It sure seems like the world of poker just can’t catch a break these days. World Series of Poker officials have completely changed the course of action this year, focusing on creating events with smaller buy-ins, with the hope of increasing the size of fields, and thus helping to grow the game. Story lines early in this year’s WSOP have included Phil Hellmuth winning his record 14th WSOP bracelet, in the $10k Razz event, and Tuan Le going back-to-back in the $10k Deuce-to-Seven Trip Draw event.
The bracelet marks Hellmuth’s first since 2012, also in a Razz tournament. The win brings Hellmuth’s all-time live tournament winnings to a monstrous $18.5 million, and $12.7 million in WSOP events.
However, the headlines seem to revolve around the inaugural $565 buy-in Colossus event, which drew in a record number 22,374 entrants, creating a prize pool of $11,187,000. As one would expect, a tournament of this magnitude would be nearly impossible to pull off without a hitch, and as hard as everyone tried, the inevitable did in fact happen.
Several pros tweeted out complaining about the top prize of $638,880, saying a top prize of only 5.7 percent of the total prize pool was unacceptable, and that it was a essentially a waste of their time. Ty Stewart defended the choice, saying that by paying out more to the winner, thousands of others would have been denied a pay day, which is not what they wanted.
“We really thought the tragedy and outrage would have come if we would have stolen from thousands of players at the bottom or middle of the payout scale just to have a big, splashy, sexy headline at first place,” Steward said. Poker pro Ray Henson shared Stewart’s sentiments, and tweeted, “To everyone still in the Colossus: if ya’ll don’t want the $639k, I’ll gladly take it now without a fight!”
The WSOP is not sure at this point whether or not the Colossus will return next year. In addition to the controversy surrounding the top prize, many players waited an extremely long time to get paid out, some up to two hours. “If we feel that we can do it better than we’ve done in a way that’s really going to guarantee repeat visitation, it’ll come back,” Steward said. “And if we felt like we bit off more than we can chew under the current constraints, then it won’t.”
Cord Garcia, the eventual winner of the tournament, was more than happy with the payday. “I think, for the overall best interest of the game, it’s definitely good. A bunch of people got paid a lot of money,” Garcia told reporters.
