UK festival poker....non added-value festival poker...the future...

[TightEnd]

We now have 3 added value tours in the UK...GUKPT and Gala and, to a different customer and at a far lower buy in level, APAT

All are sold out well in advance usually, all overwhelmingly popular as you would expect from good strucutred comps with added value and part of a "tour"

beneath this the traditional UK festival cicrcuit is suffering. The Luton Springfest, a week before Mancester's GUKPT, saw poor turnouts

this weekend we hear from tikay that Aspers, a superb Newcastle  casino, attracted 20 for its £1000 event. It of course clashed with the Brighton GUKPT.

the schedule gets ever more crowded, players travel far and wide for "value" and therefore....


what is the future for non added value festival poker and what can the organisers do to ensure longevity of this scene?

is the simple answer that "normal" festivals have to add value too?

[b4matt]

Maybe saturation point has been reached?

[tikay]

Actually Tighty, SEVEN showed up for the £1,000 main Event.

By reducing it to a £200 one rebuy & one add on, we managed to find 20 players.

[AndrewT]

Surely with only 20 runners they were able to have a good comp, without the usual pressure on the blinds that a bigger turnout would have caused? With only 20 runners the better players will suffer less due to variance.

In these days of sold out festivals, surely quiet tournaments offer a choice for those who don't want a donkament?

[tikay]

Surely with only 20 runners they were able to have a good comp, without the usual pressure on the blinds that a bigger turnout would have caused? With only 20 runners the better players will suffer less due to variance.

In these days of sold out festivals, surely quiet tournaments offer a choice for those who don't want a donkament?

It was tremendous fun, Andrew, I could not have enjoyed it more.

Tidy Final Table, too, with J T Law, Steven Liu, George Geary, Carlo, & Alan McLean. You don't get much better than that!

And yes, the better players did do better. Until it got Heads-Up, that is.....

[TightEnd]

Surely with only 20 runners they were able to have a good comp, without the usual pressure on the blinds that a bigger turnout would have caused? With only 20 runners the better players will suffer less due to variance.

In these days of sold out festivals, surely quiet tournaments offer a choice for those who don't want a donkament?

but how long will the venues even offer such events?

if they do not, is that a case for regret, or just market forces in action?

[AndrewT]

Well, seven is a little light.

Before the days of internet poker, the festivals were simply the only place to play these types of tournaments. The players were a captive audience so the casinos didn't have to add anything.

Now, if they want to attract the players, they do have to add something. The question is, once they've done the sums, will they actually make anything out of it?

If they decide not, then it's goodbye to casinos putting these tournaments on off their own back and hello more £20 rebuys to get the usual gamblers through the doors.

[AndrewT]

Surely with only 20 runners they were able to have a good comp, without the usual pressure on the blinds that a bigger turnout would have caused? With only 20 runners the better players will suffer less due to variance.

In these days of sold out festivals, surely quiet tournaments offer a choice for those who don't want a donkament?

but how long will the venues even offer such events?

if they do not, is that a case for regret, or just market forces in action?

Do the poker players need the casinos more than the casinos need the poker players?

Remember that the only reason why casinos run poker tournaments is to get people through the door and get attracted by the flashing lights and wheels of death. If they're not getting bums on seats, then it's goodbye tournaments.

Regretful - yes. But the pure poker players have no power - they're not who the casinos get their money from. The casinos only care about the gamblers.

[TightEnd]

Regretful - yes. But the pure poker players have no power - they're not who the casinos get their money from. The casinos only care about the gamblers.

i don't think it is as simple as that anymore, a lot of poker rooms now act as profit centres not merely cost centres/adjuncts to gaming floor


eg Grosvenors move from reg fees to session charges


However I accept your realism/cynicism is historically well founded....

[tikay]

Surely with only 20 runners they were able to have a good comp, without the usual pressure on the blinds that a bigger turnout would have caused? With only 20 runners the better players will suffer less due to variance.

In these days of sold out festivals, surely quiet tournaments offer a choice for those who don't want a donkament?

but how long will the venues even offer such events?

if they do not, is that a case for regret, or just market forces in action?

Do the poker players need the casinos more than the casinos need the poker players?

Remember that the only reason why casinos run poker tournaments is to get people through the door and get attracted by the flashing lights and wheels of death. If they're not getting bums on seats, then it's goodbye tournaments.

Regretful - yes. But the pure poker players have no power - they're not who the casinos get their money from. The casinos only care about the gamblers.

There writes a man who understands the situation.

But we CAN influence & help, & we must.

More from me later tonight or tomorrow, after I've done some research, but I hope we can get a healthy debate going here. We need to.

[Woodsey]

I was watching one of the very recent WPT events earlier today and the sponsorship they get by the big companies budweiser etc is pretty staggering these days.

Every other televised 'sport' (or whatever the best name for poker is) benefits from the sponsors padding out the prize money, surely poker has got to follow suit here. Or are we just too accepting that only the buy in money comes out the other side in terms of prizes.

[AndrewT]

I'm not a 'live player'. I have had the occasional dabble but it's never 'stuck' when compared to the internet, for lots of reasons (logistics, bad structures, etc).

The casinos only want poker players if they're going to make money out of them. How do they do that? The changes to session charges will help, but the margins on pure live poker are really, really slim. You need numbers to get any sort of economy of scale going. There just aren't that many players willing to enter multiple £500+ tournaments across the country.

I can only suggest that all the casinos get together and work out one calender of big poker tournaments. One place every week. Any clashes and the smaller one (usually more regional one) will be a ghost town. As we've seen this weekend, even putting 350 miles between events doesn't help.

[tikay]

I was watching one of the very recent WPT events earlier today and the sponsorship they get by the big companies budweiser etc is pretty staggering these days.

Every other televised 'sport' (or whatever the best name for poker is) benefits from the sponsors padding out the prize money, surely poker has got to follow suit here. Or are we just too accepting that only the buy in money comes out the other side in terms of prizes.

Sponsors have been adding money for a while now, in return for "badging" the Tourney. But it's only started filtering down to the players in the last 9 months., notably via the excellent Tours started by Blue Square/Grosvenor, Gala & APAT.

But that's not the real issue here, it's the lack of an organised framework or structure for tournaments really. For such a large scale venture, Tourney Poker in the UK has no "form", or cohesive structure. When it gets one, the Sponsors will be queueing up.

[AndrewT]

But that's not the real issue here, it's the lack of an organised framework or structure for tournaments really. For such a large scale venture, Tourney Poker in the UK has no "form", or cohesive structure. When it gets one, the Sponsors will be queueing up.

Poker in this country is like golf before Arnold Palmer, or women's tennis before Billie Jean King. Get tournament poker into a form where Sky Sports want to show it every week and the money, and sponsors, should come. The breakthrough will be when non-poker/casino companies want to get involved in sponsoring it.

[TightEnd]

The breakthrough will be when non-poker/casino companies want to get involved in sponsoring it.

I think that is close.