Poker News

Jonathan Raab

When the European Poker Tour (EPT) launched three years ago, the buy-in for the first event was a very modest ?1,000 ($1,360), rising to what seemed like a very natural level at ?5,000 ($6,800) for the events in its most recent third season. At a press conference held in Barcelona last September, founder John Duthie suggested he would ideally like to maintain this price in forthcoming years.

But when the Tour resumes this autumn, the cost to play will be ?8,000 ($10,900) per event. While many European pros found the cost too high last season, a significant number of them still managed to play most of the events. The camaraderie between players, who were becoming more and more familiar with each other at each passing event, was one of the feel-good factors that made the tour so successful. With such a huge hike in the cost of the buy-in, the tour’s demographics could be very different from now on.

What’s prompted such a massive jump in price? Well, there are a number of factors, not the least of which is the high demand to play. Most of last year’s events sold out just a few days after seats went on sale. One way to deal with high demand would have been to increase the number of starting days from two to three. Duthie, however, was loathe to do this because many players expressed the opinion that four-day tournaments were already long enough.

Nevertheless, the majority of the events scheduled for season four are now 5-days long, still with two starting days, but with an extra day to complete after the field is merged. Capacities have been increased slightly, but not nearlyas much as increased buy-in costs. Significantly larger venues simply don’t exist.

There may be another, more commercial reason, for the big price increase. The Tour is pretty much now the property of Pokerstars and the current legislative situation in the US has resulted in a huge drop in the number of qualifiers that the site can send to the WSOP.

Although Pokerstars has continued to run satellites for the WSOP, they are no longer able to make direct buy-ins for players. Satellite winners received their packages as cash into their accounts and only a small percentage of them went on to use it for its intended purpose.

With the exception of the Monte Carlo Grand Final, very few Americans, other than online qualifiers, made the journey over to Europe for EPT events. By raising the cost of the buy-in, the increased prize pools may be attractive enough to encourage more Americans to journey regularly to Europe, thus increasing the prestige of the Tour and enabling it to compete directly with the World Poker Tour and the WSOP.

Pokerstars will also have a much bigger entity allowing them to smoothly switch the focus of their satellites away from the WSOP. They will also be able toensure that the large numbers of satellite packages won on their site are used for their intended purpose.

So what does this mean for the EPT that we have come to know and love so well in Europe? The EPT fields are likely to feature a larger percentage of online qualifiers, a larger proportion of the field will be non-Europeans and many of the tour regulars from the past three years will be priced out of the game.

With fewer regulars playing every event, the spirit of the EPT, which for many has been its most successful aspect, could be lost. The EPT is in danger of betraying the players for whom it was originally intended.

Filed under: Poker News