A Lot from a Little: Poker Tourneys Making Millionaires

Two poker tournaments are scheduled to complete today and tomorrow, both of which were planned and structured so as to emphasize the idea of making a “millionaire” out of the winner. In a sense, they both hone in on what has long been a central thesis and primary attraction of tournament poker, namely, the chance to make a lot out of a little.

Tonight at the 2013 World Series of Poker will come the conclusion of Event No. 6, the so-called “Millionaire Maker” $1,500 no-limit hold’em event (with a re-entry option) in which the structure was designed to guarantee the winner at least a seven-figure first prize.

As it happened, the event managed to attract enough total entries -- 6,343 -- to push the total prize pool up over $8.5 million and provide for a payout schedule that gives the winner even more than the $1 million that had been guaranteed. With 10 players returning today, a day that had to be added to the schedule to accommodate the large field, a cool $1,198,780 awaits the winner.

Besides setting a few WSOP records (as Nolan Dalla spells out on the WSOP blog), the big turnout and large prize pool also allowed the payouts to be less dramatically skewed at the top than might have been the case otherwise. That said, there’s still a mighty big jump of more than $450,000 between first- and second-place in Event No. 6, as $741,903 is scheduled to go to the latter.

Meanwhile the €3,000 buy-in Main Event of the 2013 International Stadiums Poker Tour at Wembley Stadium in London has been playing out over the last few days, a tournament which also features a gaudy guarantee for first place, in this case €1 million or the equivalent of just over $1.3 million. They’ve just returned from dinner break of Day 5 at the moment with nine players left, with the plan being to play down to a six-handed final table afterwards and then complete the tournament tomorrow.

That this ISPT event is even happening at all perhaps comes as a surprise to some after more than a year-and-a-half of confusing advance notice regarding the event, punctuated from time to time by frequent changes in the scheduling, format, structure, and expectations. I wrote a post back in February in which I referred to the ISPT and its tournament as a “poker cipher,” and to be honest now that it’s playing out I’m still not too sure what it really signifies.

The fact that the tourney ended up taking place during the first week of the WSOP has also diverted a lot of attention from it, not to mention been one of the factors affecting turnout for the event. The tournament ended up attracting a total of 761 entries (re-entry was also possible for this one), which added up to a total prize pool of €2,054,700 and a scheduled first prize of just €410,940. That meant organizers had to add a whopping €589,060 to the first prize in order to meet the €1 million guarantee for winning.

That massive touch-up also means a gaping difference between first and second, as the runner-up is currently scheduled to earn €285,000. It appears certain, however, that there will be some deal-making at some point prior to the end, and in fact with nine left players left there’s already been one unsuccessful attempt to negotiate some sort of multi-way chop.

While the ISPT event isn’t really registering so much with those of us on this side of the pond, the idea of someone earning a seven-figure return in an event costing only a couple of thousand (or thereabouts) to play nonetheless intrigues, just as it has over in Event No. 6 at the WSOP. And of course, the added oddity of an extra three-quarter million dollars’ being contributed to a tourney on top of players’ buy-ins raises the eyebrows, too.

We’ll see going forward if events such as these have any lasting influence. Something tells me the WSOP will certainly be keeping some version of the “Millionaire Maker” among its offerings in the future, given the popularity of the event this time around. I guess in a way these events could be said to occupy a kind of middle ground between the usual lower buy-in tourneys and “One Drop”/“Super High Roller”-type spectacles -- the kind of thing that can work well as a special, novel offering, particularly in the context of a larger slate of tourneys such as are offered at the WSOP.

The ISPT, a Poker Cipher

I just did a search of the blog to see if I had ever written a single word here about that long planned for International Stadiums Poker Tour event. I’m sure you’ve at least heard of it, although if you have it hasn’t been here on this blog as I couldn’t turn up a single reference.

