Decision to Reverse Increased Payout Structure in Two High Roller Events at EPT 13 Barcelona Angers Pros

EPT 13 Barcelona
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  • PG News August 22, 2016
  • 2 Minutes Read

Enthusiasm has been dampened at the ongoing PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) 13 Barcelona, with players upset over the reversal of the increased payouts at the €25K Single-Day High Roller and €50K Super High Roller events, which came after the organizers had promised larger ones just days before the event.

 

PokerStars Explains Payouts

The EPT paid just 10% of the field a part of the prize money during its first five seasons. Thereafter this was increased to 15%. This year, on the eve of the festival, it was announced that payouts would be 20% of the field.

In fact, PokerNews.com did an interview with Neil Johnson, Department Head of Live Poker Operations, PokerStars on the changed payout structure and at that time, Johnson stated that “We saw that if we would pay out 20 percent instead of 15 percent, we could give 5 percent of the field a do-over. It’s effectively like saying ‘Thanks for coming, I hope you had a lot of fun. Sorry you didn’t make it into the big money, good luck the next time because here’s money for another shot.” If someone has a buy-in to play another poker tournament, that’s a good thing. So that’s the direction we ended up going.”

Johnson further added that a survey had been done and that it was a “player-driven industry” therefore the decision had been taken in the interest of the poker economy. It was also reported that this increased 20% of the field payouts would currently be only for the EPT 13 Barcelona, Malta and Prague. After checking the feedback from the about 200 events in the above, it would be decided whether to continue with it or not.

One important point that Johnson admitted was that a larger entry-field was directly related to the payouts and pointing to the larger picture he said, “To keep a healthy poker economy, a solid liquidity for live tournament poker, you need more winners. You need more people able to buy in and play so the fields continue to grow. You don’t want to see a situation where it just stagnates, which happens if there’s not getting new money in.”

 

Decision Reversed

While no reasons have been forthcoming about the decision to reverse the increased payouts of the two high rollers from 20% back to 15%, rumours doing the EPT 13 Barcelona are whispering about the low player-turnouts in the two events. There has been no official comment on this though.

Additionally the decision to reverse the payouts was announced at the nth hour angering the high rollers at the event. Most of the players lashed out their anger on twitter.

Those wondering about the changed decision, it is being speculated that the answer lies among the top echelons of Amaya, parent company of PokerStars. With founder David Baazov out of the picture, the rest of the brass are wary of taking decisions all by themselves, with none willing to be liable for any backlash that might follow later.

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