Hold'Em Conspiricy Theories

[egthareal]

In this world of infinate conspiricy theories I heard the all time greatest proposal of a poker conspiricy theory....

The other night at a home game poker tournament a friend proposed, "The WSOP is rigged, and I can prove it".

His theory revolved around the premise that several very important "gaming" companies, including MGM Grand/Mirage (soon to own Mandalay Bay) were visited by a group of marketers with a fail-safe idea of how to market pokers to the masses. These large "gaming" corperations then became heavily invested in the WSOP, merchandise and poker era mind set. Thier idea was to rig the televised WSOP event so that a seemingly regular everyday Joe Schmoe with relatively little poker expierence would win the tournament and spark incredible controversy. They repeated the same forumla in 2003 and in 2004.

My friend then presented his data for this theory which included some suprisingly accurate E*Trade financial reports indicating majority stock holders in publicly held WPT (as opposed to privately held WSOP) were some of the same players or competitors thereof who he suggested were involved in the marketing proposal years earlier.

Now - this could all just be a conspiricy theory. Or there could be some truth to it. WAS Poker destined to become mainstream? Or, was it forced the publics mainstream view?

Think about how ultra successful it has become - suggesting that its simply due to the fact of TV exposure is not necessarily true. Think if they put Bridge or any other strategic card game on TV would it have become this successful?

[card4]

That's hillarious. I can't believe anyone would actually believe that. If you told me that some of the original WSOP main events were rigged, I might buy it. Things were a lot different in Vegas back then and its a lot easier to rig an event with only a few dozen people.

The WSOP has been filmed for a while now but I'm assuming your friend says it started being rigged in 2002. The field is just too large to even imagine being able to pull off something like this.

Here are the simple facts. Poker has been very slowly gaining popularity over the years. I think taping of major tournaments certainly pushed this along but the biggest breakthrough has come with the card cams and simply the fact of better coverage. If you watch any of the older WSOP events and other taped tournaments, it pretty boring compared to today's tv coverage.

The other thing getting people more excited about poker and bringing them in to enter tournaments is all the guide books out there that have leveled the playing field some what and given amatuers the confidence to feel they can compete.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, the internet has done wonders to aid in poker's growth. Not only can you talk strategy with people from all over, including pros, you can play virtually any type of game, any time, for just about any stakes including free.

It does help ratings and boost interest to see a relative unknown player win and become and instant millionaire. I would not be surprised at all if 5000 people enter this year's WSOP main event.

The fact is, with so many people buying in, it decreases the chance a professional has. One, it is a lot tougher to beat a bigger field. Two, it can be tricky to play against the novices who will push all in on any given hand and thus take away some of the options a pro has to outplay them post flop. Despite all this, I think if you looked at the percentage of pros who enter
vs. % of pros who finish in the money and compare that with the ITM % of everyone else, the pros would have the edge. This proves that the best players will still do well but in any given tournament, any given player can get a rush of cards (or bad cards and draw out) and beat the greats.

Is the WSOP rigged? Not a chance.

[JungleFVR]

Yes EG I must admit I too thought this was a joke when I first read it. I think your friend was one of them paranoid fellas who believe that the pentagon 9/11 thing didn't happen either.

What Card4 said had alot of validity to it "the simple fact of more entries lessens the pros chance" .

[Monster]

well i not sure if it was rigged or not, would be hard for any pro player to wanna throw there game just so some rookie can win, that makes them look bad and they lose money and the prize. and them pro players didnt care about the prize etc they would not enter and just let the rookies and varage joes play. i did hear though the espn did edit there wsop last year and made hands play out that never happend via editing.. so that part maybe rigged to try to make poker not so boring on tv.. lets face it not every hand is going to be a big hand, they cut alot out and i think thats wrong i say espn needs to show the whole event so what if it takes a whole week to show it all from start to finish with out us missing any hands....


but ya never could be rigged these corprate folks will do anything... :cool:

[Four2Eight Feet]

Does your friend also believe all the online sites are rigged? :D The WSOP is one of if not the longest standing poker competions in the world. There have been God knows how many books written because of it and people have become famous overnight. Does he think whoever rigs it gets a piece of the royalities for life.