| If
you hadn't heard before now that Jaime Gold is the winner of the 2006
World Series of Poker No-Limit Texas Hold'em Championship well, you
must have had the TV turned off and skipped reading the papers.
Gold
is a former Hollywood agent who once counted James Gandolfini among his
clients, and he produced 10-time WSOP winner Johnny Chan's
instructional poker DVD. And that makes him a near-perfect media winner
for what has become an enormous annual media event.
It wasn't
always that way, of course. No one outside poker pro circles paid
attention in 1970 when Johnny Moss became the first WSOP winner. He was
elected champion by his peers, who voted Moss as the competitor who had
played the best during the event. The following year the freeze-out
formula, playing until one player had all the chips, was adopted, and
Moss won again.
Moss won $30,000 for that 1971 freeze-out, a far
cry from the $12 million won by Gold this year. Today's big money is
the result of the phenomenal growth in poker, especially no-limit Texas
Hold'em, that has been spurred by televised and online tournaments.
There were 8,773 entrants this year, each with a $10,000 buy-in,
whether that buy-in came via actually ponying up the 10 grand or by
winning their entry for a fraction of the cost in satellites at
Harrah's casinos across the country or on the Internet.
The
Internet connection is bound to be a source of controversy and angst in
the coming years, depending on how aggressively the federal government
chooses to pursue controlling online gambling. The U.S. House of
Representatives this summer passed a bill that would outlaw banks and
credit companies from handling transactions for online gambling. It
doesn't appear the Senate will approve such a measure, so we're at an
uneasy status quo in which the federal government holds it to be
illegal for U.S. residents to gamble online, but doesn't seem to be in
position to control it.
Against that backdrop, Antigua has filed
a complaint with the World Trade Organization, contending that any U.S.
crackdown on online gambling violates international trade rules. The
WTO can't stop the U.S. from passing anti-Internet gambling rules, but
it can impose economic sanctions.
The economic sanction that
Antigua is seeking would sting the industry where new World Series of
Poker champion Gold makes his non-poker living. Antigua plans to ask
the WTO for permission to copy and export U.S.-made DVDs, CDs and other
entertainment media without paying royalties.
That raises the stakes far beyond a $10,000 entry to the World Series of Poker, and even far beyond Gold's $12 million windfall.
Scanning
the list of players who finished in the money in the No Limit Texas
Hold'em Championship, I kept an eye out for anyone with a local
connection. The top Midwesterner was Dan Nassif of St. Louis, who made
the final table and finished ninth, good for $1,566,858. No. 1 in the
Chicago area was Walt Schafer of Aurora, who finished 104th, winning
$51,129.
The World Series of Poker is far more than the final
championship, with 45 events covering the poker spectrum. The top
Chicago area finisher in any of them was Shawnee Barton of Chicago, who
finished second and won $123,178 in the $1,000 buy-in Women's No Limit
Hold'em championship.
Off the poker track, my wife and I took
advantage of a vacation day to drive to Milwaukee and visit the
Potawatomi Bingo Casino. It had been a few years since I'd been able to
make it there, and wanted to get a good look around. Potwatomi does a
great job with its theme, using Native American photographs, artifacts
and imagery around the property. That includes a huge false flame that
symbolizes the Potawatomi status as keepers of the fire in alliance
with the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes.
We had a fun day, mostly
dabbling in nickel slots. What the casino is most of all is a slot
lover's haven, with games from a variety of manufacturers – IGT, WMS,
Bally, Aristocrat, Atronic and Konami. This was the first casino where
I got to see Atronic's e-Millions in action – if you bet the maximum,
you're eligible for a million-dollar progressive jackpot. If not, you
can still become a nickel-aire, with a jackpot of a million nickels.
Food
service is outstanding here, with Dream Dance being one of the best
casino restaurants around. We were there on a seafood buffet night, so
we opted to make some cold cracked crab claws the center of our meal.
Expansion is coming soon to Potawatomi, and I'm looking forward to seeing what that brings.
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