Back in the days when the newest technological advancement in communications was television broadcast in color, the World Series of Poker was a gambling event run by gamblers. Today it's run by hotel people at Harrahs and reality TV experts at ESPN.
I think they're fixing to get bit on the ass by the gamblers who still play in the World Series of Poker.
WickedChopsPoker reports the plans under consideration for this summer:
Play would be halted this July once the field was whittled down to its final nine players, and then delayed until three months later. The idea is to make the final table a big television event with plenty of lead time to hype the finalists and so no one knows who the winner is until the show airs.
Random Shuffles suggests that there might be some bad results from such a plan
Sure, let's give the final table three months to cut secret deals and work out what tapping twice vs tapping three times means when checking. Of course, they can do some of this in the short period between the last two sessions, but there's a limit on how much they can get accomplished. Over three months, you can not only work out a whole set of cheating signals, but you can practice your cheating.
But, the potential for cheating isn't just about deal making. Don't forget, we're dealing with gambler's here. Prediction markets are ripe for exploitation if the reality TV planners at ESPN and Harrahs actually give some gamblers a few extra months to set up something. What
maroons.
The prediction market hustlers are
already fixing Tennis and snooker matches. Does anybody really think it would be tough to exploit prediction markets on the winner of an over hyped WSOP final table given 3 months of hype time?
Even exchanges that are highly regulated and heavily policed
can't keep out the cheats. We don't need to make it easy for them.
Labels: casino management, cheating, prediction markets, WSOP
