Michael Craig

If you don't know Michael Craig - he is one of the most informed, intelligent and humorous of the poker writers. If you do know Michael Craig - you will be saddened to learn he is giving up his Full Tilt poker blog as of January 1st.

I look forward to following him in his future endeavors. If you have not read his book The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time- buy it. I consider it the finest and most entertaining poker book I have ever read.

WSOP

The World Series of Poker has been running for about two weeks. If you are interested in following the action - or if you are just a fan of interesting insights into the human condition - then the two spots for you to check daily are:

Tao of Poker - Dr. Pauly's twisted takes on Las Vegas and the degenerate lifestyle.

Michael Craig's Poker Blog - heavy on Full Tilt pros and stories of same but great stuff nonetheless

Moving the Final Table of the WSOP to November

Oliver Chubb makes some good points. Mainly about an unexpected decrease in the real first place payout due to losing 4 months worth on interest on millions of dollars:

So the eventual winner effectively has to share four months of interest with the rest of the final table. The sum paid to the winner in November will be roughly $100,000 less than what the prize would have been worth if paid out to him/her in July and invested.

If the eventual winner is a non-US amateur - he may get a double whammy:

Non-US amateur players have previously been allowed to claim 100% of their prize and handle their own tax authorities as they saw fit. Come November, when their face has been on ESPN for four months and in the poker literature, their claim that they are not entering the country to seek financial gain may be a little harder to substantiate. Although Caesars’ lawyers have promised to assist in the arrangement of entertainment visas, if even one of the players is refused entry to the US, or the IRS decides to withhold part of even one player’s payout, the new format will have been a disaster.

Michael Craig also makes some good points here:

Withholding the outcome as Caesars is doing accomplishes two things: (1) It builds the suspense, drawing people who watch individual episodes to return because that’s (just about) the only way to find out how it ends; and (2) Helps in story telling. Everybody - Caesars, ESPN, the rest of the media, the public - will get to know the final nine much better. It’s a lot easier to tell their stories over the period of four months than in a continuous-running event. The goal (and it may take a few years before this works out, and works out regularly) is for a lot of people to be intensely interested in the players, to be familiar with them, to have favorites, and to look forward to watching the finale to find out how it ends.

Craig makes some more points here.