The WSOP 2013

[theprawnidentity]

So when is Blonde announcing it will be providing the updates for the 2014 WSOP?

It's pretty awful that they can't employ enough staff or run a system competent enough to cope with the fields.

To be fair, there must be several thousand people over multiple rooms some days.  People move tables and switch rooms too, so guess unless they see an exit or are following twitter they are always going to struggle.

The system they had last year was good, but must have been pretty expensive to run.  As would a system with tens of updaters I imagine.

There are no surprises after ten years of big fields and concurrent events. I can understand updates being sporadic but chips counts and whether people are in the tournament should be reliable.

It surely can't be too hard to get the seat open updates onto the web.  They know who's in what seat right?  So when the floor get the seat open card and remove the player from the system how hard can it be to have that sync'd with the online update system?

[Doobs]

So when is Blonde announcing it will be providing the updates for the 2014 WSOP?

It's pretty awful that they can't employ enough staff or run a system competent enough to cope with the fields.

To be fair, there must be several thousand people over multiple rooms some days.  People move tables and switch rooms too, so guess unless they see an exit or are following twitter they are always going to struggle.

The system they had last year was good, but must have been pretty expensive to run.  As would a system with tens of updaters I imagine.

There are no surprises after ten years of big fields and concurrent events. I can understand updates being sporadic but chips counts and whether people are in the tournament should be reliable.

This just seems massively unrealistic. 

How do you propose they get real time updates of people's chipstacks, how can they catch every leaver, how do they know they aren't just going for a fag, some food, a toilet break or just to rail their mate in another room? How do they identify the mateyboys? If people didn't seek out Tighty at DTD, I imagine he'd probably miss way more exits than he saw on day 1s.

I guess the reason chiptic is now silent is the technology must have been very expensive and the revenues must have been nowhere close to covering the.  Even chiptic couldn't cope with the bigger events and think they limited themselves to bigger buy ins and smaller fields last year.

I guess they could do a bit better at ends of days etc, but they aren't ever going to be close to perfect.

[Tal]

Any poker tournament has a "seat open!" cry from the dealer. The seat card is handed to the floor and the floor should know who was in that seat.

The scale of the comp should not be a factor, as it just means a bigger workforce is needed.

I'm not saying it should be perfect and I've no idea what the financial constraints are. All I'm saying is the resources should be available to enable it to work and businesses should be able to operate a system capable of performing the task.

DTD does it with aplomb and for a lot less juice. I don't think it's completely fantastic or simplistic to say scaling up the same basic operation is achievable.

[TightEnd]

Congratulations to Athanasios Polychronopoulos, Winner of Event #17: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em ($518,755)
 

Athanasios Polychronopoulos, Winner of Event #17 ($1,500 No-Limit Hold'em)

After winning his second World Series of Poker bracelet in three years, Athanasios Polychronopoulos was mobbed by a boisterous bunch of friends, fans, and fellow poker pros. Having navigated the minefield in 2011 to best a massive field for his first piece of gold, Polychronopoulos has once again weaved through thousands of amateurs and experts to claim every chip in play.

A total of 2,105 runners took their seats on Saturday afternoon, and that enormous field was quickly carved down to size, leaving us with a star-studded final two tables that included 2009 Main Event Champion Joe Cada, online legend David "Bakes" Baker, poker sage Barry Greenstein, and of course, Polychronopoulos.

Cada was 4th
Bakes 8th
Greenstein 11th

[TightEnd]

Paur Leads Final 14; Ivey Looking to Win First Hold'em Bracelet
 

Phil Ivey

It was quite a day in Event #18: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em . When the day started there were 163 players already well into the money, and the remaining players were looking up at the top prize of $340,260. After 10 levels of play, only 14 players advanced to Day 3, and Taylor Paur was leading the way with a commanding chip lead.

Paur grabbed the lead late in the night and will take 1,318,000 into the final day. Two of his closest competitors are Alex Barlow (792,000) and MacKinnon (557,000). WSOP bracelet winner Daniel Idema is still in the mix with 400,000.

The big story however was the emergence of Phil Ivey. After securing his first cash of the series in this event, Ivey will try to earn his 10th bracelet when play resumes on Tuesday. Ivey will go into Day 3 with a below-average stack of 285,000, but the world's best player is always a favorite regardless of where he stands on the leaderboard. If he were to win the event, it would mark his first WSOP title in a hold'em event.

