Aussie shelf-stacker wins $96k, cost of being a pro & are the big players really worth millions ?

November 19, 2007

Aussie shelf-stacker wins $96,000 in tournament

19yr old student and part-time supermarket shelf-stacker Daniel Booth has won $96k in a poker tournament in Adelaide. Apparently he’s only been playing the game seriously for five months.

more … Student wins $96K in poker tournament

Every week there seems to be another headline about a complete novice or recreational player winning a big poker tournament and beating the professionals – Ever since Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP in 2003 through an online satallite we all love to hear about the “Average Joe” success stories – But how long can it last ?

We’re always told that poker is about skill, that over the long term skill wins out over luck. Therefore logic suggests that the run of recreational players winning big money and big tournaments will come to an end … The professionals grinding out with their superior skill will even out the odds over the long term and their will be no place in the limelight for meer recreational players like oursleves.

Or is it that the main stream media has only just caught onto the live poker tournament scene ?

Stories in the media tend to go in cycles – A kid gets mauled by family pet makes the national news and then suddenly it’s as if some kind of epidemic has spread like wildfire – Kids are getting mauled by family pets all over the country within days …

The reality is kids were getting mauled the month before but it just wasn’t hitting the headlines – I think the poker scene is just going through the same experience.

The bottom line is tournaments both live and online are a numbers game – someone has to win it but if the “amateurs” outnumber the “pros” by 50-1 then however good the pros are collectively “average joe” will win more because they’re are more of us in the running.

High cost for professionals of playing on international circuit

I read an interesting editor’s piece in Inside Poker magazine the other week basically commenting at the increased cost of being a poker pro on the international circuit.

The massive growth in the number of $5000+ buy-in tournaments in the WSOP / WSOPE / EPT / WPT schedule means a player would need close to $200k in entry fees. So they would need to make at least one final table just to break even.

UK pro and Inside Poker contributor Nick Gibson even suggested the WPT could rapidly send alot of poker pros broke.

which leads nicely into another interesting piece I found

Are the big name pro’s as rich as their winnings suggest ?

This is an interesting article from over at poker-king.com

more … Pro’s net worth is rarely as big as you think

A great read, again highlighting the big “working captial” required to enter tournaments and therefore a player with millions in tournament winnings doesn’t necessarily mean the poker pro’s have millions sat in the bank.

Even in the big game the pro’s want to be playing against some easy money – the devil may care high roller or the dot com billionaire.

In every game however high the stakes you always want to be able to spot the mug at the table … If you can’t, then it’s probably you.

Good Luck at the tables
cheers Scrawnybob

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