If last years debacle wasn’t enough Harrah’s has decided to keep the delayed Final Table concept along with several other changes that will be evident with the 2009 WSOP. To say that I am disappointed would be an understatement. Last years delay was absolutely pointless from a marketing standpoint. Yes, the numbers went up in terms of viewership. However, what they do not seem to understand is that most of the people that watched the Final Table were already fans of the game.

The idea of delaying the Final Table was to bring in NEW viewers and that did not go over very well. Some of the problems were clearly due to the players not making themselves available to various TV shows and media outlets. The other problem is that outside of ESPN we saw absolutely no promotion of the players or the Final Table at all. Harrah’s has to saturate the media with the Final Table participants for this move to make sense in my opinion. If they are prepared to do that along with the players be prepared to be in the public eye then we might have something.

Lastly, a few of the last years Final Table participants have indicated that the delay was too long. Perhaps an abbreviated delay would work out better. It seems that the people that are running the WSOP are not doing a very good job of listening to those that play the game. If this is the best we can do with the No Limit Main Event Championship then we might as well leave it alone.

Other changes we are likely to see involve the re-buy tournaments. 5 of the re-buy tournaments have been removed from this years WSOP.