[TightEnd]

In Event 19 the $5k PLHE

16 remain

they include

Dan Kelly (again)
Minieri
Katchalov
Elky
Vandersmissen the Irish Open winner
Hennigan

Jason Mercier and Paul Volpe cashed

No British cashers

[TightEnd]

Event #20: €1500 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better

219 of 1014 remain

James Bord, Stephen Chidwick and Richard Ashby appear to still be in

[MintTrav]

Three players entered by the UK's LivePubPokerLeague cashed in Event #18, one in 42nd, but you'd never know it from the updates. They've got one of them as being from Guatemala and one from Somalia. How?

[dino1980]

Any poker tournament has a "seat open!" cry from the dealer. The seat card is handed to the floor and the floor should know who was in that seat.

The scale of the comp should not be a factor, as it just means a bigger workforce is needed.

I'm not saying it should be perfect and I've no idea what the financial constraints are. All I'm saying is the resources should be available to enable it to work and businesses should be able to operate a system capable of performing the task.

DTD does it with aplomb and for a lot less juice. I don't think it's completely fantastic or simplistic to say scaling up the same basic operation is achievable.

At comps outside of DTD this simply isn't the case. The only way for sure the floor would know who was in that seat was if the player was in that seat from the start of day seat draw. Of course this simply isn't the case as tables break throughout the day and a so the player in, for example, Table 19, Seat 7 may have started the day at Table 37, Seat 2. To get round this, as I'm sure you know, at a lot of events, such as UKIPT's, players have an ID card in front of them which corresponds to a name on an excel spreadsheet tournament staff send to media. When a player gets knocked out the ID card is handed to the floor and they pass it on to the media and we can report that Mr X is out. It's an imperfect system as players don't always display them, or leave them behind when they move table (and then get reported as out) and to be honest they're doing us a favour by displaying them so it's their choice as I see it.

Tournaments don't always have them and updating a field of any size is so much harder without them, the last tournament I covered had a manual seat draw where players simply picked their seat out of a bucket! I have no idea how DTD's system works but covering events at their venue as I get to do a couple of times a year is a doddle compared to elsewhere as I'm sure Tighty will attest.

I've never updated from the WSOP but I'm sure it's a thankless task in the massive NLHE events and keeping track of every exit at a series where the events take place in a massive conference space (so no inbuilt casino software etc) in multiple rooms is impossible.  

[tikay]

Any poker tournament has a "seat open!" cry from the dealer. The seat card is handed to the floor and the floor should know who was in that seat.

The scale of the comp should not be a factor, as it just means a bigger workforce is needed.

I'm not saying it should be perfect and I've no idea what the financial constraints are. All I'm saying is the resources should be available to enable it to work and businesses should be able to operate a system capable of performing the task.

DTD does it with aplomb and for a lot less juice. I don't think it's completely fantastic or simplistic to say scaling up the same basic operation is achievable.

At comps outside of DTD this simply isn't the case. The only way for sure the floor would know who was in that seat was if the player was in that seat from the start of day seat draw. Of course this simply isn't the case as tables break throughout the day and a so the player in, for example, Table 19, Seat 7 may have started the day at Table 37, Seat 2. To get round this, as I'm sure you know, at a lot of events, such as UKIPT's, players have an ID card in front of them which corresponds to a name on an excel spreadsheet tournament staff send to media. When a player gets knocked out the ID card is handed to the floor and they pass it on to the media and we can report that Mr X is out. It's an imperfect system as players don't always display them, or leave them behind when they move table (and then get reported as out) and to be honest they're doing us a favour by displaying them so it's their choice as I see it.

Tournaments don't always have them and updating a field of any size is so much harder without them, the last tournament I covered had a manual seat draw where players simply picked their seat out of a bucket! I have no idea how DTD's system works but covering events at their venue as I get to do a couple of times a year is a doddle compared to elsewhere as I'm sure Tighty will attest.

I've never updated from the WSOP but I'm sure it's a thankless task in the massive NLHE events and keeping track of every exit at a series where the events take place in a massive conference space (so no inbuilt casino software etc) in multiple rooms is impossible.  

Added to all that, why should they be obligated to run good Live Updates? Would poker players pay for them if they were available at a cost? I don't think so!

There seems to me, as I see it anyway, a misplaced sense of entitlement here.

We don't have a right to Live Updates.
 

[Tal]

Maybe not. I think a live update adds something to a comp and I'd happily pay an extra ten bucks on my entry fee for a big comp for there to be live updates. This would be 10 grand for 1000 runners. If a service is being run, it should either be run properly or not at all. This is a halfway house and deeply unsatisfactory IMO.

I've said enough on this anyway, so I'll stop now. 

