That's true, but there's going to be far less of them.
For example, the only UK one they are retaining is London.
The festival series is basically a cut down EPT with smaller buyins.

This is what Stars tweeted so I guess this means the regionals will in fact somewhat stay, just rebranded?



@chuckbasspoker These tournaments remain, but are being re-branded to Festivals. Stay tuned for dates and more info.
PokerStars ‏@PokerStars 9h9 hours ago

@chuckbasspoker We have many more events to be announced, in addition to the current three festivals and championships.

I'm only going with what I was told a few months before the changes were announced. Nothing they have tweeted so far leads me to believe anything new.
Sure, they say they are announcing more festivals, but expect them to be the likes of Malta and Marbella rather than Birmingham or Nottingham.

Pokerstars Championship draws 200 fewer entrants in the main compared to last year. Have a feeling this unification is going to backfire amid an already declining live tourney pool. Clearly a horrible start.

However people felt about pokerstars in recent times the EPT brand seemed somewhat immune to these negative feelings and sentiments from my perspective at least. Have little to no interest in going to Panama or Macao personally. Seems Europe is now really under represented with all the 1k main events like the FPS/UKIPT disappearing over night.

That decrease is downright embarassing, they are straight killing that as an appealing stop like it used to be when it was a $10k BI. No longer a place casuals want to satty into anymore. There were all these spin and go winners that never showed up lol.

$25k PLO highroller got pushed back a few hours, then finally started with 4 players

any confirmation that there were actually players who got in via spin and didn't show up? I mean, you get a whole package, not just entry, right?

anyway, rebranding ept is a truly horrible, completely inexplicable decision, and it looks like it's gonna be a spectacular failure. Good thing WPT is becoming a solid alternative in Europe.

^ Kevmath said on twitter there were 27 no shows in the main

I said it a few years back and I still believe there's a large amount of truth to it.

Pokerstars don't want players attending Live Events.

Well not quite true... but partially. They want the Timex's and winning players there as the total # of players is all that many people look at when defining a successful turnout or not.

What Pokerstars doesn't want is recreational players playing in $530 buyins trying to satellite in. This money is scooped up by "winning players" who have already won a few packages and therefore the money leaves the ecosystem at the expense of it not going to higher margin rake games like SPG, or even low stake cash games/sng's.

Yeah they are ok with SPG satellites to the PCA because they are largely comprised of rec players playing $10 buy ins and the winner will be a "new qualifier" as these rake traps don't appeal to the "winning player".

Stars needs to view ALL Live events as lost leaders and stop amayaing in this area. Kudos to sites like Party and Unibet and actually put on quality stops that are designed to grow their brand as opposed to squeaking every dollar out of there dwindling player base as Amaya does.

Except if you lived in Canada/Mexico or Brazil/South America, it would probably still cost you to attend the event just in airfares given they give less spending money in these packages than they used to.

BTW, I don't quite understand stars stance on the no hole cards till FT thing. If they are making tv episodes before the FT then I understand, but they haven't done so since Monte Carlo 2015 I think. Even if it's annoying for them to switch the featured table every couple of hours, I think hole cards are vital for getting casual fans to watch the game. They had hole cards all the way through the aussie millions main event last year and it was bar none the most enjoyable torny I've ever followed (though JCarver and Nano helped with awesome commentary as well obv).

Another once great event that has gone way downhill. 1st place in the main doesn't even reach half a million. Players are abandoning the PCA and will continue to do so.

PCA has always been a **** show. Everything on the resort is overpriced, there is no decent food, no service, and there isn't anything to do at night. Stars does nothing to support or supplement the massive influx of people its bringing to these resorts either.

PCA Main Event 1st prize

2012 $1,775,000

2013 $1,859,000

2014 $1,820,420

2015 $1,491,580

2016 $728,325

2017 $480,012

Yeah this pretty much sums it up. Bet next year's event draws even less players and wouldn't be surprised if the buy-in goes down even more. Just a real garbage series now.

this is the only relevant part since it used to be a 10k buy-in before that.

lol @4ppl playing the 25k plo, with ben and ike ending up chopping it.

I went back to PCA this year and despite things being expensive and the fact that the tip included Atlantis staff leave something to be desired service wise I had a pretty good time. I'm sure the beautiful weather helped but its also still a fun tournament. My biggest complaint is that Stars has really dropped the ball on qualifying people for this tournament they could fix it by qualifying more players for the main and by running qualifiers for the national event which had way less runners then last year.

So rather than having 80 events around the world you'd rather have 20 close to you?

Decreasing the number of events decreases the number close to you.

Pokerstars don't do real satellites, they do pyramids for grinders to play to win multiple packages for profit. If they had what I call "Moneymaker satellites" - 500 people pay $20, 1 person gets a $10K package they'd have more qualifiers than the way it is now where 500 people pay $20, 50 people get chance to be shark food for professional satellite grinders at the next level up the pyramid.

Meh.

That's the only advantage of concentration.

The disadvantages are the usual things NVG is full of all the time. Particularly the difficulties of providing a quality experience for playing poker in a place that doesn't have anything like that number of players in it for 51 weeks of the year (e.g. security cameras, professional dealers and floor).

I'm sure this point was raised in a meeting, but the person was shouted down by all the others braying "they don't care about competition, they just want to gambollllll!"

+1 If they want better turnouts for events like the pca they need to start with cleaning up the live sats first imo

The next cut they make will be live coverage, then its seriously GG ept.

Kev mathers just tweeted new locations for festivals this year


New @PokerStarsLIVE Festival locations announced:
Chile - May
Marbella - June
South Korea - July
Manila - July/August
Uruguay - September

http://www.amaya.com/press/2017/02/p...ia-00420.shtml

'Pokerstars Festival events are mostly for rec players.' Who are they trying to kid? They are just a mix of normal tier and slightly less successful pros shark hunting on the fish.