Polish online tournament ace Jakub ‘Olorionek’ Michalak won the first International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) Main Event in the Wembley Stadium of London, scooping in €346,000 after a six-way deal. According to the latest news, the tour may continue in 2015, at the venue of the year’s Champions League finale: the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. This has been announced by ISPT Director Prosper Masquelier in a recent interview.
Masquelier said that Germany is an important market for them and that he would be happy to organise an event in the country. “We are already working on that for 2015. As we all know, the Football Champions League finale takes place in Berlin, why should not the ISPT also go to the Olympic Stadium?” He also said that the stadium itself was suited perfectly for the purposes of the tour.
The Olympic Stadium in Berlin
Even though the size of the player field fell well short of expectations and the tournament ran with a major overlay of €589,000, Masquelier considers the first ISPT event a success.
“We managed to organise a poker game in a stadium. For the participants, the event was a success, and we became much wider known. The ISPT is now a new brand,” Masquelier said, while he acknowledged that the positive feedback holds true only regarding the live phase and they had made many mistakes during the online qualifiers.
Masquelier also claimed that they had to investigate what worked and what not during the first ISPT and had to make the necessary conclusions. For example, they would likely drop the idea of mixing live and online satellites and come up with a much more sophisticated concept.
The International Stadiums Poker Tour, as imagined by the French Groupe Tapie to be organised at the Wembley Stadium, had been meant to be the biggest tournament ever, with 30,000 players playing on the seats via tabs and the top 3,000 finishers playing it down to the winner on the pitch. The gargantuan tournament had been promoted with an equally generous guaranteed prize pool of $30 million.
However, the original concept subsequently underwent tremendous changes: the prize pool was lowered to €20 million and later, the “guaranteed” was gone altogether. The tourney eventually offered a €1,000,000 guaranteed first prize. The record number of 30,000 participants was no longer expected and the game on tabs was replaced by the first event days played in online rooms.
Even though the ISPT had been widely anticipated, the aforementioned changes resulted in great uncertainty about the tournament. Consequently, the eventual field turned out to be considerably smaller than hoped.
Masquelier said that Germany is an important market for them and that he would be happy to organise an event in the country. “We are already working on that for 2015. As we all know, the Football Champions League finale takes place in Berlin, why should not the ISPT also go to the Olympic Stadium?” He also said that the stadium itself was suited perfectly for the purposes of the tour.
The Olympic Stadium in Berlin
Even though the size of the player field fell well short of expectations and the tournament ran with a major overlay of €589,000, Masquelier considers the first ISPT event a success.
“We managed to organise a poker game in a stadium. For the participants, the event was a success, and we became much wider known. The ISPT is now a new brand,” Masquelier said, while he acknowledged that the positive feedback holds true only regarding the live phase and they had made many mistakes during the online qualifiers.
Masquelier also claimed that they had to investigate what worked and what not during the first ISPT and had to make the necessary conclusions. For example, they would likely drop the idea of mixing live and online satellites and come up with a much more sophisticated concept.
The International Stadiums Poker Tour, as imagined by the French Groupe Tapie to be organised at the Wembley Stadium, had been meant to be the biggest tournament ever, with 30,000 players playing on the seats via tabs and the top 3,000 finishers playing it down to the winner on the pitch. The gargantuan tournament had been promoted with an equally generous guaranteed prize pool of $30 million.
However, the original concept subsequently underwent tremendous changes: the prize pool was lowered to €20 million and later, the “guaranteed” was gone altogether. The tourney eventually offered a €1,000,000 guaranteed first prize. The record number of 30,000 participants was no longer expected and the game on tabs was replaced by the first event days played in online rooms.
Even though the ISPT had been widely anticipated, the aforementioned changes resulted in great uncertainty about the tournament. Consequently, the eventual field turned out to be considerably smaller than hoped.
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