[outragous76]

Any poker tournament has a "seat open!" cry from the dealer. The seat card is handed to the floor and the floor should know who was in that seat.

The scale of the comp should not be a factor, as it just means a bigger workforce is needed.

I'm not saying it should be perfect and I've no idea what the financial constraints are. All I'm saying is the resources should be available to enable it to work and businesses should be able to operate a system capable of performing the task.

DTD does it with aplomb and for a lot less juice. I don't think it's completely fantastic or simplistic to say scaling up the same basic operation is achievable.

At comps outside of DTD this simply isn't the case. The only way for sure the floor would know who was in that seat was if the player was in that seat from the start of day seat draw. Of course this simply isn't the case as tables break throughout the day and a so the player in, for example, Table 19, Seat 7 may have started the day at Table 37, Seat 2. To get round this, as I'm sure you know, at a lot of events, such as UKIPT's, players have an ID card in front of them which corresponds to a name on an excel spreadsheet tournament staff send to media. When a player gets knocked out the ID card is handed to the floor and they pass it on to the media and we can report that Mr X is out. It's an imperfect system as players don't always display them, or leave them behind when they move table (and then get reported as out) and to be honest they're doing us a favour by displaying them so it's their choice as I see it.

Tournaments don't always have them and updating a field of any size is so much harder without them, the last tournament I covered had a manual seat draw where players simply picked their seat out of a bucket! I have no idea how DTD's system works but covering events at their venue as I get to do a couple of times a year is a doddle compared to elsewhere as I'm sure Tighty will attest.

I've never updated from the WSOP but I'm sure it's a thankless task in the massive NLHE events and keeping track of every exit at a series where the events take place in a massive conference space (so no inbuilt casino software etc) in multiple rooms is impossible.  

Added to all that, why should they be obligated to run good Live Updates? Would poker players pay for them if they were available at a cost? I don't think so!

There seems to me, as I see it anyway, a misplaced sense of entitlement here.

We don't have a right to Live Updates.
 

but they buy the rights for marketing reasons and then do a terrible job

this is such a backward mentality, when there is technology is place capable of improving their offering.

I love the WSOP and I follow it everyday. So far this year I have been to poker news once (in 2 weeks?), to view their content, (when Bax won), and Im almost certain I could have just you tubed the interview the next day anyway. The manner in which they cover the WSOP does nothing but damage their brand (IMO ofc)

[tikay]

Any poker tournament has a "seat open!" cry from the dealer. The seat card is handed to the floor and the floor should know who was in that seat.

The scale of the comp should not be a factor, as it just means a bigger workforce is needed.

I'm not saying it should be perfect and I've no idea what the financial constraints are. All I'm saying is the resources should be available to enable it to work and businesses should be able to operate a system capable of performing the task.

DTD does it with aplomb and for a lot less juice. I don't think it's completely fantastic or simplistic to say scaling up the same basic operation is achievable.

At comps outside of DTD this simply isn't the case. The only way for sure the floor would know who was in that seat was if the player was in that seat from the start of day seat draw. Of course this simply isn't the case as tables break throughout the day and a so the player in, for example, Table 19, Seat 7 may have started the day at Table 37, Seat 2. To get round this, as I'm sure you know, at a lot of events, such as UKIPT's, players have an ID card in front of them which corresponds to a name on an excel spreadsheet tournament staff send to media. When a player gets knocked out the ID card is handed to the floor and they pass it on to the media and we can report that Mr X is out. It's an imperfect system as players don't always display them, or leave them behind when they move table (and then get reported as out) and to be honest they're doing us a favour by displaying them so it's their choice as I see it.

Tournaments don't always have them and updating a field of any size is so much harder without them, the last tournament I covered had a manual seat draw where players simply picked their seat out of a bucket! I have no idea how DTD's system works but covering events at their venue as I get to do a couple of times a year is a doddle compared to elsewhere as I'm sure Tighty will attest.

I've never updated from the WSOP but I'm sure it's a thankless task in the massive NLHE events and keeping track of every exit at a series where the events take place in a massive conference space (so no inbuilt casino software etc) in multiple rooms is impossible. 

Added to all that, why should they be obligated to run good Live Updates? Would poker players pay for them if they were available at a cost? I don't think so!

There seems to me, as I see it anyway, a misplaced sense of entitlement here.

We don't have a right to Live Updates.
 

but they buy the rights for marketing reasons and then do a terrible job

this is such a backward mentality, when there is technology is place capable of improving their offering.

