Pro-Rated

My apologies for the lateness of this post.

But let’s be honest. Would you have missed this if you never saw it?

Think about it. I haven’t.

I did tease this though on an episode of The Rail, so here it is, the question that will continue to grow as we move closer to our November 9.

Does a pro need to win the Main Event?

Now, the question is not do we want a pro to win poker’s biggest prize. I don’t know anyone that was rooting against Ivey last year, and excitement built to a fever pitch with anticipation.

But honestly, is it better for the game if a pro wins?

I’m not going to argue that it would make things worse, but I certainly don’t think that poker would have been leaps and bounds better had Ivey won.

In the inner circles, it would have solidified Ivey’s place as maybe the best of all time as he would have collected on dozens of bracelet bets.

But the general public would not have made a seismic shift towards playing poker. Ivey would not have become most likely this huge mainstream celebrity that poker really needs.

Do ratings soar this year if he does? Meh, probably not. Are fields juicier this year? I wouldn’t think so.

In short, we would pretty much be exactly where we are right now.

Of course, I definitely think there would have been a problem had a complete amateur won. We don’t need another Jamie Gold or Jerry Yang winning in the face of all the Senate hearings going on to give them even more ammo and prevent poker from ever becoming legal in any form in this country.

So while it would be a nice story worth rooting for, I just don’t see the need for a well-known pro to win the Main Event.

Maybe in time, maybe even this year, a pro will win, and we can revisit this discussion as more than a hypothetical. But for now, all we have is conjecture, and I think that poker can survive just fine on its own without it.

Now let’s go DN!!!