Players Invited to WSOP Town Hall Meeting on Twitch

7 years ago
Poker Players Invited to WSOP Town Hall Meeting on Twitch
10:04
16 May

The second ‘Town Hall’ conference of the year for the World Series of Poker will take place this coming Thursday May 19th as officials preview the 47th Annual WSOP.

Once again Executive Director Ty Stewart will be joined by Tournament Director Jack Effel, this time in a live video conference broadcast on Twitch. Also appearing for the WSOP will be Bill Rini, Head of Online Poker at WSOP.com.


The opportunity for the media and public to give their views and ask questions about the forthcoming festival has taken a modern slant in recent times. Back in February they held an hour-long interactive session, one of the main points of discussion centering around the playing schedules for events, with the WSOP planning to shorten the length of tournaments to avoid late finishes and undesirable extra days.

Naturally earlier start-times proved to be a contentious point for many of the poker world’s lazier pros – last year’s Main Event winner Joe McKeehen venting his spleen on Twitter on behalf of his bad-timekeeping buddies:

It won’t affect me as much as many others but in a city that never sleeps, it’s going to cause many people to skip events.”

Although McKeehen is hardly the best example of players’ views, open sessions such as the Town Hall provide an excellent platform for pros and other interested parties to have a say in how the future of poker will be - and the direction it ought to be heading in.

Recent examples of this - away from the WSOP - have ensured that players are represented at the highest level of decision-making in the game, even if the result is not always what they or the game might hope for. With the increase in offline/online play and dual sponsorship, even internet players should be looking forward to such public forums.


Other new ideas which have made their way through to the 2016 schedule include a mixed online and offline event, where players can actually top up their starting stacks by playing an online event before the real event number 4 starts. Players will have to be in Nevada first to participate though.

In a first of its kind for the WSOP, they have also included a sponsored event, the Crazy Eights No-Limit Hold’em having an $888 buy-in to reflect their sponsors in event 54. In addition, ‘tag-team’ poker will also make an appearance, event 61 being a team event.

One of the biggest changes has been in the payout structure, this year seeing a 50% increase in those making the money – the flatter structure now being set at 15% instead of 10% of players reaching the money.

“By paying 50% more entrants and reaching the money earlier, we anticipate the 2016 WSOP to be the most rewarding yet,” said WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel of the changes.

The Main Event – the real biggie among the bracelet on offer – will finish up on July 13th when the final table is set, and then reconvene on October 30th in order to avoid a clash with the US Presidential elections.


Although the WSOP have also changed quite a few things internally, the Q&A session is unlikely to attract much in the way of ‘controversy’ this time around, but with poker pros you can never be quite sure.

Instead of sourcing out media coverage as they have traditionally done in years gone by, the current approach is on building an ‘in-house’ team to take care of all the various media and reporting tasks.

‘Kevmath’, the ‘social media superstar’ has been brought in ‘on loan’ as the ‘TwitterCzar’ to take care of the burgeoning real-time discussions among poker fans, and it seems as though the WSOP has finally cottoned on to the ‘inhouse’ approach which the WPT and PokerStars have been using for some time now.

Questions for the Town Hall meeting can be relayed through TwitchTV chat on the WSOP channel, and of course the Official WSOP - Twitter account will also pass on any queries which might be deemed worthy of discussion.


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Andrew from Edinburgh, Scotland, is a professional journalist, international-titled chess master, and avid poker player.Read more

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