[bettilimbroke999]

As far as not playing in the WSOP, not that big of deal.............considering he figures to make a much larger score per hour on paper playing in the side games as opposed to the tourneys.

Amongst the top players in the world its considered that tournaments are -EV in and of themselves (read Greenstein's Ace on the River, which is a short entertaining book) but that they play them bc winning or placing high provides fame that they can then turn into sponsorship deals that they cant get in cash games. Tournaments in general (due to high taxes on winnings, house takeout, extreme volatility) are just not that good of an idea for a professional poker to make a consistently reasonable profit but (prior to all the banning and site shutdowns) they were +EV bc winning or placing high in one would give you TV exposure that a guy like Chris Moneymaker could cash in on for years. At Phil Ivey's fame level winning the WSOP wouldnt even improve his fame level so the only reason he plays is to get that big Full Tilt logo on TV for free for as long as he can, which would be pointless right now as Full Tilt is basically shutdown and I dont even know what the state of poker site advertising is but it might be in his best interests NOT to advertise Full Tilt right now, plus theyd probably spend the whole tournament interviewing him about Full Tilt and bothering the shit out of him about it anyway.

Here's a cut and paste from an article on the 2008 winner of the WSOP Main Event. In 2008, Peter Eastgate from Denmark, the winner of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event, was taxed with 45% for the first $4 million of the total amount and then the rest of the amount was taxed with 75%. Denmark is the country with the highest tax on gambling winnings in the world. At the end, he could only enjoy the $2.5 million from the total of $9.1 million win.

The one lottery winning lucky bastard that paid 10k to beat over 8k players then had to pay 6.6 million dollars in taxes on a 9.1 million dollar win...ouch! Anyway as you can see paying large taxes on tournament winnings doesnt help the EV at all.

In Ivey's case he couldnt be more well known, if he never played another tournament in his life it would probably be to his advantage financially but the problem is that the site that sponsors him wants all that free TV exposure so he continues playing until this year of course. This would also definitely not be the most "fun" year to be the most well-known Full Tilt pro playing in the WSOP Main Event around a bunch of guys who have just been stiffed for huge amounts of money. There are many poker pros who used Full Tilt basically like a bank account, only withdrawing money when they needed it, the shutdown has in all likelihood broken many of them.