On December 24, Brian Reinert brought up an objection on Twitter to the $10 Million guarantee for the WSOP first prize. He felt that it was taking away from the poker community, because that money basically disappears from the poker economy. Reinert and several others advocated for a much flatter payout structure, with some players even saying that 20% of the field should be paid, rather than 10%. (Interestingly, that 20% would have really helped me, as I finished in the top 20% from 2011-2013 and received nothing.)

At the time, this was met with a lot of defensivess from tournament director Jack Effel and his boss Ty Stewart. They kept insisting that they were appealing to recreational players with the $10 million dream, but the pros countered that recreational players know that they are highly unlikely to see that $10 million, and instead would be thrilled with just cashing.

Effel then made a laughable statement that rec players don't care about min-cashing.

I countered by asking Effel why it takes hours for the Main Event bubble to burst if nobody cares about cashing.

Here's writeup of the situation from a month ago:

http://www.parttimepoker.com/poker-c...on-first-prize


And while it looked like the WSOP brass was digging their heels in and refusing to do anything about it, I received the following surprising e-mail from Seth Palansky today, which went out to all poker media members.

$10 Million 1st Place Guarantee Removed

LAS VEGAS (Jan. 27, 2015) – The World Series of Poker has made a change to its payout structure for the Main Event, replacing the $10 million first place guarantee in favor of guaranteeing 1,000* places receiving winnings.

“The dream of life-changing money is core to the DNA of the WSOP Main Event and we also want to make it easier to experience playing in poker’s Big Show,” said WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart. “Our players understand numbers, and 2015 now presents the best odds ever to leave the Main Event a winner.”

With a strategy to more broadly distribute the prize pool, the WSOP Main Event will still award a massive prize to its Champion. If participation numbers are the same as 2014 (6,683) the 2015 winner would receive $8,000,000, a prize consistent to winners of the past decade before last year’s $10 million first place prize to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the event at the Rio. In addition, all final table participants would receive at least $1 million.

Using the 2014 Main Event entry number – 6,683 entries – the 2015 Main Event payout structure would look like this: (It is important to note the final payout structure will be determined based on number of 2015 entries)

· 1st place: $8,000,000
· 2nd place: $4,663,527
· 3rd place: $3,500,000
· 4th place: $2,750,000
· 5th place: $2,000,000
· 6th place: $1,500,000
· 7th place: $1,250,000
· 8th place: $1,100,000
· 9th place: $1,000,000
· 10-12th place: $550,000
· 50th place: $142,500
· 100th place: $50,000
· 500th place: $20,850
· 693rd place: $16,750 (last year’s last paid place)
· 694-1,000 place: $15,000

The WSOP recognizes the Main Event is a unique tournament onto itself, given the highly international field, percentage of repeat players and lofty $10,000 buy-in. The WSOP believes paying a higher percentage of players in this particular event, (based on last year’s entry figure would be akin to 15 percent of the field – nearly 50% more players than previously) will encourage both new and repeat participation for the Main Event, and thus an increased prize pool.

The current slate of individual events offered during the 46th Annual WSOP is almost finalized, with 60+ official gold bracelet events on tap and will be announced in full in the coming days.

* The event must have a minimum 5,000 entrants in order to pay 1,000 places.

So basically they will be paying 1000 people, no matter how many entrants there are (provided there are over 5,000, which there will be.)

With an expected 6800 or so entrants (I think that's a good over/under), that means they will be paying almost the top 15%, unless there is an unexpected rise in entrants. Still, unless there are 10,000 entrants, this is a much flatter payout.

Of course, that payout is only $15k, meaning you are making just $5k on a $10k buyin.

Still, I think this is a great move, and good for the poker economy.

They finally realized that the huge money payouts are going to pros, which disappears into a black hole and is never seen by the community again.