The Jeff Pulver Blog: No "Dot Com" Shirts Allowed at the 2006 WSOP!

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August 12, 2006

No "Dot Com" Shirts Allowed at the 2006 WSOP!

Two weeks ago when I spent the weekend at the Rio Hotel I noticed a new fashion trend amongst the poker player community -- black tape on T-Shirts. While I wasn't sure what exactly was going on or what the symbolism really was, I almost went out to a store to purchase black tape to put on the shirt that I was wearing to show my solidarity with the poker community.

Well, it turns out that one of the new rules introduced in the Amazon Room at the Rio Hotel during the 2006 World Series of Poker was the "No Dot Com" on a Shirt Rule. Shirts that promoted websites that ended with .net and .tv and dot anything else were allowed, but not dot coms. I'm not sure if this was being driven by ESPN or by Harrah’s but after hearing this announcement at the start of each day of play I made sure that I didn't wear any of my pulver.com shirts. I figured it would take too much effort to explain to the suits that pulver.com was not an online casino.

Just guessing here, but since it turns out that just about all of the non-free poker room websites end with a .com, I suspect some official in a suit decided that ESPN was not going to offer free advertising for online poker rooms, especially given the current fight in Washington, D.C. over online gambling in the United States.

The other rule that the ESPN "media enforcement bureau" make happen was the banning of SLR cameras from the Amazon room that had more than a 2 inch lens. It seems that the use of my Nikon camera was banned from the World Series of Poker "because the camera can take good pictures." I wonder if this also meant that some pens were banned from the room because "they can write good stories."

Lesson learned. For next year's WSOP, I will make it a point to apply for media credentials long in advance of the commencement of the 2007 World Series of Poker.

Tags: WSOP, Poker, Jeff Pulver