As we reported, the International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) is scheduled to launch in May 2013, planned to be the biggest tournament ever with 30,000 players. The tens of thousands of players will play simultaneously; however, not on the field but at touch screen pads in the seats of the stands. Once the player pool drops to 3,000, players will take their seats on the field at live tables – this is also the money bubble. The final table will be 10-handed.
The original plans were altered in September last year, when the guaranteed prize pool of €30 million was revoked and changed to €20,000, then the word 'guaranteed' disappeared from the official website altogether. This was followed by the exact numbers of the expected participants (30,000) and it was announced that instead of the touchscreen monitors in Wembley, players will have to play Day 1 online.
As you can see in the above table, Lock Poker would have held Day 1A on 10 January, but only two players registered, the event was postponed a week due to lack of interest.
There might be a few reasons behind the lack of interest. Even though the ISPT was a very promising tournament, the frequent and considerable changes to the original concept ignited mistrust in players. The communication was insufficient from officials of the ISPT towards the players, many didn't even recognize the tournament has already started. To further the damage, ISPT Ambassador Michael Mizrachi even posted a tweet with the wrong starting date for Day 1A at Lock Poker.
The ISPT twitter account stated the cancellation of the Lock tournament is due to "technical issues".
It would be too early to state that the ISPT is bound to fail, but unfortunately there are signs. Poker770's ISPT 1A satellites were also cancelled, the number of the €2,20 rebuy tournament and the €11 freezeout entrants also didn't reach the minimum.
Right now there are 13 participants of the ISPT Wembley stage, they qualified through Partouche Poker's Day 1A on 3 February.
The direct buy-in of the first days is €300, but players can also buy in to the Wembley stage for €3,000
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