For a Horse final table preview, go here:  If you are interested in some of the background behind this event’s diminishment, continue reading.

The Horse event is kind of regarded as the player’s championship.  Sure  the main event has more glitz (Phil Hellmuth is rumored to show up as Caeser this year), and more heartache, but only a great player can win all the disciplines required to navigate the 50k Horse Event.

Last year, with continued ESPN coverage and Scotty Nguyen meltdown on his way to a title, 148 players coughed up the cash to win the Chip Reese trophy.  This year a paltry 95 did.

Why? 

Reason 1.   The World Series of Poker and Players Advisory Council chose to hold a $40,000 hold ‘em event to kick off the 40th anniversary of the WSOP.  How many big buy-ins can many of these players afford?  Most of them pulled the trigger early, and now sometime into the tournament many of them can’t find the scratch to compete late.   There were a ton of 10k events in between too. 

Reason 2.   ESPN decided not to broadcast it.  Okay, let’s say you have a choice between the 40k event and the 50k horse event.  You can’t really afford both but you could do 1.  Who wouldn’t keep the extra 10k and play on a televised table (yes, ESPN is going to televise the 40k event).  Not only was the prize pool bigger, the potential for new endorsements bigger with TV time, but there was always that chance in a player’s mind he could take that first one down and afford the 50k.

Reason 3.  It’s the economy stupid.  Maybe soup kitchens haven’t sprouted up yet, but for many in the poker playing schools of fish, this is a lot of money to gamble away without a good shot. 

What’s worse is the small player pool had to be cajoled after a series of fits and starts to buy-in.   At the scheduled noon start barely more than  30 players were registered. 

Even worse many of the registered hadn’t bothered to show up on time.  The WSOP waited for more to buy-in an luckily got to almost 100.  The sponsors sat on their wallets recognizing there were no cameras and buy-ins were incredibly hard to come by.

These sites that made their business on online Texas Hold’Em have a hard time entering players to an event nobody is watching and TV ratings indicate nobody really cares about.  Next year, the suggestion is that the final table will return to a No Limit only contest, and the belief is ESPN and a slew of players will return.