Major restructuring just announced by Amaya regarding EPT and PCA 2017

good ?

bad ?

meh ?

https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/tournaments/pokerstars_championship/2016/pokerstars-announces-global-championship-162921.shtml



Rec player Fedor likes



but pro player Fabrice, not so much



.

EPT + APPT + LAPT = PokerStars Championship
Rest = PokerStars Festival

besides that, i write since almost 10 years for news sites and tbh, i sometimes struggled with the amount of events/tours ... isn't prolly the worst idea, to re-brand the whole bunch and make it slimmer (EPT already slimmed down the recent years and it seems to work)

schedule PokerStars Championship Bahamas (fka PCA) seems very NLHE heavy, but i hand't time to check. also didn't check rake/structure/whatever

edit: kudos to Dan Druff - todd said in february, that the pca 2016 was the last one ^^

four quick thoughts...

1) Looks to be pretty close to WSOP model. Bigger and Better PCA sort of like summer WSOP @ Rio. Rest of PokerStars Championship structured like WSOPc's but with bigger buyins


2) Not sure where to place PokerStars Festivals in the big scheme of things. But, in the $1000-1500 buyin range these are priced similar to WSOPc's


3 ) Since Caesar Interactive recently sold Playtika (for 4 ba-billion) the only thing left at CI is WSOP and WSOP.com (and maybe still a few B&M casinos dunno). Assuming CI ends up as independent company only assets being WSOP and WSOP.COM, I would suspect the hedge funds (who I think will end up owning most of it) will want to sell vs operate.... Amaya should just buy CI and then own the live poker MTT world.


4) PCA was already big and apparently getting bigger. Bahamian police might want to build a few more detention centers to better harass increased numbers of players trying to carry > 10K cash through the airport

The festivals seem to be replacing the old UKIPT/Estrella.
They've already announced New Jersey and London festivals with more to come, but from what I hear, London is the only UK event.

I would expect to hear Malta, Prague and Marbella as future festival events.

ptlou at its best again. How does it feel to open a thread in NVG? you must be feeling amazin right now...

+ (prolly) IPT, FPS, BSOP, Eureka and APPT leftovers

Yep, I meant to add etc on the end.
Also NAPT!

Hopefully this year they will loudly announce that if you mis-declare cash to United States exit customs IN THE BAHAMAS coming out of Nassau that you will be handed over to local Bahamian authorities and be subject to being thrown into local prison and or a refugee camp.

Two horror stories and the state of affairs in Nassau:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...terrible+story

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...terrible+story

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2014/04...-in-the-world/

literally nothing changes, except for uniting multiple tours under one of two names

I don't really see the downside with that, what is Fabrice Soulier unhappy about? Maybe some details that are not in the announcement?

If you misdeclare cash going from the US to the Bahamas, you will be handed over to local US authorities and may be subject to being thrown into local prison and or detention pending deportation in case you are not a US citizen.

I've never heard the WSOP or any other poker tour loudly announce that pretty obvious fact. That's like asking liqour stores to tell every customer that they are not allowed to drink behind the wheel after they leave the store.

[/end derail]

I wouldn't say literally nothing. A festival stop in the United States, new unified website and login system, sizeable rebranding, bigger PCA, a division between "serious" championship events and fun festivals that aims to appeal to recreational or new poker players.

Huh ?

maybe he just got a "i <3 grind EPT 4 ever" tattoo on his chest :-(

... WSOP should also warn about hotel thefts, cheap prostitutes robbing you, the dangers of drugs and of course civil forfeiture ^^

Basically what they are doing is converting 9 tours into 1 with the regional 1-1.5k and 4 tours into 1 for the big events.

Overall what's going to occur is way less Pstars events next year but with the rebranding this may not be so obvious and Stars can save face by making a change like this. The reason for the vast reduction of stops is Pstars isn't capable of getting enough online qualifiers and a lot of their online offerings have become an embarrassment.
Overall this is a good move for both Pokerstars and the players as the current method isn't working.

Well this is ob\viously a budget cut / overall live reduction masked as a new good change

I dont see how this is good news, less tournament stops around the world isnt a good thing.

If everything was going good at all the Live Stops they currently have than I'd agree with you. The reality is many tours are suffering terribly, especially getting qualifiers online. It's better to have 25 stops but with more rec players and general interest rather than 75 events that are floundering without much buzz or excitement.

Pstars in many ways doesn't even want rec players winning a Live event package as margins would be better if he played many other offerings. But at the same time they want events to be big... so it's a bit of a catch 22.

What Stars has failed to do is get the best of both worlds where they should be striving to get rec players to their Live events even if they don't play.
For some of their stops I could get 2k new account players to show up without much of a sweat. By not going this route Stars has lost the buzz of the events and haven't grabbed the full potential value of sponsoring an event.

anyone else worried that with all the talk about "focusing on fun" in Festivals, they might increase the rake? You know, to help the ecosystem.

They opted to go for another payoutstructure. They are paying now 20% of the field. According to Neill they want more players be able to play more events.

Can anyone answer this for me? Did the pokerstars tv EPT episodes seriously diminish over the past year? The only ones I have been able to find for multiple days of tv coverage is the Monte Carlo EPT Grand Final and EPT London. The rest only have a final table episode, right? Or are there more episodes from last season with Stapes and Hartigan? I don't even see anymore EPT High Roller episodes like they used to film.

Thanks!!

They just streamed a SHR final table from EPT Barcelona and started broadcasting the ME from day 2.

It sounds like ... is PS trying to steer all the recs to the 2nd tier 'Festival' series - where they can have all the things that make games unbeatable, like flat payout structures, fast game structures, high rake, no leaderboards?

And then are they maybe hoping pros will stay interested in playing the 'Championship' series even after they've steered lots of the fish away, if they add leaderboard prizes?

Guess is PS trying to make the games unbeatable, but is hoping everybody will still want to play? That's what they seem to be trying to do online too ...




PS So tired - was so fun having the Olympics to watch on tv every night ... at least MasterChef's on tonight ...

Guess the NJ Festival would be new - there was an article a couple of months ago about a couple of people from neighboring states going to NJ to play on Stars again, who were playing some live poker too while they were there ...


Atlantic City's coveted visitor: The Poker Tourist

http://articles.philly.com/2016-06-1...-atlantic-city

I think it's a mistake because ept had a strong brand name and winning an ept was a big deal. Winning a poker stars championship doesn't have the same ring and feels more commercially contrived even though it's not really. Just adding more events to the pca or whatever it's called doesn't matter if more people dont show. Again the pca name was well known.

putting aside all the Amaya is the devil stuff... I'm sort of excited to have a live Pokerstars MTT presence in the US hopefully they grow to more stops around U.S.

I dont know.

would there really be a big difference between winning

EPT Barcelona Main

vs

Pokerstars Championship Barcelona Main

I'd guess after a year or two it would have the same meaning to most.