Prestige
At first, the bracelets did not have much prestige. Ten-time bracelet winner Doyle Brunson said that his first bracelet "didn't mean anything" to him and that he did not even pick up two of them.
Some professional poker players believe that there are two types of poker players; those who have won a bracelet and those who have not. Those who have belong to an exclusive club. "It's impossible to overstate the value of a World Series of Poker gold bracelet to anyone who takes the game seriously," stated World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack during the 2006 bracelet unveiling. "It is the equivalent of winning the Stanley Cup in hockey or the Lombardi Trophy in football."
Many professional poker players desire the recognition that is associated with the bracelet. Former Celebrity Poker Showdown host and poker star Phil Gordon said, "I want that bracelet more than anything." Freddy Deeb said that he did not appreciate his first bracelet because he did not recognize what it meant. He said his 2007 bracelet, however, "means everything to me". Jennifer Tilly says that winning her 2005 Women's Championship bracelet was "better than an Oscar". When the World Poker Tour decided to offer a prize to its event champions, they decided to present them with WPT Bracelets. In so doing, WPT Founder, President and CEO, Steve Lipscomb said, "The championship bracelet has become synonymous with poker as a symbol of achievement and respect, and we are honored to continue the tradition that Benny Binion began over 30 years ago."
Read more about this topic: World Series Of Poker Bracelet
Famous quotes containing the word prestige:
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“A Carpaccio in Venice, la Berma in Phèdre, masterpieces of visual or theatrical art that the prestige surrounding them made so alive, that is so invisible, that, if I were to see a Carpaccio in a gallery of the Louvre or la Berma in some play of which I had never heard, I would not have felt the same delicious surprise at finally setting eyes on the unique and inconceivable object of so many thousands of my dreams.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)