As a result, I can’t really say when exactly I first heard anything about the ISPT and its idea to stage some sort of massive poker tournament at Wembley Stadium in June 2013. Searching around I’m seeing others starting to refer to the Tapie group -- i.e., the same ones behind that failed bid to purchase the zombiefied Full Tilt Poker -- back in late 2011, so it had to have been around that time I began hearing about it, too.

Those references describe a $30 million guaranteed poker tournament slated to happen in the fall of last year at the huge London stadium over the course of several days. Would start with players, perhaps 30,000 of them (?), sitting in the stands playing shootouts on laptops, apparently, reducing the field down to what would eventually be a final table right there on the pitch.

There were lots of reasons why I paid little heed to the ISPT. Seemed super weird and foolhardy in those months following Black Friday for anyone to be cheerleading for some sort of ultra-mega-bigger-than-anyone-has-ever-witnessed type poker event. Whatever it was, it was not happening in my country, which probably further diminished my interest. And it seemed at first like a total fiction, a bit like some of the fanciful scenarios occasionally portrayed in advertisements by PokerStars and others showing poker being played in a stadium à la the Super Bowl or something.

Over the next year-and-a-half, we’d continue to hear things about the ISPT and the big tournament, including announcements about the guarantee going down (to zero, now), the event being rescheduled to 2013, and occasional bursts here and there regarding the sponsorship of players. Pro-ISPT tweets would occasionally appear coming from this or that pro player, indicating he or she had been signed on to help promote the event.

But again, no one really cared. The sponsorship thing in particular seemed mostly ornamental, with the transparently faux commitment of the tagged players helping further this sense that what we were really dealing with here was some sort of elaborate, expensive, interactive performance art piece involving the poker community.

To draw a comparison, some have adopted a kind of mild cynicism regarding Ivey Poker’s frequent indications of “more to come” as well as its having brought something like 50 players into its fold by now (with the recent acquisition of Leggo Poker).

That said, when Greg Merson won the WSOP Main Event last fall as one of the first to sign with Ivey Poker, people gave some attention to the patch he wore, much as they did when Dan Shak final tabled both the Aussie Millions Main Event and the $100 Grand Challenge last month and when Matt Giannetti won the WPT Lucky Hearts Open in Florida yesterday -- two more Ivey Poker pros registering some big scores. No one knows yet what being an Ivey Poker pro really signifies, but it still carries some sort of significance as observers remain interested in seeing what comes of the website.

Meanwhile, when Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi won that WSOP Circuit-affiliated event down in South Africa last week, absolutely no one said “Hey, that’s really good for the ISPT.” Sure, he’s one of the pros who’s apparently been given a few bucks to allow the site to use his likeness and to sport a patch. But since practically no one understands or cares about what the ISPT is, it’s not coming up in the conversation at all.

I did overhear some players at the EPT Deauville Main Event jokingly refer to the ISPT, kind of characterizing the whole thing as a big ruse to be avoided at all costs. It sounds like some sort of online qualifying has actually begun for the event, but almost no one is participating. Barry Carter yesterday posted an interesting update of the ISPT in the form of advice to other, would-be tourney promoters in an article for Poker Media Pro titled “Poker Marketing Lessons from the International Stadiums Poker Tour” -- worth a read, if you’re at all curious about where this sucker stands at present.

The article helps confirm what I think most of us have been suspecting pretty much from the first time we heard of the International Stadiums Poker Tour. That is, that “ISPT” continues to seem more a cipher than an actual signifier of anything in particular. In other words, it probably represents nothing at all, sort of like someone shoving all in when the five community cards already form an unbeatable Broadway straight. Feels like its chances of success are about the same as someone failing to make the call there, too.

See Carter’s article for more. He helps us perhaps consider drawing some sort of larger symbolism from whatever ISPT is doing, something indicative of the poker world as a whole and the seemingly constant presence of such “weird lines” in the way people try to find different, unusual ways to battle for what is really mostly a small pot.

A cipher can signify nothing, an absence. Or it could unlock a secret message. Perhaps ultimately the ISPT will come to mean something about the poker world, although my guess is the meaning will either provide a momentary distraction or be ignored altogether.