I love the WSOP and I follow it everyday. So far this year I have been to poker news once (in 2 weeks?), to view their content, (when Bax won), and Im almost certain I could have just you tubed the interview the next day anyway. The manner in which they cover the WSOP does nothing but damage their brand (IMO ofc)

So you want the service for free, but are not happy with the free service?

How does you viewing Live Updates monetise the brand?

The brand is monsta huge, & with or without Live Updates, the numbers won't alter much.

They did try technology last year (Chiptic) but it was fearfully expensive & full of glitches, & it seems to have been dropped this year. To my certain knowledge, Chiptic must haver had 12 staff full-time on the WSOP gig last year. Lotta money, that, with zero payback.

As it happens, I belive numbers will be down this year.

[outragous76]

Any poker tournament has a "seat open!" cry from the dealer. The seat card is handed to the floor and the floor should know who was in that seat.

The scale of the comp should not be a factor, as it just means a bigger workforce is needed.

I'm not saying it should be perfect and I've no idea what the financial constraints are. All I'm saying is the resources should be available to enable it to work and businesses should be able to operate a system capable of performing the task.

DTD does it with aplomb and for a lot less juice. I don't think it's completely fantastic or simplistic to say scaling up the same basic operation is achievable.

At comps outside of DTD this simply isn't the case. The only way for sure the floor would know who was in that seat was if the player was in that seat from the start of day seat draw. Of course this simply isn't the case as tables break throughout the day and a so the player in, for example, Table 19, Seat 7 may have started the day at Table 37, Seat 2. To get round this, as I'm sure you know, at a lot of events, such as UKIPT's, players have an ID card in front of them which corresponds to a name on an excel spreadsheet tournament staff send to media. When a player gets knocked out the ID card is handed to the floor and they pass it on to the media and we can report that Mr X is out. It's an imperfect system as players don't always display them, or leave them behind when they move table (and then get reported as out) and to be honest they're doing us a favour by displaying them so it's their choice as I see it.

Tournaments don't always have them and updating a field of any size is so much harder without them, the last tournament I covered had a manual seat draw where players simply picked their seat out of a bucket! I have no idea how DTD's system works but covering events at their venue as I get to do a couple of times a year is a doddle compared to elsewhere as I'm sure Tighty will attest.

I've never updated from the WSOP but I'm sure it's a thankless task in the massive NLHE events and keeping track of every exit at a series where the events take place in a massive conference space (so no inbuilt casino software etc) in multiple rooms is impossible. 

Added to all that, why should they be obligated to run good Live Updates? Would poker players pay for them if they were available at a cost? I don't think so!

There seems to me, as I see it anyway, a misplaced sense of entitlement here.

We don't have a right to Live Updates.
 

but they buy the rights for marketing reasons and then do a terrible job

this is such a backward mentality, when there is technology is place capable of improving their offering.

I love the WSOP and I follow it everyday. So far this year I have been to poker news once (in 2 weeks?), to view their content, (when Bax won), and Im almost certain I could have just you tubed the interview the next day anyway. The manner in which they cover the WSOP does nothing but damage their brand (IMO ofc)

So you want the service for free, but are not happy with the free service?

How does you viewing Live Updates monetise the brand?

The brand is monsta huge, & with or without Live Updates, the numbers won't alter much.

They did try technology last year (Chiptic) but it was fearfully expensive & full of glitches, & it seems to have been dropped this year. To my certain knowledge, Chiptic must haver had 12 staff full-time on the WSOP gig last year. Lotta money, that, with zero payback.

As it happens, I belive numbers will be down this year.

I really don't care whether they update or not, because what they provide is terrible and a waste of time. An no I wouldn't pay for it

They would have a good degree more traffic if they did a decent job is what I am saying.

As for traffic not yielding revenue, you know as well as I do that's nonsense. Ok so the user doesn't pay, but they can increase cost of advertising, etc etc

Take blonde for example, how many people join blonde because of a live update, or because of a mate who signed up during a live update? 50% of members?

How many posts and views come from live update boards? What impact does that have on value?

The point I am making is there is little merit in paying for it then doing a terrible job. They pay for it so that they are "seen" as market leader and for protectionism, as if it was left to open competition they would lose within a few years.

Look what the Poker farm did a few years ago, it was the best WSOP content id seen in years (and with no live chip counts)

[Acidmouse]

Poker and WSOP in the big scheme of things is tiny, no one cares outside poker players. You would think offering anyone who wants to report on it, chip counts or whatever could do so for free to push the brand in as many media sources as possible. Current insular thinking means no one bothers to look, care or read about it.