[Unfortunately, a wonderful email I received this Wednesday morning in response to this column was lost. Would the writer please resend it? The author asked if a move to Caesars was likely. No, is my answer.]

I spent most of my adult life working in corporations. I can recognize a corporate orphan when I see one. The way poker players have been treated the first few days of this year’s WSOP tells me that upper management at Harrahs has orphaned the WSOP. Evidently they think poker profitability has peaked and assets should be allocated elsewhere. Harrahs is certainly acting as if that is their forecast.

It is time for Harrahs to leave this baby on some other doorstep.

They’ve made plenty from poker in the last four years, due to Becky Binion Behnen’s incompetence. Now it’s time for Harrahs to move on to whatever the corporate hierarchy has decided is more lucrative. And let poker players have parents that care about us.

It’s sad because I’ve come to like Jeffrey Pollack, the Commissioner, and the WSOP staff. They did a fabulous job the first two years at the Rio when we reasonably thought everything would be screwed up. The crowds were unprecedented. Why wouldn’t there be some problems associate with such rapid growth?

But remember the first event of the first year in the gargantuan Amazon Room? It started 20 minutes after noon. Johnnie Grooms, the Tournament Director then, said that’s what he was most proud of, with justification. We were all amazed.

Evidently, little of the unbelievably abusive player treatment - like the five hour lines - we’ve seen this year can be laid to Pollack’s excellent WSOP crew.

I know Jack Effel. Jack Effel is a friend of mine. Whoever is undermining the WSOP is no Jack Effel.

Jack, the current Director, is a poker man. He can tell the difference between a 6 and a 9. He knows how to schedule events and have them start on time. Jack is being sabotaged. I don’t know why, except to think that the WSOP is now a corporate orphan.

Effel is being hung out to dry just like the rest of the poker community. When senior management doesn’t even care enough to stop the Rio from abusing us, why should we care about Harrahs senior management?

I remember a wonderful tournament we used to have at the Rio a few years ago. It was called the Carnivale of Poker. The Rio had private owners then. We had a nice, airy room upstairs with FREE SANDWICHES, cookies and soft drinks for the players (ok, and for the press). A caring, competent staff ran a very tight event. On the breaks the players would go right downstairs to the pits to lose some money. The Rio accountants were delighted with us. We’d get glowing reports from the pit bosses. “They dropped $50,000 that break. $100,000 on the dinner break.” They loved us.

Then Harrahs bought the Rio. This was before anyone knew that poker was going to explode. Our beautiful tournament, now Carnivale III, was literally shoved into a vacant kid’s arcade room. As many tables as could be crammed in, low ceiling, no air. Our walls were covered with action figures and cartoons. It was horrendous. We knew the Carnivale of Poker was dead forever. R.I.P.

It was outside this stupid arcade that something good happened, however. A terrifically excited Mark Napolitano came up to me and said he and his wife Tina had started a new poker website…PokerPages.com. Tina was to tell me years later that I was the first person to ever write for PokerPages. I’m very proud of that. (Especially as this could be my last article, if she reads this.)

So a few years later we hear that Harrahs has bought the ‘Horseshoe’ name and had also picked up this little item thrown in for pocket change…The World Series of Poker. Benny Binion is spinning in his grave at this point. Jack Binion let his little sister, and the despised Nick Behnen her husband, go down the toilet.

Of all the companies to buy the WSOP, not Harrahs! I thought. The ones that killed the Carnivale? What’s going to happen to our dear, precious WSOP? Will it get shoved into a kid’s arcade, too?

But what timing for Harrahs. (I know they are brilliant operators, but could their rocket scientists have seen this coming when the players didn’t?) That year Chris Moneymaker won the World Championship with a $40 bet on the Internet. And the glass table - to show the hole cards - started being used on television.

Bonanza! Suddenly poker was the hottest thing since girls. But the crowds were going to be so big, the WSOP could only be accommodated in the Rio Pavilion. Ok, what’s the problem?

The problem is that the Pavilion is about a mile from the Rio casino. The Pavilion has no slot machines, no table games, no keno runners, and no cocktail waitresses.

No nuttin’, honey.

I can fully understand why the pit bosses were pissed. Millions being made in the Rio complex and they are getting almost none of it.

A pit boss might say, “You’re telling me there are five thousand poker players a mile from here and I can’t make my numbers this week? I’d rather have a Geriatrics’ convention in there. At least they gamble.”

So it’s understandable to me why the Rio accountants would make it as hard as possible to sign up for the tournaments. They could insist on a Harrahs Reward Card for everyone, besides tournament registration, replete with pages of paperwork. The events would start late and the players, having nothing else to do, would walk to the casino to drop some cash. I think the Rio management would love to see the WSOP leave the buildings. If this is how we’ll be treated, poker players should be glad to leave as well.

If senior management doesn’t care enough about the WSOP to tell its own employees at the Rio to behave, you have the definition of a corporate orphan.

End of rant. Was that controversial enough?

Love,

Mike Paulle

If you have your own comments I’d like to post them: MikePaulle@aol.com

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