blonde poker forum

I haven't read that much of the WSOP stuff so this might already have been mentioned a million times, but if Andy Black qualified for his seat on Party Poker - http://www.partypoker.com/news/events/wsop-2005.html how come he was wearing Full Tilt clothing at the Final Table?

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Fron what I have read Andy seems to be the sort of person who would tell Full Tilt where to stuff their money, although if I was in his position I might have a little auction between the 2 sites. Would have thought Party could afford to outbid anyone though.

But don't you automatically agree to wear their stuff when you enter the sat? Just wondering in case I get to the final table next year ;)

Well I know Andy was offered a HUGE sum on day 4 & 5 to wear Full-Tilt gear IF he played at any time on the TV Table, which ran from the very beginning of Day One. He did indeed spend some time on the TV Table, during that time, triggering what I heard was a $20,000 payment to Andy. Jen & I had dinner with Andy on a two nights, & he told us all sorts of mind-boggling stuff about offers he had received, but that was OTR.

One can only imagine how much he was paid to wear it in the Final. (Matusow wore Full-Tilt too). Thing is, if there was a clause in the Party Poker Qualificatuion deal that he HAD to wear PP gear, what could they do if he refused, or changed his mind?

The pre-eminence of folks wearing Full-Tilt gear in Vegas, & the amount of money Full-Tilt were chucking around, was an eye-opener - they are clearly making a move for the top. Normally you expect to see more Stars gear than anything else, but it was Full-Tilt everywhere you looked, including so many of the top American players. Full-Tilt must be spending tens of millions on promotion.

And I saw Pacific Poker 888.com throwing it around big time last night, with a 100,000 stretch limo fitted out as a poker room. Ostentatious, or what?

Clearly, some of these cardrooms are chucking money around like there is no tomorrow. It's at THAT stage of any economic cycle that the badly managed companies start to suffer damage, & pay for their excesses, & the better run, maybe more prudent organisations, sail serenely on.

I can imagine Mr Dikshit sitting in his James Bond Baddy style secret hideaway with sharks swimming around the outside and a pussy ;) in his lap plotting his revenge. "Mr Black, why not come round for a spot of dinner? I'll send my private jet to pick you up......"

What will really send the money even further up through the roof is when companies from outside the poker industry realise the exposure that some of the best poker players get and the massive audience it can achieve, in the USA now and probably in the UK in the future. It'll become what snooker was in the 80's!!

Going slightly off on a tangent I see that Poker makes it onto ITV1 this week, albeit one of those celeb jobbies. 50K to the winners fave charity.

From my understanding of how Party Poker operate they have a policy of offering you money if you "Wish" to wear their logo which increases progressively depending on whether or not you make the final table and subsequently win an event.

Unlike some other sites they DO NOT insist on you wearing their logo.

IMO this is a good policy as there was a great deal of controversy involving Paul Wolfe last year refusing to wear one sites logo. There are also problems if you are already contracted to one site and then qualify via another not to mention potential legal action against you if you are a US citizen as the government still do not like anyone actively promoting online gambling which is still considered illegal.

As for Andy wearing Full Tilt gear the WSOP had a policy of only allowing you to wear a logo if that sponsor registered you as a player prior to the start of that event. They wanted to prevent free for all auctions by the various sites buying players once they got to a final player and to avoid the final table of an event being overun by any individual site.

Having said that they conveniently "Overlooked" Johnny Chan switching his shirt and sponsor when at the final table when going on to win his tenth bracelet.

this is right. The economics of it are that once the number of players being attracted to the sites stagnate, the "marginal utility" to the site of excessive deals dries up completely. The players in a position to benefit now should enjoy it while it lasts. The industry wide implications of a plateau-ing of growth have been seen in other industries...price wars (presumably in poker's case "rake" discounts) and consolidation, with the weakest sites being driven out and the industry rationalising to fewer players

As to when that is, I have no crystal ball