(Distributed June 20, 2006)
TOURNAMENT DIRECTORS PROUD OF HISTORIC 2005 WORLD SERIES
The first thing you notice about the team of Johnny Grooms and Jack Effel is how much they enjoy directing major poker tournaments. The second is how good they are at it.
At January’s World Series Circuit Event in Tunica, Miss., Grooms and Effel conducted the tournaments with professional efficiency tinged with Southern hospitality. Just as important, they calmly diffused table flare-ups with firm diplomacy, no easy task with so many players tensely battling for so much cash.
Last summer, the pair were part of history when they guided the 2005 World Series main event, the biggest poker tournament ever, to its stunning conclusion in Las Vegas. That final tournament, won by Australian Joe Hachem, attracted 5,619 players and yielded a staggering $52.8 million total payout, both record-shattering totals.
After the champion’s bracelet was awarded, Grooms and Effel were on top of the poker world as directors. By January in Tunica, they were out.
“I don’t really know what happened,” said Grooms at the Mississippi tournament, “but I think they (Harrah’s Entertainment) wanted to go with a more in-house team.” Grooms and Effel were employees of the Horseshoe in Tunica. Harrah’s had secured rights to the World Series and moved it from Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas to the Rio near the Strip.
“It was like being kicked in the face,” Grooms said. “There were travel expenses involved, planning stages, and all the things that have to happen there in Vegas. It’s pretty much a year-round job, and they wanted somebody that’s going to be there in Vegas.”
Harrah’s named Robert Daily, the Rio’s poker room manager and a 30-year casino industry veteran, to replace Grooms as director of this year’s World Series which begins its 45-tournament schedule next week. Succeeding Effel as assistant director will be Michael Matts, poker room manager at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
To reduce the new directors’ workload, Harrah’s announced there would be more assistants hired this year. That news likely brought a wry smile to Grooms and Effel.
“We worked 16 hours a day with no off days for seven weeks last year,” Grooms said of their one-time experience. “There was so much stuff you did, and it all went by so fast. So looking back on it, it’s like telling war stories.”
Some of them are really good stories, too.
“The most unusual situation I can think of was the night Doyle Brunson won his 10th bracelet, the same night Johnny Chan won his 10th,” Grooms said. Effel chimed in: “You also had actress Jennifer Tilly in the process of winning the ladies event, and her boyfriend (Phil Laak) happened to be the guy playing Chan heads-up. ESPN was just drooling at the mouth. It was like a whirlwind.”
For a perfect ending to that stretch of chaos, Effel got to award Chan’s bracelet while Grooms awarded Brunson’s. “Between the two of us,” Grooms said, “Jack’s favorite player is Johnny Chan and my favorite player is Doyle Brunson. It was really neat.”
There were testy moments, too, such as the inevitable temper outbreaks at the tables.
“You know, without the emotion, you don’t have much of a poker game,” Effel said. “But you have to control that, and Johnny was kind of the originator of the f-bomb rule because that’s a word that always entices very disruptive behavior.”
Effel should know. At the 2005 World Series, he invoked several 10-minute penalties against players for obscene language, including fiery pro Mike Matusow late in the main event. Matusow, by the way, calmed down during his “break” and went on to win $1 million at the final table.
“Taking that word out of play has cleaned up a lot of situations,” Effel said. “It has made poker a little better environment…and now you see more people such as lawyers, doctors, ladies, celebrities, what have you, playing the game.”
Their trickiest problem last year was the math in dividing up $52,818,600 for the main event. “We wanted everybody at the final table to be a millionaire, we wanted first place to be $7.5 million, and for everyone at the bottom of the pay scale to at least make a small profit instead of just winning their money back ($10,000),” Grooms said. “Doing a payout for 5,619 people had never been done before in poker.”
Both of them expect World Series records will be broken again this year at the Rio, but can’t help looking back to 2005 and what they accomplished.
“Anything that’s done from here on out, they might do equally well or find slightly better ways of doing, but we hold the title to date for running the largest poker event in history. We set a precedent,” Effel said.
Smiling, Grooms turned to his sidekick and said, “We’re hard to beat!”
E-mail your poker questions and comments to russ@luckydogpoker.com for use in future columns. To find out more about Russ Scott and read previous LuckyDog Poker columns, visit www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2006 RUSS SCOTT
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