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The World Series Of Poker has kicked off for the summer and the buzz is, erhm, here, I guess? The truth is no one really cares about the WSOP outside of the main event. But that begs the question, why do people even care about that?
ShenaniGang has searched long and hard (3 different Wikipedia pages) and has discovered a frightening truth: The World Series Of Poker scripted the outcomes of its first three years being televised on ESPN. Let’s look at the data:
Prior to 2003, the WSOP existed and was even televised on the Discovery Channel. But obviously no one cared. It wasn’t until it got its big break and was going to be televised on the world wide leader in sports, ESPN, that anyone was talking about poker.
It was a moment of truth. Would poker be able to fill the void left by the absence of football and basketball in the summer? Would people actually tune in? With stakes this high the WSOP knew that they couldn’t leave their poker tournament up to chance. They needed to create a compelling storyline to gain people’s interest. They needed a hero. They needed an underdog. Enter Chris Moneymaker, the novice poker playing accountant.
I mean they legitimately had a random man named Moneymaker win the biggest tournament in poker. That sentence is insane. So insane that it worked. I mean it would be like if the best basketball player in the world was named Lebron Dunkjumpshot. It’s one of those things that feels so perfect that you couldn’t script a better scenario. A “reality is stranger than fiction” type of situation. Except in this case it was perfect because it was scripted. How can I be so sure? Well let’s see what they did in the following years.
2004 rolled around and with the massive, yet manufactured, success of the main event, the producers had to be asking themselves how the hell they could recapture the excitement. They knew that it wasn’t just enough to have the winner appeal to the “everyman” again. They needed a hook. Many poker players wear glasses while they play in order to prevent people from reading their eyes. What if the WSOP made their new plant wear the most ridiculous pair of glasses imaginable?
Greg Raymer aka The Fossilman wore these stupid looking glasses and the country went wild. We couldn’t get enough of the fat man in the dinosaur shades. What an insane look. What a specific choice. What a representation of America in 2004. IS THIS YOUR KING, AMERICA?!?
One is lucky. Two is momentum. But three is a pattern. That’s why come 2005 WSOP needed to pull one last trick out of their hat in order to cement themselves as an ESPN summer mainstay.
But they used up all their tricks in 2003 and 2004. How many more out of shape Americans could they make into icons. They needed to look elsewhere both to other countries and to other sports for inspiration. What other sport reminds you of summer but possesses more excitement than baseball? The World Cup. They needed to steal the excitement that soccer fans from Europe possess for their teams and harness it for poker. Enter the last piece of the puzzle: Australia’s own Joseph Hachem.
The name doesn’t ring a bell? Well what about the soccer-like chant:
AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE! OI! OI! OI!
A chant that electrified a sport that is generally associated with fat slobs and smug kids quietly fidgeting with their chips.
3 years and 3 home runs. There has not been anywhere near as much excitement for the WSOP main event since 2005 and yet it premieres on ESPN every summer due to the success of these initial trials.
We were manipulated and now we all have to pretend that poker is an actual sport.
