For 13 seasons, the European Poker Tour has arguably provided one of the best tournament experiences in the industry. Lavish parties, well-run tournaments and other entertainment has been the hallmark of the EPT since its creation back in 2003. According to several players, that has all gone away since the ownership of the circuit changed hands, bad enough that they have actually begun to voice their displeasure.
The €5000 Main Event in Barcelona, Spain (which ran at the end of August) was the kickoff to the Season 13 schedule for the EPT, but there was a wealth of other side events that ran in coordination with the EPT Main Event. Over the 12 days that the poker festival was conducted, 64 tournaments were run with buy-ins beginning at €100 and ranging up to the €50,000 Super High Roller. While some might have liked the variety, some in the tournament poker world didn’t think that jamming through five tournaments per day (on average) was good for the game.
Starting the fires of discontent was Irish poker pro Dara O’Kearney, who frequents the EPT as well as other tournaments run by the PokerStars contingent. He starts his blog post with an analogy, discussing how his parents once frequented a small local grocery store in his hometown. Once the curmudgeonly but likeable owner sold the store, the parents went to the “big” store a little further away from his home, but they never got the same service as they did at that “mom and pop” store. They eventually wouldn’t return and the small store shut down.
O’Kearney then brings his analogy full circle in discussing the current state of the EPT. Noting his experience at the MPN Poker Tour in Talinn, Estonia – saying that the overall event was “very cheerful” and that the personnel involved were working “flat out to provide as much cheer as a presumably quite limited budget allows” – O’Kearney then compares the experience with the Amaya Gaming owned PokerStars stop in Barcelona and notes it used to be more like the MPN experience, but not anymore.
“Stars used to be very good at this,” O’Kearney states. “In the early days they treated live events as marketing and budgeted accordingly. Over time they decided they didn’t want to spend money on this anymore, and the goody bags got meaner, the parties less impressive, the hotels simultaneously worse and more expensive, the tournaments simultaneously faster and more raked. In Barcelona I was told that Amaya no longer want to break even from live events; they want to make as much money as they can from them. And boy does it show.”
“The 10AM starts also make for a lot of tired grumpy players and dealers,” O’Kearney continues. “One of the features of the EPT and Stars events in general used to be that you had the best and friendliest dealers in the world. Some of the same faces remain and are as friendly and professional as ever, but many have left, and most of their replacements are sullen and unsure of the latest rule changes. It seems clear that customer satisfaction is no longer a priority, and may not even be included as part of the training.”
These thoughts from O’Kearney were echoed by Doug ‘WCGRider’ Polk on the Two Plus Two forum. In a thread there, Polk detailed how the EPT now was going to pay out 20% of the players in tournaments, seriously reducing the overall win for the eventual champion but sending more players home happy with a cash. “I think this is a good firm step in the wrong direction, decreasing the skill in events for the players,” Polk commented in starting the thread.
This has been a long debate in the tournament poker world. There is a faction that believes the larger payout brings more glory and, as a result, brings in more players. There is another faction, however, that believes the more people paid, the happier players are overall. Even this year’s World Series of Poker adapted the latter, paying out 15% of the players at the world’s most prestigious events.
For their part, Amaya – which took over the EPT when they purchased PokerStars from the Scheinberg family in 2014 – has stated that there have been no changes to the quality of the product they are putting out with the EPT. There will be a change as of next year, with Amaya Gaming changing the name of the EPT to the PokerStars Championships, but they seem to expect to carry on the same quality.
The debate will continue regarding whether there has been a decline in the quality of the EPT. It is obvious, though, that players are looking for the best value for their tournament dollar and will go to the events that provide that “bang for the buck.”
