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Norway already has Magnus Carlsen as the current World Champion of chess. Last night the small nation of barely 5 million people almost got a second World Champion in a game played by hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people around the world: poker.
The 2014 World Series of Poker Main Event completed last night. The annual champion of this No Limit Texas Hold 'Em event is universally labelled as the World Champion of Poker for the year. The final table began with 9 hopefuls distilled down from roughly 6,800 entrants in July. It all came down to Felix Stephensen from Norway and Martin Jacobson from Sweden playing heads up. Norway's Stephensen settled for 2nd best, going all-in with A-9 against a pair of 10's. Both players hit the flop, as a 9 and a 10 came up, but Stephensen could make no further progress and Jacobson won the title and $10 million.
Yes, that's 10 million greenbacks. Makes the Millionaire Chess Open look like a lemonade stand.
It would have been quite a feat for Norway to be able to boast having the World Champion in each of the world's two most popular games.
Last edited by Paul Bonham; Wednesday, 12th November, 2014, 04:31 PM.
Reason: correction to flop
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
I would be curious to see how many persons selected at random could name the world chess champion vs the world poker champion. I imagine that most persons would fail to name either, but it would be an interesting study.
I imagine that if you asked them to name ANY previous world chess champion, most people could name Fischer or Kasparov. What are the poker equivalents? I admit my ignorance up front.
Fwiw. when I Googled "number of poker players worldwide" the figure in the top search result (World Poker Tour) still shows 100 million plus, though the answer is the same as when I did the same search two years ago (by comparison, 60 million plus chessplayers for just for the USA is also given there, though neither figure notes the minimum frequency of play per week, for example).
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Wednesday, 12th November, 2014, 09:39 PM.
Reason: Substituting 'USA' for 'North America'
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Fwiw. when I Googled "number of poker players worldwide" the figure in the top search result (World Poker Tour) still shows 100 million, though the answer is the same as when I did the same search two years ago (by comparison, 60 million chessplayers for just North America is also given there, though neither figure notes the minimum frequency of play per week, for example).
I believe the accepted number of people who play chess world-wide at least once per year, is 600 million. Can anyone give a source for this alleged stat?
I would be curious to see how many persons selected at random could name the world chess champion vs the world poker champion. I imagine that most persons would fail to name either, but it would be an interesting study.
I imagine that if you asked them to name ANY previous world chess champion, most people could name Fischer or Kasparov. What are the poker equivalents? I admit my ignorance up front.
Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth and maybe Gus Hansen and Patrick Antonius would be more famous than say Kramnik, I would think. Edit: and Antonio Esfandiari.
Last edited by Tom O'Donnell; Wednesday, 12th November, 2014, 09:23 PM.
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
Fwiw. when I Googled "number of poker players worldwide" the figure in the top search result (World Poker Tour) still shows 100 million plus, though the answer is the same as when I did the same search two years ago (by comparison, 60 million plus chessplayers for just for the USA is also given there, though neither figure notes the minimum frequency of play per week, for example).
The difference is that, among adults, chess is declining dramatically in popularity and poker is rising equally dramatically in popularity. Chess had its boom in the early 1970s with the Bobby Fischer era. Poker also has had a defining personality: Chris Moneymaker. His WSOP Main Event win in 2003 created the modern day poker explosion, almost sheerly on the power of his last name. The year he won, first prize was $2.5 million and the number of entrants was 869, just 200 more than the previous year. But in 2004, suddenly the entrants jumped almost threefold to 2,576 and first prize doubled to $5 million. The winner that year was Greg Raymer, who mesmerized his opponents and the suddenly huge TV audience with his psychedelic glasses:
The boom was on, and in 2005, entrants doubled to 5,619 and first place prize money went up 50% to $7.5 million. The following year records were set which still stand: 8,773 entrants and first place prize money of $12 million. The numbers have since been tamed presumably by the effects of the severe recession in the U.S., but nevertheless the numbers remained and still remain far beyond those of Moneymaker's watershed year.
As superior as poker is to chess in terms of spectator appeal, poker is not without its limitations. I watched much of this year's final table coverage, and it was fascinating... until it got down to heads up play. Suddenly it was absolutely boring, almost as bad as watching chess. Not because it was as slow and painstaking as chess, but because all elements of strategy were gone. Even the commentators were saying things like "every hand is playable in heads up." It really came down to both players trading small pots back and forth, over and over, waiting to get lucky. Jacobson had a roughly 5 to 1 chip advantage throughout the heads up, and so Stephensen was just biding time -- a long time -- until he got a playable hand, and then went all in.
