High stakes crusher Nick Schulman has reopened a discussion on why poker doesn’t have an official world champion. The American is known to be a keen chess player and doesn’t see why we cannot come up with a similar championship format.
Wonder if poker could become more like chess one day, real sponsors, less gambling, less casinos, little kids studying and playing, a true consensus world champ. We would all huddle around some Russian 11 year old animal to watch his moves, "young Haxton" they'd whisper lol
— Nick Schulman (@NickSchulman) June 3, 2020
Nick Schulman Calls for Poker World Champion
When Nick Schulman tweeted his ideas for change he reopened a discussion that has been seen many times in the past.
“…real sponsors, less gambling, less casinos, little kids studying and playing, a true consensus world champ.”
This idea of an image makeover for poker would certainly be a positive change but the consensus has always been that it is not possible to have a single world champion.
Another high stakes beast, Mike Timex McDonald, was quick to point out that he too had aired the same discussion last year. However, the overwhelming feeling was that the idea was unpopular.
Could it be true that we’re all just repeating an old herd opinion and not looking deep enough into what is possible in 2020?
Poker strategy software has come on in leaps and bounds over the last few years. GTO poker solvers and general simulation software options must give us the capability to run a game that does away with variance.
Modern Era Deserves a Real Poker World Champion
One of the problems of why there hasn’t been much of a push to declare a poker world champion is how the game is seen from the outside.
In other disciplines spectators will always naturally gravitate towards watching the best participants. In poker this isn’t always true.
TV poker has always been about the personalities on show. Think Phil Hellmuth in a high stakes real money poker cash game. Everybody knows that he is a loser against top cash players but we want him there to see him lose his temper.
McDonald points out,
“I do play chess- I just think poker is weird where we have these debates about whether its more fun to watch charismatic mediocre players, or elite players. But we place so much prestige on titles that have extremely little to do with ability”
This placing of prestige on a title that doesn’t deserve it explains a lot.
We have seen enough WSOP Main Event champions over the last 20 years that aren’t even close enough to being profitable in that tournament, let alone worthy of poker world champion status.
If this is the case then we need a modern solution. The goal is to clearly highlight the best players and entertainment is not a factor here.
Poker World Championship Format
Surely today with the budgets that are available we can try out a format such as range poker. The players simply enter their full range for every decision and this works cleanly for both tournaments and cash games.
Each hand could be simulated millions of times to do away with almost all variance.
The issue now has to be that the game has been sterilised. Poker is a beautiful game because it is a fusion of technical skill and psychology. We can see who has the best technical skill but can that player have the nerve to pull off the right move when there are millions at stake.
Sam Greenwood makes a good point when he says,
“I’d like this, but I think a skill of an elite poker player is playing well while getting stomped. Try finding the tricky solver river bluff that is worth 1% of the pot after losing 350k in a week.”
For now it seems we are going to be stuck with only a subjective opinion on who the best players are.
This isn’t really so bad, but one hopes that Nick Schulman and all of the high stakes regs who got involved in sharing ideas can keep pushing to come up with a true world championship format.
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