The Year of the Car Park?
Topic: Poker
As others have noted, it wasn't a good WSOP main event for those who promote the idea that the name players have a substantial edge over the field. Not only was the winner, Jamie Gold, a complete unknown, but so too was virtually everyone else in the last 100. After Gryko got knocked out in 50th place, I think there were only three people left I'd heard of!

Faced with that, I can't help wondering whether this was bound to happen, given the plethora of books about No Limit hold'em that have been written in recent years, and the huge amount of actually quite good blogging about poker hands and situations (mercifully surrounded by a lot of crap too). There used to be a rule about not educating the weaker players - "Coaches in the Car Park!"

Luckily there are still plenty of people who are capable of reading a good poker book and completely misunderstanding the context in which its advice applies. But in a field of nearly 9,000 players, there's going to be about a thousand who are clever enough to digest the advice and know when to apply it and when not to. With the addition of many more skilled players, along with the increased field sizes, perhaps your skill level matters less than your stamina; knowing the odds and the moves being less important than being able to apply any skill at all after nine long days of play!

But what if someone wrote a really bad book? I'm not pointing any fingers here, as I've not read much of the output of recent years, but isn't it interesting that in the year following the publication of 'Kill Phil', Phil Hellmuth has one of his best WSOPs!