The International Stadiums Poker Tour promised the world, yet the only thing it could potentially show for all the hype are broken promises and failed expectations. ISPT marketing chief Georges Djen recently said that all the promise of a $30 million guaranteed tournament has all but gone by the wayside after logistical problems could lead to the cancelation of the tournament.
Talking to PokerStrategy, Djen told the poker site that “at least 15,000 players must come, otherwise the tournament won’t take place. But we could guarantee that this will be the hugest tournament in the world in terms of the participants. A maximum of 30,000 players could play.”
All that sounds impressive if they can actually pull it off. But with the removal of the phrase “guaranteed” from the ISPT website, a lot of confusion has arisen on whether the ISPT can live up to its initial boasts. After all, it’s not like the formula has never been used in the past. In fact, the poker industry relies on a basketful of hype and promotion for a lot of its events in order to attract players.
But the problem with the ISPT is that they may have bitten off more than they could chew with the aggressive hype they put into the poker series, which would have involved a two-stage tournament with the first stage having players use their laptops to play online poker while seated inside Wembley Stadium. That stage will last for two days at which point all the remaining players will move to the tables to play the remainder of the tournament live.
A number of poker pros have even joined in to be ambassadors for the event, including Michael Mizrachi, Sam Trickett, David Benyamine, and Liz Liu. But even if there’s some recognizable names serving as ambassadors, it looks like the ISPT won’t be able to live up to the enormous hype it initially generated. Even worse, they may not even get the chance to hold the tournament to begin with.
In more positive poker news, 24hPoker recently made its jump to the Microgaming Network official, leaving behind its previous partners, IGT Network.The company announced the move in a press release from 24hPoker parent company iGaming Malta, saying: “Microgaming, the world’s largest provider of online gaming software, is pleased to announce that iGame Malta is to join the Microgaming Poker Network.”
Can’t get any clearer than that, can it?
PokerStrategy also got the chance to speak to iGaming Malta’s Sami Kurvinen, who confirmed the move when said, “We are very happy to be joining one of the biggest and best networks in the industry. The future looks very promising for us, our partners and players as we now can offer our loyal customers better games, traffic and larger tournaments.”
