Its nothing new to hear about large cash games running alongside of a prestigious tournament series.  In fact, this phenomenon of games sprouting up around large tournaments is one of the things that brought players like Doyle Brunson and Barry Greenstein to the sites of tournaments in the first place.  They figured that all of the action created by recently-busted tournament players on the cash game tables would be worth the trip all by itself, and judging by their overall success, we have to assume that they were on to something.  But what is happening this week at the Rio may be without precedent on a live table, and it is worth noting as we watch endless WSOP coverage that the action does indeed extend beyond the tournament felt.

According to players in the Rio cash games, the stakes are getting almost astronomical.  There has been a well-documented PLO game where the blinds have run as high as $1,000-$2,000-$4,000, which makes it a game on about the scale of the famed “Bobby’s Room” games of old at the Bellagio.  Those games have dried up somewhat over the years, but this little poker fiesta is going strong as the WSOP hums along in the background.  Players like Ashton Griffin, Andrew Robl, Kido Pham, and Tom Dwan have shown up for the game, and at several points it has been reported that there is more than $1.5 million on the table.  A few pots have reached toward the $500,000 mark, and as far as winners and losers are concerned, Griffin has been painted as a large winner in the game, with Dwan reported to be significantly in the red.  (It is fair to note that these are the reports of players in the game, not official dollar counts.)

But beyond the news of this game itself is the question that it raises about the future of cash games.  Bear in mind that even at these stakes, players are only being charged $15-$20 per hour to keep a seat at the table, which is unbelievably cheap considering the money at stake in the game.  In other words, this is ostensibly a rake-free game!  When the money reaches this point, and players believe that they have even the slightest of edges, it is easy to see how walking away to play in a $2,500 tournament would be next to impossible.  But I’m going to suggest that this summer will be a barometer for the high stakes live cash games, because the “cash game vs. tournament” debate will lean heavily toward the cash games when the tournament circuit moves out of Vegas again after the summer, and players are faced with travel expenses, tournament entry fees (fewer poker sites will be providing sponsorship dollars, remember), and the always-present possibility of not cashing in the tournament at all.  The future of tournament poker may be bleak on several fronts, and these cash games are going to help paint that picture for us.

As you watch this year’s WSOP, keep an eye on the cash game reports as well.  My guess is that we are seeing a preview of the world where players will set-up “home base” in one or two global locales, and simply play from there most if not all of the time.  The jet-setting tournament players will be very few and far between, which will of course hurt the tournament scene, but it will also prove that the global tournament scene is not cost effective once the online sponsorship dollars have gone away.  Until those sponsorships and satellite events return on their previously global scale (read: online poker finds definitive regulation in the USA), cash games like the ones at the Rio and many, many more on a much smaller scale will continue to be the bread and butter of the poker world.