By Eric Rosenberg

In 1986 Wade Boggs had 580 official at bats and made 207 hits. After someone pulled out their pencil and did a little sixth grade division, we were given proof that Wade's batting average for the year was .357. Similar statistics are kept in other sports too, all based on the individuals actual performance. But statistics for the World Series of Poker are kept in a much different way.

The WSOP likes to give their statistics in dollar values. I've always had a problem with this because the numbers do not reflect two major factors, 1) how much money they have lost and 2) how much was given to other players as the result of a deal.

Let's address both of those issues.

We'll start with wins .vs losses. In the Wade Boggs example above, there is a clear cut method to figure out his batting average for the year. A baseball player's batting average goes up as he gets more hits and goes down after each strikeout. The player's statistics are equally affected by positives and negatives. Not so with poker statistics.

One list that I often see is the lifetime earnings list. Take Daniel Negreanu for example. According to the WSOP official web site, Daniel has had lifetime WSOP earnings of $1,301,035. Not too shabby, but what happens when we figure in Daniel's lifetime WSOP buyins? Take that figure and subtract it from the $1,301,035 and that should be Daniel's true WSOP earnings. Hey, wait a second... the web site does not list that figure.

To play in all of this year's WSOP events up to and including the main event, one would spend $139,750. Add the $50,000 HORSE event and that total rises to $189,750. If Daniel played all of these events and did not have a single cash, would the lifetime earnings on the WSOP web site be altered to reflect the amount of money that he lost in buyins? I think we know that the answer is no.

Sure, you could use the argument that it doesn't matter how much money the player dishes out, his earnings are his earnings, but that's the same as saying that I will fly to California to wash your car for $200. If the plane ticket costs me $300, did I still "earn" $200? I guess if you want to get technical about it, but earnings like that surely won't pay the bills.

Now we are at the second issue that I have with WSOP statistics... deals.

To those in the know, deals are made in poker quite often. A simple example would be a final table down to its last three players decides to split the prize money equally. If that were to happen in a World Series of Poker event, the official record would not indicate that such a deal took place. They would report that first place won $XXX, second won $XX, and third place took home $X.

One could argue that the WSOP is not involved in these deals and the players are free to do with there money whatever they want, but we now know that that is not the case. Take last week's $1500 Shootout event, in which Bill Chen asked permission from a tournament director if it was acceptable that he and the other remaining player at his table can split the prize money and send Bill automatically to the next round (Bill agreed to give his opponent 25% of his winnings). The tournament director agreed to that deal, causing even ESPN to raise one eyebrow. This, of course, was a much different scenario than the final table example given above. In a shootout, the winner of each table advances to the next round of the tournament. Bill Chen's made a deal with a player that affected the outcome of the tournament without the rest of the players' approval, but he did do it with the tournament director's approval.

So, now we have situations where WSOP referees are officiating over equity deals made between players in the middle of the tournament.

The official WSOP record showed that Bill Chen earned $6,757 for his efforts in that tournament. But wait a second! We know that Bill was obligated to give 25% of that to the player that he made the deal with. This was an official deal, overseen by an official of the World Series of Poker! Why are they not giving credit to the player that "earned" $1,689 of that $6,757?

In the great debate that happened this week about whether Chen's deal was ethical, a good majority of those arguing pounded that the TD approved the deal and deal making is a part of poker, therefore it was all good.

If deal making is a part of poker then why aren't deals, especially the deals that are signed off on by officials, a part of poker's statistics?