Big Blinds By Phil Gordon Originally published on April 27, 2006 by ESPN.com One of the most annoying things to me and a lot of the other professional poker players is the ridiculous blind structure the World Poker Tour forces on the contestants at the end of the tournament. These players, who have battled it out for five or six days find themselves at the final table playing for many millions of dollars. Unfortunately, the blind structure eliminates most of the skill and turns the final table into an “all-in fest.” Why would the World Poker Tour do this? I haven’t asked Steve Lipscomb (the founder of the World Poker Tour), but I can come up with two compelling reasons: They want action – all-ins make for great television, someone stealing the blinds doesn’t particularly thrill the home audience. They don’t want to pay the crew overtime. With reasonable blind structures, a final table could take more than 4 or 5 hours to film. The WPT would have to pay more money to the film crew (Gasp!) and thus reduce their ever important profit margin. At this year’s World Poker Tour Championship event, six hundred plus players put up $25,000 each to compete. At the end of six days, six players remained. Each player started with 50,000 in tournament chips. At the final table, about 30,000,000 in chips were in play. At some point on the final table, the levels were decreased to an astounding 30 minutes each. Add to this the fact that due to the “television” being made, the play is extra slow – the players take more time doing “Hollywood” and the crew force the dealer and action to be much slower than normal for dramatic purposes. Tape changes, camera difficulties, and other things that happen on a live film set can also delay the action while the clock is ticking. When the players got to heads up, $5.8 million dollars was up for grabs. That is some serious cash. $3.7 million for first, $1.9 million for second. It was time to play some serious heads up poker for a place in history. Or was it? The blinds when the players got heads up? $400,000 - $800,000 with $100,000 antes. Imagine, for a second, you’re at the final table playing for a prize differential of $1.9 million dollars. How would you feel about the tournament organizers popping the blinds to that stratospheric level and turning the event into a crapshoot? I can tell you how you’d feel: you’d be pissed off. Why is this so terrible? Simple: big blinds erase all skill from a tournament. Here’s an example: 30,000,000 in play. 20,000,000 for Player 1 10,000,000 for Player 2 Blinds are 400,000 - $800,000 with a 100,000 ante. You’re player two and on the short stack and you’re dealt K-J offsuit – a very nice hand heads up. To raise before the flop, you’re going to have to make it about 2,500,000 to go, about three times the big blind. If your opponent moves all in against you, there will be 12,700,000 in the pot and you’ll be asked to call your last 7,400,000. In other words, you’re getting 1.7 to 1 on your money. Your break-even percentage to justify a call is about 37%. You put your opponent on a hand, something like A-5 or A-T. The K-J has 42.5% equity in the pot against those hands and is virtually forced to call all-in. In fact, the K-J would be forced to call unless he knew for certain that his opponent had A-A, A-K, A-J, K-Q, or K-K. It’s just too tough a read. The K-J will call, and most of the time, he’ll be right to do so. The final confrontation hands this year at the championship? The powerhouses Th-4h vs. 9-5 offsuit. And you know what? Both players did the right thing on the hand when all the money, 30,000,000 in chips, went into the pot. One they had committed chips to the pot before the flop, the rest were going in after the flop. With less than 40 big blinds in play, there just isn’t much play to the game whatsoever. No Limit Hold’em, played aggressively, turns into an all-in fest. That makes great TV, but it doesn’t make for great quality championship play. The World Poker Tour should take notice of the extra spectacular effort made by the crew at the World Series of Poker this past year. That final table lasted more than 18 hours. When the players finally got heads up, they were still playing 2 hour levels and they had more than 100 big blinds combined. Now that, readers, is enough chips to let the skill rise to the top. With so much money on the line, don’t you think the most skillful players should have a chance to show it? This, among many other reasons, is why I have refused to participate in World Poker Tour events for the last year. I miss playing on the WPT. I have two WPT wins under my belt and I’d love to compete for more. But until the WPT realizes that they are truly hurting the integrity of the game for the sake of their precious television show and profits, I’ll stay as far away from their tournaments as possible. The next time you’re watching televised poker and you see the players moving all-in on ridiculous looking hands, check out the blind structure. If you’re watching the Travel Channel and the World Poker Tour, you can be pretty sure that the structure made them do it. << Go Back To Articles