Official Footwear of the WSOP

World Series of Poker 2011 / Matthew Pitt / 30 May 2011 / Leave a Comment

Fear not gentle reader but I have not completely lost the plot and started to make up ridiculous headlines just to make you read my musings, the World Series of Poker, for this year at least, will have an official footwear sponsor. I kid you not.

Over the past few years the WSOP has had a number of different sponsors some of which have been heavily linked to poker and others maybe not so much. For example, Milwaukee Light beer was quite an apt sponsor, as was the All In energy drink. Then came other companies that were not as synonymous with playing poker such as Jack Links Beef Jerky and Levitra, an erectile dysfunction medicine! Now Ty Stewart, vice president of the WSOP, has decided that poker's biggest festival needs a footwear sponsor and Dearfoams Slippers will be it.

Now I will admit I have never heard of Dearfoams Slippers but after a little bit of research I have discovered they have been around since 1947 after being founded by Florence Melton and since then they have sold more than a billion pair of slippers ranging from $20 to $50. But how does a pair of slippers, or any footwear for that matter, link back to either online or live poker? Stewart took care of that one, referring to the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel sporting flip-flops at the final table.

Stewart said "Our champion last year won nearly $9 million while wearing flip-flops, so we know poker players covet comfort in their pursuit of glory. But let's face it, flip-flops aren't so comfortable. So we have partnered with Dearfoams - who makes the world's most comfortable slippers - so players can now feel truly comfy as they pursue their dreams of winning the WSOP and going on to live a life of leisure where it will be appropriate to wear Dearfoams slippers 24/7."

A pair of Dearfoams will be given to every single entrant in this year's $10,000 Main Event and the Ladies-only Event and they will also be giving away entry to the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event via a competition on their website. Mark Zobel, the vice president of R.G. Barry Corporation, the parent company of Dreamfoams, had this to say of the new partnership, "This is an exciting opportunity for us and a unique way for Dearfoams to reach a broader male audience, who may not be as familiar with our brand as women. They're the perfect pair whether at a poker table, running errands, heading to class, or just kicking back at home."

I will admit that I have already looked on the Dreamfoams website and have considered ordering myself a pair of slippers as I am in the house most of the time and wear slippers all day long. I guess their marketting campaign has already suckered one poker player in then, one-nil to Dreamfoams and the WSOP.

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Two online poker rooms merged on Thursday to make a much larger poker company. Bwin and Party Gaming is now the world's largest online gambling company. The new online poker site company will be called Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment. The company has two poker sites, Bwin Poker and Party Poker. This merger is the culmination of plans that started in July of last year. Now that the new company has been formed they opened to the public on the London Stock Exchange, trading as BPTY at £1.94.

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Simon Rowlands: Official going, winning distances and longest SP

Ante-post / Simon Rowlands / 07 March 2011 / Leave a Comment

What will the going be described as on day one?

Our blogger takes a look at three of the Cheltenham Festival Specials markets available on Betfair...

With the Cheltenham Festival approaching fast, various specials markets have started springing up all over the betting industry. Some of these represent little more than 'hit and hope' jobs at this stage, but it is surprising to discover just how far a modest amount of research can take you with the others.

I decided to look at the markets for official going, winning distances and longest SP.

The following is the historical data since 2001, the year in which the meeting was cancelled due to foot and mouth:

The official going market is settled according to the official description of the majority of the ground on the hurdle course prior to the first race of the meeting. In this, it is subject to human interference in both the imperative to achieve a certain outcome ("good jumping ground") and in the possible inclination to believe that that outcome has been achieved, come what may (what might be termed the "mark your own exam paper" phenomenon).

Simon Claisse has been Clerk of The Course at Cheltenham since 2000 and Timeform, using race times as well as other information, has disagreed with his description in four of the last five years.

In other words, it matters little what the ground is, if Mr Claisse states it is "good", or more commonly "good to soft", that is what you will get paid out on. He even changed it from "good to soft" to a more credible "good" halfway through the first day of last year's meeting.

Claisse consults with famed weather forecaster John Kettley in the weeks leading up to the meeting and waters as he sees fit. Current odds of [1.42] on Betfair suggest that Claisse will achieve his goal of describing the ground for the first as "good to soft".

The state of the going - real, rather than imagined - has an impact on many other markets, not least that of winning distances. Wider modelling of margins confirms that they increase as the ground becomes softer, though more gradually than might be supposed.

Gauging the real significance of winning distances at the Cheltenham Festival has been akin to trying to herd cats over the years. Not only has the going varied, but the numbers and types of races have varied, too, as has the means by which the margins themselves are determined.

The meeting went from being a three-day one to a four-day one after the 2004 Festival, and there will be another race - making 27 in all - this year. That race is a two-and-a-half mile novice handicap chase, while the Jewson Chase becomes a non-handicap.

The final column in the spreadsheet takes into account the different means of returning winning margins prior to 2009 and adjusts those margins up to 27 races on a pro-rata basis. It is not that simple, of course, but it is some sort of a guide.

The average of this column is 102, which is close to the midpoint of both the winning distance odds market and the winning distance line market, but the median is just 92.

It seems to me as if a couple of wide-margin years recently (one of which was run on genuinely testing ground) might have skewed people's perception. There is also a tendency for people to bet "high" - to want something to happen, rather than not happen - with these markets.

A sell of the winning distance line at 100 or more and a back of winning distance odds of less than 90 lengths makes appeal unless there seems a good likelihood of conditions turning testing. It should be noted that any abandoned or voided races will be made up at 10 lengths (see rules tab), even though the average winning margin has been just under 4 lengths.

The longest SP winner market is divided into "shorter than 33/1", "longer than 50/1" and in between. Bear in mind that just one instance of a rank outsider will trump everything else, and that, in the absence of that, just one instance of an in-between winner will trump the shorter-priced category. 187 of 209 races (89.5%) have been won by "unders", 21 races (10%) by "in between" and just 1 race (0.5%) by "overs".

If you convert that into probabilities, the implication is that the true odds should, respectively, be something like: [15.0]; [1.23]; and [8.2]. In the last nine years, the in-between category has prevailed eight times and the rank outsiders once.

I am, however, very sceptical that this is representative. A better measure - one which shows the middle category to have been overperforming greatly (and probably randomly) against expectation - is likely to be the average amount of the book taken up by each category in races in which a horse's true chance has been established from the Betfair SP.

This eliminates the so-called favourite-longshot bias and produces expected figures of 93.5% unders, 5.5% in between and 1% overs. The resulting probabilities produce (by my reckoning) estimated likely odds of [1.84] in between; [4.2] overs; and [4.6] unders.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but, with the market as it is, unders looks the best bet. It could be expected to come off only about 22% of the time, and has done so not once recently, but [8.0] is too big if you believe theory and past market expectation rather than potentially misleading evidence.

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Wallman Official Spokesmodel for Poker Room

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