5 ways to instantly improve the World Series of Poker

With just two tournaments in action at the 2011 WSOP on the Fourth of July Holiday -and neither awarding a bracelet-I’ll once more deviate from my daily WSOP wrap-up and use today’s post to talk about a few improvements I would like to see implemented in the future at the WSOP.

#1 — Change the value of the bracelet

How can the WSOP and the record-books assign the same value to a bracelet won in the $10k Limit Holdem Championship as they do for a bracelet won in the $1,500 Seven-Card-Stud tournament?

My suggestion to the WSOP is to change the bracelet’s value based on the buy-in:

• $2,500 buy-in and lower = Gold Bracelet
• $3,000 — $5,000 buy-in = Gold Bracelet with embellishment
• $10k Championship Events = Platinum Bracelets
• $10k Main Event, $50k Players Championship, and $25k Heads-Up Championship = Platinum Bracelet with embellishment

#2 — Implement a dress code

Ok, this is bit of a pet peeve of mine, but until they do something about I’m going to keep griping. The WSOP, and poker in general, needs to implement some sort of dress code. I’m not advocating for Tony Dunst attire, but it would be nice to see players wearing at the least a collared shirt and jeans.

#3 — Rules Schmules

Paging Marcel Luske and Michelle Lau… Poker needs some uniform rules and what better place to start than the WSOP. Not only are the rules entirely different year to year, but the rulebook has gotten so thick that poker tournaments are almost like a police state.

So, let’s implement the rules set forth by the xxx, and do away with all the nanny nonsense of you can say this word but not that -except when it comes to a dress code!!!

#4 — Eliminate all duplicate events

What is the point of having five $1,500 No Limit Holdem tournaments? If you want to have a number of smaller buy-in $1,500 NLHE events to draw players in fine, but why do they have to be WSOP bracelet events, just make them part of a daily schedule throughout the WSOP.

#5 — Stop overlapping tournaments

First of all, if we eliminate the duplicate events like I suggested above that would be a huge step in terms of overlapping tournaments. Secondly, why not just drag the WSOP out another week? It already spans the entire summer!

When there are five, six, sometimes seven tournaments in progress each day it’s difficult for the poker media to pay the necessary face time to each one; not to mention the numerous side stories that slip through the cracks. If you want to see what I mean, go to any poker news outlet and see if you can find complete write-ups on each tournament along with all of the other news going on in the poker world.