For about 7 years, NBC used to broadcast every Sunday afternoon in the month of May a National Heads Up Championship in Texas Hold 'Em. It was 64 players playing elimination matches, all heads up of course. It was dreadful to watch and luck reigned supreme, no elements of strategy could be found by the commentators to keep the audience engaged. God knows they tried, but it was all so elementary and simple, they were all just doing the same thing.
Last edited by Paul Bonham; Thursday, 13th November, 2014, 01:28 AM.
Reason: missing word
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Fwiw. when I Googled "number of poker players worldwide" the figure in the top search result (World Poker Tour) still shows 100 million plus, though the answer is the same as when I did the same search two years ago (by comparison, 60 million plus chessplayers for just for the USA is also given there, though neither figure notes the minimum frequency of play per week, for example).
Yes, but what does it mean to be a poker "player"? I think you would get similar numbers if you asked how many people "play" Angry Birds or Tetris.
There is a huge difference between casual play and organized play. Playing poker or chess on the internet is not something that is worth counting in any case (unless there is a money-making aspect).
Of course poker is more popular (as would be crazy eights) since the rules are significantly easier to understand (1/2 hour versus several hours)
and poker involves very little skill and chess requires quite a bit...
People play lotto games for exactly that reason: no investment in time; little investment in money; little - approaching zero - chance to win.
When the current championship match is over Norway might have Zero World Champions. Of course, they still have the largest Sovereign wealth fund in the world. The Alberta Heritage Fund is a fraction of theirs.
Kerry, I don't think it is as clear cut as that. For both games the RULES are fairly easy to understand. However for both games, the STRATEGY and TACTICS can take years to learn. If you think poker involves very little skill, we need to invite you to some poker games with serious players. When you leave broke 4-5 nights in a row, you might rethink this.
Of all the gambling games, poker is the one I would choose to play in Vegas, as opposed to craps, slots, or blackjack. It's the one game that does not rely solely on chance.
BTW, never play poker or pool against someone whose first name is a city.
Kerry, I don't think it is as clear cut as that. For both games the RULES are fairly easy to understand. However for both games, the STRATEGY and TACTICS can take years to learn. If you think poker involves very little skill, we need to invite you to some poker games with serious players. When you leave broke 4-5 nights in a row, you might rethink this.
Of all the gambling games, poker is the one I would choose to play in Vegas, as opposed to craps, slots, or blackjack. It's the one game that does not rely solely on chance.
BTW, never play poker or pool against someone whose first name is a city.
Fair points Garland, but I would point out that in a hand of poker there are a rather small number of decisions that must be made by the player - the next card is determined by chance and about all the player can do is calculate probabilities at each point and make a decision. Chess is quite a bit more complex than that I think. Poker is 'gambling' by any reasonable definition but I agree that it involves more human input than the other forms of gambling you mentioned (although I think blackjack is almost the same situation, no?). Maybe I should Google for the "house odds advantage" for blackjack and various flavours of poker - I wonder if they are actually close or if my presumption is valid?
Paul, you don't seem to like chess very much. Why do you post on a board for chess enthusiasts?
(I don't like sailing, maybe I'll go find a yacht club and tell them how good motor sports are....)
You are simply wrong. I do love chess from a player's perspective, and I especially love it when it is based solely on the creativity of the two players.
My issues with chess are threefold:
(1) there is too much memorization at the elite level. Look at the current WC match, game 3: all the commentators agree that Anand's preparation won the game. He was prepared all the way to Black's 24th move!
(2) to solve problem (1), we have chess960 but those who are in control of organized chess refuse to do anything to promote this. They turn a blind eye to the whole idea that chess should evolve in order to overcome problems. And so all of today's -- and tomorrow's -- chess elite have to spend countless hours memorizing opening lines, instead of simply being creative over the board.
(3) from a spectator point of view, where 'spectator' means someone watching chess who does not play chess, the game offers nothing. At slow time controls, it's just drudgery. When sped up, it's just confusion. The game is too hard to understand for the non-player, and that will forever limit its spectator success, and that in turn limits the ability of players to make a living at playing chess.
John, you seem to think that being critical of something means you don't love it. If you're married, I wonder if you've ever been critical of your wife?
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
(3) from a spectator point of view, where 'spectator' means someone watching chess who does not play chess, the game offers nothing.
Same about poker, isn't? I only watched several episodes of poker games because: 1. it was played by a trash-talker; 2 (main) he was a Lithuanian LOL
As for 1) memorizing. Why do you care about those elite players? Does it hurt your mind that they can remember long variations, and find there some good and interesting ideas? As for the game 3 - the truth might surfaced later why Magnus went into that variation. Do you remember the Kramnik-Leko disaster?
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