Three Questions about the Onyx Cup

Even if you've been living under a rock the way I've been for the last few weeks you probably heard Full Tilt's announcement yesterday regarding the Onyx Cup Series. It's a series of six high buy-in tournaments ($100k to $300k) that will take place in Macau, Las Vegas and London. High finishers will receive points; the player with the most points at the end of the series will be awarded the Onyx Cup. Online qualifying for the series starts today.

Full Tilt created a promotional video for the series hosted by Ali Nejad. The video stressed that this series allows "pros to play against pros" and therefore will highlight who is the best.

Like many, I have a number of questions about the series.

1. Is the move towards "super high-roller events" an acceptable way to highlight the best players? There are plenty of pros out there who can't afford to shell out $1 million for a tournament series. Good bankroll management (if there is such a thing anymore) suggests a bankroll of $15-20 million is needed to play such a series comfortably. Not a net worth of $15-20 million. A bankroll.

Instead what this event may do is give a very small number of players with extraordinarily deep bankrolls and/or other income streams the opportunity to play in a club-like environment with similarly situated pros. There will likely also be a handful of super-rich amateurs who don't mind dusting off $200k to play in a small-field event with Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. The recent cash games in Macau are instructive on that point.

Restricting the field by buy-in does not necessarily highlight the best players in the world. It highlights the richest players in the world. While there is some overlap in those two categories (as there should be), many of today's richest players in the world have become that rich through ownership interests in online poker sites. Good for them, but those ownership interests give them a cushion the rest of the poker world lacks. To me the format does nothing for determining the best of the best.

2. Who is going to qualify for this event? The FTP promotional video mentions that online qualifying for the series starts today. I'm trying to imagine who will want to qualify for this series. To the average FTP grinder, $100k (or more) is a sizable chunk of money. Will that type of qualifier really want to burn six figures just to play in a small-field event with a dozen of the world's top poker players?

For mid-level pros the prospects are only marginally better. These players can't afford the $100k buy-in. How many will want to put a syndicate together or take other backing or, on their own money, play the online satellite equivalent of an EPT Main Event (let's say the buy-in is $8,000) for a 1-in-13 shot at qualifying for just one of the Onyx Cup events? Some will, no doubt. They'll eschew proper bankroll management for the fairy tale of coming through a satellite field for $8,000 and turning that into $1 million or more at the Onyx Cup. But I'd bet that it will be a tiny number of players.

For those that do, likely what will happen is their six-figure buy-ins will disappear into the bankrolls of Erik Seidel or Phil Ivey or _____ [insert your own Full Tilt Pro], never again to return to the lower echelons of the poker economy from whence it came. Not because those players are necessarily the best, but because they're very good and sheer numbers dictate that outcome more often than not.

3. Is this series "good for poker"? My guess is that it's good for Phil Ivey. It's good for Patrik Antonius. It might even be good for Full Tilt Poker. But what's good for Full Tilt isn't necessarily good for poker.

The branding potential for players like Ivey and Antonius is through the roof. They are already recognizable quantities. Now they'll have the opportunity to play in small field, high buy-in events. Along the way they'll probably attract some Chinese businessmen or other super wealthy amateurs who won't mind dropping six large to play with them. Even if they go 0-for-the-series, there's an upside for them.

But this strategy also risks stunting the growth of the rest of the poker industry. What poker should be doing is nurturing the growth of the next generation -- the ElkYs, the Jason Merciers, the (ugh, Lord help me for saying this) Sorel Mizzis of the world. It helps keep the game fresh, which in turn helps keep TV viewers' interest.

Last year a colleague who was working the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship with me said, "Ah, now I can see what poker was like in 1996." It was a brutal remark that had the ring of truth. There was some change this year at NBCHU but the field still felt overly reliant on "old-school" players. That will eventually become a problem for the brand. Televised poker doesn't need to move away from the old-guard players who were around 10 years ago when the boom hit, but relying on them exclusively will cause the product to become stale.

Is the Onyx Cup good for poker? Look. I'm no seer. I can only make an educated guess right now based on limited information. My intuition says, "No," but I'd love for Full Tilt to prove me wrong. I guess we'll see.