- Day 1 tournaments on Lock and Poker770 postponed after not enough players registering to play.
- ISPT officially explain the delay due to “technical issues.”
- 17 players did successfully win Day 2 seats through PartouchePoker.FR.
The International Stadiums Poker Tour faces yet more woe as Lock Poker had to cancel its first Day 1a satellite after only two people registered.
The satellite has been postponed and will now run next weekend. Poker770 also had to cancel two satellites to the Day 1a satellite. A €2.20 rebuy and €11 freezeout both failed to meet the minimum number of entries to run.
So far, 13 places have been awarded to the event due to take place in Wembley Stadium at the beginning of June. The successful satellite was run on Partouche Poker, a french regulated site owned by the family of Prosper Masquelier, one of the event organizers.
The official ISPT twitter account stated the Lock tournament is postponed until December 17 due to “technical issues.”
Expectations have been reduced at every stage as the event has failed to live up to the marketing hype with which it was launched. Guarantees were reduced, then abandoned. Forecasts of player numbers have dropped each month.
The tournament format promised real innovation, with thousands of players playing online in the main stands of Wembley Stadium in London, before the Day 3 survivors moved onto the pitch to play out the remaining hands live.
To build the numbers, ISPT organizers planned worldwide satellites to be played through online partners, but also allowed players to buy in directly to the live event.
The current format has abandoned the online play inside the stadium, replacing it with satellites where the final chip count will be carried forward to the live event. The number of sites offering satellites is low, and includes none of the biggest industry names.
Lock Poker is enthusiastically promoting the event, offering satellites to US and .COM site players. They also have a well produced marketing video up on YouTube using the malapropism “Let’s WemPlay.”
Poker770 is running satellites on its .COM and .ES site, while French players have the option of Partouche.FR or MyPok.FR. Italian players can get access through Netbet.it.
It is premature to predict the number of players who will ultimately qualify through satellites, and it is certainly too early to write off the event as a failure. There are enough players within easy reach of London prepared to buy in for the live event at €3,000 and play the side cash games to ensure that this still has the potential to be a great poker festival.
However, hopes that it could attract what Marketing Manager Georges Djen called “financially interesting” numbers of 15,000 to 17,000 entrants are looking unlikely to be met.