- The usual high turnout for Sunday tournaments was badly affected by the football World Cup.
- Many operators reduced guarantees in advance, but player turn out suggests the reductions may have been too pessimistic.
The usual high turnout for Sunday tournaments was badly affected by the football World Cup, as many operators reduced guarantees and players stayed away from their computer screens.
partypoker announced an across-the-board reduction of Sunday guarantees ahead of time.
“Just a quick note to say that all guarantees on Sunday will be halved, due to the World Cup final. That includes the $200k GTD,” a party representative announced in its official support thread on Two Plus Two.
The Full Tilt “Sunday Brawl” normally offers a $100k guarantee, but this was also cut by 50% to $50k. The $215 buy in “Sunday Major” saw its guarantee down from $150k to $75k.
Pessimistic
In the event, Full Tilt proved to be too pessimistic. Both tournaments easily beat their reduced guarantees—the Sunday Brawl pulled in an $81k prize pool and the Sunday Major attracted enough players to provide almost $130k.
PokerStars kept the $1 million guarantee for the Sunday Million. There were 5,554 entries—11% down on last week’s total of 6,296 but more than enough to beat the $1 million guarantee with a final prize pool of over $1.1 million.
The Sunday Warm-Up also kept the same $400k guarantee as last week and easily avoided an overlay with $460k in prize money.
The top operators may have over-estimated the impact of the World Cup, but the reduction in players was substantial. If the 11% fall in tournament entries is also observed at cash games, it could take the global market to its lowest point in 2014.
