Is 11AM too early for WSOP events?
Joe McKeehen thinks so, do you think the WSOP making their events too physically gruelling?
One of the more surprising stories of last week was reigning WSOP Main Event champion Joe McKeehen going off on an angry rant about the WSOP's decision to include some 11AM start times this year.
He went on to blame the poker media (whom I assure you have absolutely no influence on this sort of thing) and went as far as to claim poker players were being treated like slaves. I wont entertain those particularly silly claims, especially from someone who has just benefited more than anyone from the way the World Series of Poker does business.
However, the 11AM start time thing is an interesting topic, because I've never seen starts that early before for a poker tournament.
The laziness reputation
Poker player's have a reputation for not liking early starts. This is not because they are lazy, as the stereotype often suggests, but because they work late. It's only because they tend to work in a casino that people think they are living it up on easy street, if it was night shifts in a steel mill nobody would claim they are lazy.
However, an 11AM start shouldn't be a huge shock to the system. A large portion of the field will be coming to Vegas from a different time zone anyway, so as such they are expected to (and will be well versed in) adjusting their body clock.
Poker players stay up late when the games are good and go to bed early when they are not. Everyone is used to playing tired, whether it's from staying up late or getting up early. This is just the nature of the job, which has both plusses and minuses. It's all relative, if playing at 11AM is hard for one player, it is likely hard for many of the other thousand in the field that day.
Vegas is also one of the few places where you can easily get away with an earlier start time, because you can say with some certainty that the majority of the field is staying five minutes away. Many of the players are at the Rio and can get to the card room at a moment's notice, and most of the rest are a short walk or a five minute cab away. If this was an EPT where the players are scattered around a large city I'd understand the issue, but even if you oversleep in Vegas it's not likely to have a profoundly bad impact on your day at the tables.
A huge logistical operation
Then you have to remember the huge logistical task that is the WSOP. This is a festival that, by and large, gets bigger every year overall. More events, more players, better structures and now we are even seeing guarantees on multiple events. For this trend to continue, there has to be a degree of cooperation from the players. Don't forget that it's not just the players who have to get up earlier, it's the hundreds of staff members working hard to make this event happen.
If you are a professional bracelet hunting, the 11AM start also makes it that little bit more likely that if you bust early in one event, you might have time to jump into another.
Finally, and the point I often end with whenever the professional poker player community take issue with a big change like this, the fact is that most recreational players in Vegas will be fine with an 11AM start, and what is good for the recs is good for the pros. I'm a recreational player and I can attest that the day cannot start fast enough when you are playing in a tournament you have been looking forward to for weeks and months. In fact, 11AM is late for recreational players who have a 9-5 job.
I understand how professional players can often place a lot of importance on arguably trivial details like starting one hour earlier. Poker is a game of small edges and therefore small changes can have a big impact on a pro's bottom line. But the WSOP is a private business with operating costs and huge logistical considerations. It's not unreasonable to expect the players to meet them halfway if they are expected to host thousands upon thousands of players every day for six weeks.
