Jeffrey Pollack resigns as commissioner of the WSOP

Jeffrey Pollack stepped down as the commissioner of the World Series of Poker last night saying this would be his last day (Friday the 13th).  Most of the poker media are all "so sad" for the "great contributions" he has made to the advancement of poker.  Which is flat out ironic considering that under his leadership they were not able to cover the event properly.  Jeffrey allowed various companies to own the media rights to the WSOP and those rights made it very difficult to get competing coverage.  Competing coverage would have been better for fans of poker in my opinion. 

Maybe I missed something but I think this could be a very good thing for a couple reasons.  Jeffrey Pollack had no idea about poker and it's history.  For instance, because of his lack of understanding and knowledge of the game he allowed a core of influential players to twist things to their will (once again, this is my opinion).  The people that went under represented under this scenario were casual poker players.  Under his reign there was way too much focus on the "old guard" and while the WSOP Players Advisory Council was set up to get players input it really only reinforced that the "old guard" makes the rules and everyone else should just settle for crumbs.  

Poker is not like other sports

There was a very crucial element that almost every other sport has that Jeffrey Pollack neglected in his reign and that was the up and coming player.  Most every sport celebrates the next generation while also celebrating it's current stars.  Folks we were subjected to an hour and forty five minutes of Phil Ivey folding with announcers talking about how "their man is just card dead", overall I thought the coverage was o'kay because they extended the show but I think a lot of the show was trying to celebrate Phil Ivey when in reality he barely did anything and when he did, it was typically wrong.  At the time it annoyed me and I thought it was representative of the short sightedness of the top brass at both Harrah's and ESPN.

Things could get worse

With the announcement of the WSOP Online many pros started to protest.  Essentially the WSOP will now be the competitor with all of the other online poker sites.  I would guess that could be a big contributing factor on why Mr. Pollack is stepping down.  The next nine months will obviously tell the story but I expect things to become very contentious between the sponsored players and WSOP executives.  Most of the current Player Advisory Council are sponsored pros from major online poker sites.  Many of those disputes could fall on the shoulders of Mitch Garber (the former CEO of PartyGaming) under the pressure of the UIEGA Mitch folded, so I am not expecting anything different from him if things get a bit turbulent.

The WSOP has not said who will be the de-facto leader but one name you may hear is Craig Abrahams.  Craig has been very bullish on poker for a few years and is an up and coming executive at Harrah's.  He is also a bit more acquainted with poker than Jeffrey seemed to be. 

Jeffrey obviously did some good things

He certainly raised the profile of poker and walked it through a very trying time after the UIEGA.  Ante up for Africa and his deal to keep the World Series of Poker on ESPN should all be applauded, they are good things for the game.  While you will likely hear even more from many of the people that cover poker and know Jeffrey much better than I do, I thought a different perspective would be in order.  Sadly I doubt things are going to get better moving forward.

0 responses to Jeffrey Pollack resigns as commissioner of the WSOP

Leave a reply