Rumble in the green felt jungle

Friday, Feb. 3, 2006 | 12:30 p.m.

TUNICA, Miss. - It's a long way from the Las Vegas Strip, but an emerging battle between the world's biggest casino superpowers just had its first public skirmish.

On the felt poker tables of Tunica, Miss.

The two biggest forces in gaming compete every day, in a variety of venues. Harrah's Entertainment is the world's biggest casino operator, measured by revenue and profit, and the second biggest in Nevada and Las Vegas. MGM Mirage is the second biggest, but tops in the state and on the Strip.

But it's the red-hot game of tournament poker that most clearly pits the two casino giants against each other.

MGM Mirage had a head start in the competition, as its Bellagio resort in 2002 was the first casino to host a World Poker Tour event. Bellagio's top poker executive, Doug Dalton, locked up an exclusive deal with World Poker to host tournaments in Las Vegas, a deal that has since expanded to include tour stops at sister properties the Mirage and Mandalay Bay.

World Poker quickly snapped up many of the world's top tournaments outside of the kingpin World Series of Poker, which then-owner Binion's Horseshoe owned but didn't do much with. And the tour found a weekly home on the Travel Channel, where the poker tour's telecasts quickly became the channel's top-rated show.

Harrah's bought the rights to the World Series of Poker from Binion's in 2003, moved the event to the Rio and added a nationwide tour of events intended to capitalize on the powerful World Series of Poker brand name.

But until last week, the two tours largely had stayed out of each other's way. Because the World Poker events had already locked in places on the poker calendar, World Series events were slated to run during the gaps between those events, scheduling that allowed the world's top players to play on both tours.

But last week in Tunica, the final tables of two major tournaments, each with a buy-in of $10,000, took place within a span of five days.

World Poker's Gold Strike World Poker Open wrapped up Jan. 23, and the World Series circuit event at the Tunica Grand concluded Jan. 27.

Two big tournaments on top of each other in the same small town was just too much, Dalton said.

"It's not in the best interest of the poker players," Dalton said at the Gold Strike, where he was watching a sizable contingent of Las Vegas-based poker pros compete in the tournament, won by Henderson's Scotty Nguyen. "I think it split the field up."

Tournament statistics supported Dalton's opinion that the proximity of the events diluted their fields.

Whereas last year's World Poker event in Tunica attracted 512 players, a total of only 568 players competed in both of last week's tournaments combined (327 in the World Poker event, 241 in the World Series circuit event).

Those figures buck the trend generated by World Poker's events in Las Vegas, which drew significantly larger fields in 2005 compared with 2004.

By going head-to-head in Tunica, the competing poker circuits ended up with two middling tournaments rather than a single great one.

The rival tours

The World Poker Tour, now in its fourth season with a fifth to begin this spring, consists of 17 high-stakes poker tournaments filmed for television at gambling sites throughout the world. After editing and "postproduction" work, the tournaments air on the Travel Channel (Cox cable channel 66).

World Poker events in Las Vegas take place at MGM Mirage properties including the Bellagio, the Mirage and for the first time this June, Mandalay Bay.

Harrah's Entertainment launched the World Series of Poker circuit last year to bring a taste of its big-league tournaments to various Harrah's properties. The circuit events promote the World Series of Poker, the centerpiece of poker's calendar, which takes place this summer at the Rio.

World Series circuit events, such as the World Series itself, are televised on ESPN and its family of channels. Even the ESPN Classic program "Cheap Seats" gets into the act with hilarious sendups of older World Series tournaments.

Clearly a rivalry is brewing between the tours, though higher-ups in the organizations aren't always eager to acknowledge it.

"I don't see it as a rivalry," World Poker Executive Chairman Lyle Berman said in a December interview in Las Vegas. Berman then offered a backhanded compliment to the World Series circuit's TV coverage by saying, "they learned it from us."

At World Poker events in Las Vegas, World Series winners have been introduced simply as "former world champions." And TV poker junkies will recall that 2003 World Series champ Chris Moneymaker, playing in a World Poker event soon afterward, was credited by the show's announcers only for winning a big - but unnamed - tournament in Las Vegas.

Finding a way to work together would help both organizations, said Johnny Grooms, the tournament director of the World Series of Poker and its circuit events.

"In all honesty, there is a rivalry, and there have been various decisions made by both sides to either enhance their brand or diminish the other," Grooms said at the Grand. "One way or another, there is a competition that exists there.

"My personal opinion is I think the competition is foolish. There's enough play for everybody, instead of competing and forcing the players to choose."

But players in Tunica were forced to make a choice - largely as a result of the acquisition of the Horseshoe Tunica by Harrah's, and the acquisition of the Gold Strike by MGM Mirage, Dalton said. The Horseshoe, the former site of the World Poker event, was previously owned by Jack Binion; MGM Mirage got the Gold Strike in its buyout of Mandalay Resort Group.

The action generated by the big tournaments was indisputably split into pieces, Grooms said.

"It's been good for both casinos, but it would have been even more impressive if we had the entire contingent at one casino."

Players choice

Some professional poker players had no problem with the rival tournaments setting up shop at the same time amid the cotton fields of Tunica.

"I think it's good for the players," said Las Vegas poker pro Gavin Smith, who placed fourth at the Gold Strike, winning $173,052. "I don't see the events as really competing against each other; it's more like they're working in conjunction. I wouldn't mind if the same thing occurred in more places."

Back-to-back tournaments on separate major poker tours, but in the same location, could set the stage for some lucky player to make history by winning both, said Henderson's Nguyen, who failed in his bid to become the king of Tunica when he was KO'd early from the World Series circuit event.

"It's good for people to have their dreams," Nguyen said. "My goal, my dream, would be to win two big tournaments back to back like that."

But Smith and Nguyen might be speaking only for top-level pros who travel the circuit and play in all the big events, rather than the recreational poker players who make up a good portion of the field, Las Vegas poker pro Bill Edler said.

"Clearly there are not a lot of people who can afford to put up the $10,000 to play in both tournaments," said Edler, who placed 15th at the Grand, winning $27,475. "You need to draw the average players, the ones who might try to win their way in through a satellite."

Daniel Negreanu, who collected the top prize of $755,525 for winning the World Series circuit event at the Grand, concurred.

"The number of entrants was down (in Tunica), but that doesn't mean interest in poker overall is down," Negreanu, the 2004 Card Player magazine player of the year, said.

Negreanu has vowed to play only in tournaments with buy-ins of $10,000 or higher this year - but as poker grows, and the market becomes more saturated, he could still have his choice of 40 to 50 events that fall into that category.

"People have to realize there are a lot more $10,000 (buy in) events than there used to be," Negreanu, a Las Vegas resident, said. "A lot of players are going to have to make some choices about which ones they're going to play in."

Jeff Haney can be reached at 259-4041 or at haney@lasvegassun.com.