Op-Ed: Reinventing the WSOP Bracelet

Earlier today I was reading an interesting article by Rich Ryan at PokerNews.com titled, Five Thoughts: A Bracelet for the Big One. In the article Ryan ponders something I have advocated for a while now, separating the smaller buy-in WSOP events from the high-buy-in Championship events. Ryan writes:

“…winning a $1,000 event shouldn’t warrant the same praise as winning a $10,000 event, so they should be separated. There should be WSOP-Gold events (anything under $10,000) and WSOP-Platinum events (anything $10,000 and higher). With this system, the weekend one-timers could still compete for the coveted gold bracelet, while the regular, late-afternoon crowd would have something more to compete for.”

I’ve had many thoughts on this over the past few years but I really like Ryan’s suggestion, of course I’ll offer a few tweaks of mine now! My primary line of thinking on this matter is that the “award” should be of equal value to a single buy-in (hell the WSOP could even take the cost of the bracelet or trophy out of the first-place prize-money).

Realistically, outside of the poker world (where a sponsorship can be achieved based on career bracelets) a WSOP bracelet is worth little more than its melt value unless there is some serious history attached to it. And as much as people equate a WSOP bracelet to success, I think the vast majority of amateur players and professionals in the poker world would put a similar type of value on my following suggestions.

First off, all $1,000 and $1,500 events should be demoted to the level of a WSOP Ring (like they award on the circuit series). The buy-ins for the $1k and $1,500 WSOP events are comparable to the WSOPC Main Events and the chance to win $500k + in prize-money AND a WSOP ring worth $1,000 - $1,500 should be appealing enough to keep registration in these events high.

$2,500, $3,000 and $5,000 events should award the gold bracelet we have come to know –with the value and embellishment of the bracelet based on the buy-in of the tournament.

$10,000 Championship Events should all have uniquely crafted platinum bracelets to differentiate them from the smaller events.

$25,000 and $50,000 buy-in tournaments at the WSOP should similarly award unique bracelets (or even a finely crafted watch), with the value of said piece equating to the buy-in of the event.

Now, the only place this idea runs into trouble is for something like the proposed $1 million buy-in tournament. Obviously nobody in their right mind would want a trophy or a piece of jewelry with a $1 million price tag attached to it (just give me the money thank you!) so in this case I’m for a nice $100,000 piece of jewelry –again either a bracelet or a watch suits me fine.