An Organizational Collapse in the WSOP 5k Heads Up

I did not play the $5k Heads Up tournament at the WSOP, but I can confidently say it was one of the worst-run tournaments in poker history. There were a couple of relatively minor problems that many tournaments struggle with, and there was one huge ethical debacle that ranks amongst the worst errors in poker organizational history.

The minor issues were the long delays past scheduled start times and a silly payout structure that paid 16% of the players. I don't have a problem with paying 16%, but that causes a bit of a grimace when one considers the prestige associated with cashing at the WSOP and some of the rankings that reward a WSOP cash. If a WSOP cash is a tangible, meaningful thing, then all the tournaments should pay the same ratio of players. Every other tournament at the WSOP, to the best of my knowledge, pays about 10% of the field.

The big disaster in the 5k HU was the awarding of byes. A heads-up tournament requires a bracket-style single elimination system. For the tournament to work, players must be eliminated by one half in every round until only one remains. There must be 2 to the x power players, as long as x is a whole number. So there can be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. players. At first it appeared the WSOP would cap the entrants at one of these numbers, most likely 256. The day before the tournament started, however, it was announced the cap would be 512. The powers that be elected to set the cap at 512 surely knowing that they likely wouldn't get that many registrants, knowing this would necessitate awarding byes in order to consolidate the field to exactly 256 players.

They wound up with 392 players, which meant that 120 received a first round bye and 272 played in the first round. Half of these first round winners, 136, would advance to play in the second round. The byes were drawn randomly.

392 players put up $5000 apiece, generating 1,960,000. After Harrah's took 6% rake, the total prizepool was $1,842,400. The average equity for the 392 players was $4700 (1.8424m/392). The average equity for the 120 players with byes was $7,197 (1.842m/256), as they were playing in a 256-player tournament. The average equity for the 272 players without byes was $3598 (1.842m/512), as they were playing in what amounted to a 512-player tournament. 120 players had double the equity of the other 272, because they were randomly given byes.
The goal of any poker tournament director should be to provide maximum fairness and minimum luck. When 30% of the field has double the equity of the other 70%, because their names were drawn out of a hat, that constitutes a major ethical problem.

One seemingly obvious solution would have been to have given the players in the first round a 50% refund. The 272 first-round players would pay $2500 apiece for the right to play one match for a $5000 seat to the "real" tournament. This is how the Mirage ran their heads-up tournament in May. However, there are two problems with this refund idea.

First, there is an equity redistribution problem. The 120 players with byes have an initial average equity of $4700, as they are random players who signed up for the tournamnet. The 272 drawn to play in the first round also have an initial average equity of $4700, also being random players who signed up for the tournament. However, when the 136 winners join the 120 byes, an equity gap has been created. These 136 winners defeated 136 losers. On some level, the 136 winners are better players than the 136 losers. 136 players who are on average weaker than the average sample have been eliminated from the tournament. The 136 winners can also be thought of as better than the 120 random players who received byes. So at this point, we have a field of 256 players. 120 of these players have an average skill level for the original 372 player field. 136 of these players have an aboveaverage skill level for the original 372 player field (we know this because they won their first round match). Also, these 136 players only had to make half the investment of the other 120. The 136 winners had to pay half the investment of the 120 byes to play in a tournament twice as large - but their tournament had an easier field. So receiving a bye would be a disadvantage from an equity standpoint.

The second problem, of course, is that Harrah's would lose out on a lot of juice.

The only real way to have prevented this would have been to cap the tournament at 256 players, but again, Harrah's wouldn't get maximum juice that way. Sadly, that seems to be the most indicative factor determining the organization of today's World Series of Poker.