The World Poker Tour World Championships continue to evolve by ditching the re-entry format that has been a part of the fabric for the past two seasons.
PokerNews, Editor-in-Chief, Donnie Peters, believes that the World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championships is, arguably, the most important event of the year, behind the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event.
I wouldn’t argue with him.
For the past 13-years, it has produced the most amazing stories, created the most amazing talents, and attracted a large number of eyeballs. When people talk about the WPT World Championships, people listen. That’s why their latest evolutionary move is an important one.
At the tail end of the week, Peters broke the news that Tab Duchateau, Tournament Director at Borgata, had announced that the Season XIII WPT World Championships would be a one bullet affair. The video game syndrome that has infiltrated our game, to great detriment, will no longer be apart of one of the games greatest spectacles.
I doubt it’s coincidental that the announcement came shortly after the WPT Executive Tour Director, Matt Savage – the man many credit for introducing the concept at The Commerce – went to print to talk about the success of the recent WPT LA Poker Classic; a series that boldly attempted to drive more players to the cash tables by removing the re-entries from the tournament schedule.
It worked.
Savage and the Commerce were happy with the success of the festival from a holistic perspective.
Speaking to Buff about those decisions Savage said: “A lot of times I’ll go downstairs and see players that I haven’t see in the tournament room because they’ve just come for the cash games. Patrik Antonius hasn’t played a single tournament here, but he’s been here all month.”
If it can work in LA, why not Atlantic City?
It’s the latest in a number of changes introduced by the WPT World Championships in recent years. As Peters points out in his piece, the event was untouched for the first 10-years of its staging. Season XI saw single re-entry introduced for the first time, and it resulted in the lowest turn out since the event began in 2003.
The changes kept happening in Season XII. The tour waved bye-bye to The Bellagio, in Vegas, and set up shop at The Borgata, in Atlantic City. The buy-in was reduced to $15,400, and the single re-entry philosophy was maintained. It worked. The number of entries doubled and the prize pool swelled. Despite shaving $10k off the buy-in Keven Stammen still walked away with a $1.3m first prize.
The event will begin 25 April 2015. This means that the conflict with the European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final in Monte Carlo, that so outraged many players last year, has been avoided. Another great example of the leaders of our poker tours listening to the feedback of the customers.
