Wednesday, July 11, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.
On the fourth and final day of the opening round of the World Series of Poker's main event, everybody was talking about the players who weren't there.
If the U.S. government hadn't seen fit to crack down on online gambling, poker insiders were saying, at least 4,000 more players would have signed up for the "Big One," the $10,000 no-limit Texas hold 'em world championship tournament, sending the size of the field into record five-figure territory.
As it was, the main event drew 6,358 entrants, down about 27 percent from last year's record turnout of 8,773. The culprit for the drop-off was the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which made it more cumbersome for Americans to move money to and from online gambling sites and prompted some online poker rooms to pull out of the U.S. market.
It also changed the dynamics of how players who won a World Series of Poker entry online - an estimated 55 percent of last year's field was generated by Internet qualifiers - actually registered for the tournament.
In each of the past couple of years, representatives from the major online poker rooms were on hand at the Rio to shepherd the registration of their "satellite" winners.
With the atmosphere surrounding online gambling in the U.S. having changed so drastically in the past year, officials from the online sites were either absent or keeping a low profile. (In one preliminary World Series tournament, a player thought he recognized one of his opponents across the table and politely asked if he was, in fact, a representative of one of the big online poker sites. "Mmmmaybe," came the reply.)
Instead, the online poker rooms generally just deposited the prize money into the accounts of satellite winners, then left them to register on their own.
Consider what that means to the guy in Dubuque, Iowa, who won a World Series main event satellite online. He has to inform his wife that he's going to take $12,000 in cash from his poker account (prize pools usually include some extra expense money), leave her with the kids in the middle of the summer and disappear to Las Vegas for a couple of weeks.
Tough sell, huh?
Given the drop in the number of main event entrants, it's clear a lot of those $12,000 prize packages went toward some new furniture rather than a tournament buy-in.
Even younger poker players without wives or kids or commitments could opt to go to Vegas but spread around their $12,000 among several lower-priced preliminary World Series tournaments, cash games and lap dances instead of risking almost all of it in the main event, on what even some poker pros call a $10,000 lottery ticket.
Impressive numbers on the World Series' undercard back up that assertion. The entire World Series drew a record 54,288 registrants for a total prize pool of more than $159 million. It included the single busiest day in World Series history, when 3,151 players competed in a $1,500 hold 'em tournament on June 30 - a record for a non-main event.
The main event prize pool is $59.7 million, with the winner to receive $8.25 million and 621 players to finish in the money, earning at least $20,320, thanks to a "flatter" payout scale this year that awards more prize money to players finishing farther down the list.
If everybody was talking about the players who weren't there, some poker pros were doing something about it at a fundraiser to support Nevada's Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, Rep. Robert Wexler, D.-Fla., and other lawmakers amenable to a poker exemption or the repeal of the UIGEA.
Wexler, who addressed the World Series of Poker crowd Monday at the Rio, supports an exemption from the law for skill-based games such as poker, bridge, mahjong and backgammon. Exemptions already exist for lotteries(!) and horse racing. Berkley has introduced a bill to study whether online gambling could be regulated and legalized.
Another World Series of Poker participant took a cheekier approach, playing in the main event while wearing a T-shirt with pictures of President Bush, who signed the UIGEA into law in October, and his father. The caption read, "Dumb and Dumber."
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