The ISPT project moves another step forward as Sam Trickett joins the company in the capacity of poker ambassador and the Amateur Poker Association & Tour (APAT) signs on as an official sponsor. Organizers of the audacious project plan to get up to 30,000 players together at Wembley Stadium in London for a €20m guaranteed poker tournament.
The event will begin with players sitting in the stands playing online on their own laptops before the action moves to the main pitch to play out the rest of the tournament face to face. One rebuy and one add-on each for €600 will be allowed. At the end of the rebuy period new players will be able to buy in directly for €6,000, for which they will receive the chip “average” at that point in the tournament.
Trickett joins Michael Mizrachi who came on board as the first “ambassador” last month. Sam is currently 4th on the all-time money list after finishing second in Guy Laliberte’s WSOP Big One for One Drop, earning $10.1m. He is a regular at the super high roller small field tournament events and plays in the highest stakes cash games in Macau.
APAT claims to be the largest European membership organization for recreational poker players. Started in the UK in 2006, it now holds National Amateur Champion tournaments throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, Estonia, and Spain.
In July APAT bought poker.co.uk and launched its own poker room on the Boss Media network. With 20,000+ registered members APAT will be a valuable vehicle for promoting the tournament to amateur players. It plans to run regular satellites to the ISPT €600 rebuy Main Event.
French organizers Laurent Tapie and Prosper Masquelier are going to face serious problems putting on this event. The technical difficulties alone are enormous. Finding 30,000 players prepared to come to London will mean reaching out to every possible player community.
“All the poker fans are welcome, from amateurs to professionals,” Masquelier said. “Therefore, partnering with APAT was completely natural for us.”
