New WSOP Champion

Jerry Yang is this year’s World Series of Poker Champion, and walks away $8.25 million richer for his efforts. Along with this nice chunk of change comes endorsement deals that will pay him millions per year, $50,000 a day corporate appearances, free Las Vegas penthouse condo (which he gets along with having his face all over the LV airport billboards), and it doesn’t stop there.

If he is successful in marketing himself, he could be the next Phil Hellmuth – everyone knows his name because of all the endorsement deals that he does. Hellmuth hawks everything from how to win DVDs to video games.

Yang is a 39 year old psychologist and social worker from Southern California, and actually won his entry into the WSOP through a local Indian casino tournament that he entered online. He won the tournament and they paid his $10,000 entry fee – not bad for only having played poker for two years prior to winning the WSOP.

Some say that the sport of poker is dying by people like Yang entering the tournaments. There are “purists” who think that the online game is ruining the idea behind it. They say that those guys that play online over and over again – honing their skills – should not be allowed to play in the live tournaments.

They say that poker is having your guy and girl friends over for Friday night poker in the living room. The game that is played there is a very different game from the one that is played online. They say that poker is a social game, and playing face to face was about the psychology of the game and of those you are playing against.

They say this game that is played now is a bastardization of the poker game that used to be. Players sitting around with baseball caps and dark sunglasses, not speaking to each other – barely acknowledging that there are even others at the table; these are not the players of yesterday – these are the players of online games.

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