: Texas' Dolly Doyle Brunson and two-time bracelet winner Starla Brodie.To get a better idea of what this event looked like in 1979, let’s look at the numbers: $600 buy-in, 25 pairs aka teams and a prize pool of $15,000. The Brunson-Brodie ‘couple’ got $4,500.

The No Limit event had 41 teams at the start and a total prize pool of $24,600. The winners? A.J. Myers and Lynn Harvey. In 1981, 52 teams gathered at the start - a peak for this kind of format. In the last two events, the WSOP raised the buy-in to $800 and after a 50-pair event in 1983, the organizers decided it was best to eliminate the event.

So why are we telling you this, you may legitimately wonder. Simple, because the WSOP will resurrect the format in 2016.

Poker Team Play All Over Again

The announcement was made on a French radio show called RMC Poker Show by WSOP director for Caesars Entertainment Gregory Chochon. Chochon said the new event will have a very affordable buy-in - just $1,000 - if we take into account the fact that we are talking about a team tournament.

Every team entering the event will be comprised of 2 to 4 players ‘like the Ryder Cup or Davis Cup’. Chochon didn’t give any more details about the actual format so, for the time being, we can only speculate. Since the WSOP had already experimented with this format, we can safely assume that the players in a team will rotate and play against their opponents alternatively. Tournament director Matt Savage has some idea of how the tournament should work:

I've always done it with alternating levels and even allowed them to rotate in cash games as well @SuddenlyBryce. https://t.co/LzGvfbGv3h

— Matt Savage (@SavagePoker) February 15, 2016

Obviously, Alex Dreyfus has welcomed the idea and believes it to be a first step towards towards the concept of Team Poker and another important step towards sportifying the game.

2016 will be the (1st) year where the concept of Team Poker will really take off thanks to the power of WSOP. #acceptance#sportifyPoker

— Alexandre Dreyfus (@alex_dreyfus) February 15, 2016

Editor’s Take: Team Poker, A Long Shot?

Team Poker is definitely an interesting concept, but will iit stand the test of time and appeal to the masses? Unlikely!

While I agree that the conditions were very different in the early 80s when WSOP first tried the experiment, poker is still the same game if we go to the very basics. By nature, poker is self-centered, self-interested and egocentric: destroy all your opponents at the table - friends and foes alike - and remain the last man standing. Just think of chess, a game I consider to be similar to poker (of course without taking into consideration the luck factor): does chess have a successful, popular team format? No, and in all likelihood, it will never have one. Just like in poker, the chess player is much more comfortable playing for his own self-interest while beating his entire competition.

To really sportify poker, we do not need to make it a team game, we just need to make it a skill game first and foremost. In other words, stop the gaming operators from eliminating the skill edge a great poker player has over his adversaries and start promoting to the masses the formats that can really prove the game is indeed all about skill and not luck. If we don’t prove that - and formats like the cash games or even the soon-to-be-dead HU cash tables can obviously support the skill case - then it is my opinion that poker will never be truly sportified.

What do you think? Do you agree with the editor? Will Team Poker prevail? Will it help sportifying the game? Share your opinions with the rest of the world in the comment section below.