Poker Overkill
Introduction
Whilst looking around at the poker news this week it struck me that perhaps some of the pundits who have been saying there’s too much poker in the media at present might just be right. Whilst we’re all waiting for the WPT to resume in the USA in November, the attention in terms of poker tournaments has undoubtedly moved over to Europe during the Fall. To a casual observer of poker in the USA media this could give the impression that all is quiet on the poker front – not so it’s actually just as frantic as ‘the western front’!
Poker in London for example
WSOPE in London
Last week, Friday to be precise, saw the culmination of the WSOPE Main Event in London, UK, with a $1.25 million first prize and a bracelet. Great – no problem with that, after all the top poker professionals need to carry on earning a living and, why not, have a break in Europe into the bargain. The WSOPE Main Event attracted players of the caliber of Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu, not to mention the eventual winner Jeff Shulman. However, having concentrated that hard on the WSOPE event I’d forgotten that a European Poker Tour event reached its climax also in London, and had been running concurrently with the WSOPE event, ending just a few days later this week. With a similar level of prize money, the EPT event had also attracted top players like Phil Ivey and Barry Greenstein from our side of the pond.
Spread the poker tournaments out
Now I’m all for there being lots of poker tournaments for us to follow either through poker websites or on TV, but quite simply the coverage given to the WSOPE completely swamped any that the EPT might have been given, or possibly even deserved. However, surely the point here is that we poker fans would prefer to have a more evenly spread distribution of the top poker tournaments giving us something to look forward to at different times of the year. So come on the International Poker Federation and the World Poker Association – how about getting together and working out some more sensible scheduling for all the various poker tournaments?