2008: Best Internation...

Wednesday, Jul. 2, 2008

2008: Best International WSOP Ever!

By Jason Kirk | WSOP 2008

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There's some evidence that Benny Binion foresaw the growth of the World Series of Poker from very early on.

"I look to have better than 20 (players) next year," Binion told historian Mary Ellen Glass back in 1973, the fourth year of the WSOP. "It's even liable to get up to be 50. Might get up to be more than that; it will eventually."

So given his foresight in other matters WSOP, it's not out of line to suggest that Binion gave his creation a name that it could grow into, a name that would someday be much more apt than its baseball equivalent. If that's true, he would be smiling at how much progress the WSOP has made as an international event in the last few years.

Through all the preliminary events of the this summer, the last of which will end sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning, the rough numbers from the WSOP staff indicate that representatives of 104 different countries have taken part in at least one tournament here at the Rio.

We've seen Swedes playing Stud and Hondurans playing Hold'em, contributing to a new record that eclipses the old one in much the same fashion as we've seen live tournament fields shatter attendance records for the last several years.

According to numbers quoted to me today by the WSOP staff, last year the WSOP set a new record for the most participating countries, with at least one citizen from 87 separate nations sitting at the felt. The old record broken that year had been set, as you might guess, the previous year as well; in 2006, a total of 54 countries participated in the WSOP.

Hachem made poker popular Down Under.

If you don't think any of those numbers sound very big, keep two facts in mind. First, there are only 195 countries in the entire world. Second, the first World Series of Poker consisted of citizens from just one country: the United States of America.

Before this year, the international growth of the WSOP was best captured by the makeup of last year's Main Event final table. Six different countries were represented among the nine finalists, including Raymond Rahme of South Africa.

Rahme's appearance at the final table marked the first time anyone from the continent of Africa had ever made the final table of the biggest poker tournament in the world, and set off an explosion of interest in the game in his native country similar to the game's boom in Australia after Team PokerStars pro Joe Hachem won the 2005 Main Event.

This year we've seen the international theme of the last few years taken to new heights. Anyone who really believes all the talk that gets tossed around about how poker is dying should take a good look at where our bracelet winners are coming from and reconsider.

Through this evening, while two final tables were still in progress, a total of 10 nations had produced bracelet winners. That includes three apiece from Canada and Germany, two from Italy, and one bracelet winner each from Brazil, Denmark, France, Belgium, Holland and Russia.

Alex Kravchenko, the catalyst for a Russian poker boom.

The success of international players just goes to show that for every downward trend in poker in North America, there's an upward trend somewhere else around the world. One of the best examples is Russia.

Alex Kravchenko's fourth-place finish in last year's Main Event appears to have been the basis of a lot of enthusiasm for the game there. $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em bracelet winner Vitaly Lunkin, 10-time casher Nikolay Evdakov and several 2008 final tablists hail from the Russian Federation.

These are the kind of signs that say the growth of the game around the world is going to continue.

Regardless of what the particular climate toward poker is in America right now, in the rest of the world there's a second poker boom in effect that is bringing all sorts of people from a lot of nontraditional poker countries to the game. If you really love the game, you have to be happy when you see an international player take home a bracelet. Today's new kid on the block might just be the best hope for the game in the long run.