The roster for the first season of the Annie Duke/Jeffrey Pollack has been announced and it's actually better than I expected.
While I still don't agree that someone can just decide to set this up and call it what they have, it's clear they have put a significant amount of effort into the writing the criteria to get the players they want.
Criteria as follows:
The 5 Year Card was awarded to 27 players who met the following criteria:
- At least $4.0 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $2.0 million
- At least 3 major lifetime titles
- At least 9 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of at least $600,000 won
The 3 Year Card was awarded to 55 players who met the following criteria:
- At least $2.5 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $1.5 million
- At least 1 major lifetime title
- At least 9 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of at least $500,000 won
The 2 Year Category A Card was awarded to 36 players who met the following criteria:
- At least $2 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $1 million
- At least 1 major lifetime title
- At least 6 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of at least $300,000 won
The 2 Year Category B Card was awarded to XX players who met the following criteria:
- At least $1.25 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $750,000
- At least 9 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of $600,000 won
It is of course a shame to see no consideration of cash game play or online tournament results but adding either of those means a lot more work (if it's even possible in the case of cash game play) so I can see why they have restricted it to live tournament results.
From the Bluff article:
'For a tournament to qualify it must have been an open tournament with a buy-in of at least $1,500 and the field had to be a minimum of 21 players. The event must also have been publicly announced for at least 30 days prior to starting.'
So none of those 18 man SNG's with $100k buy-ins that get announced a day before are going to count, which is definitely a good thing.
It will be interesting to see how many players will actually turn out to play in these tournaments. I think we can assume that a field of some of the best players in the world with none of the casual and non-professional players that make live tournaments actually worth playing might put some players off.
We may end up with fairly small field tournaments with someone like Mike Matusow or Men Nguyen able to claim to be the 'best in the world' after beating a field of 50 players, which would be a shame.
Personally I think the best talent sits in the '2 Year Category B Card' list which contains people like Christian Harder, Jimmy Fricke, Andrew Robl and Peter Jetten. I'll take them over the Phil Hellmuth/Howard Lederer type players any day.
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Showing posts with label Online Poker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Online Poker. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Online Poker Advertising
It's really weird seeing adverts from poker rooms like Sky Poker, Betfair and some other smaller sites on forums and other poker related sites. They were so much a part of the furniture that they really jump out at me, I'm so used to seeing the same banners and logos everywhere.
I guess if you remove the two biggest sites everyone else can afford to enter the market where advertising is concerned.
I wonder if we'll see a bunch more sites putting patches on players at the WSOP this year? Could be a nice opportunity for a site with a decent marketing budget to get some great exposure.
I guess if you remove the two biggest sites everyone else can afford to enter the market where advertising is concerned.
I wonder if we'll see a bunch more sites putting patches on players at the WSOP this year? Could be a nice opportunity for a site with a decent marketing budget to get some great exposure.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
New Online Poker World
The news that US players are no longer able to play online poker and that accounts are currently frozen is clearly bad for everyone involved in the industry, but what can we expect to see now?:
Online Marketing – It doesn’t look good for forums, poker podcasts, affiliate sites and anything that pretty much relies on two or three main sites as sources of income. I guess these types of income could be replaced by non-poker advertising for products likely to appeal to the poker player market, but with a potential reduction in traffic this might be a hard sell.
Player Sponsorship – Apparently Viffer was a couple of days away from signing a big deal with PokerStars. I wonder what will happen to all the ‘paid’ pros at FTP and Stars? The Red Pros at FTP have fairly basic rakeback type deals they they’ll simply lose out on those, but some of the deals must be fully contracted, monthly payment deals. I think we’ll see a few more players getting dropped.
Poker on TV – The PokerStars Big Game, Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker. The TV shows that bring poker to the mainstream on TV are on the whole sponsored by Stars and FTP. These shows were a key way for these sites to market to an audience that they don’t have access to via traditional marketing and advertising activity. I’m interested to see what happens to these now.
Live Poker - It seems likley that there will be an increase in live play in the US, but the WSOP should be interesting this year, as online sites were a common route to the Main Event. We could see a field of 5,500 or less this year. There may also be a knock on effect on the prelims if money in online accounts remains frozen. Many players would have been cashing that out to play this year.
Non US players - I think we'll continue to see a strong market, especially on Stars. Even tonight, the Daily Ninety Grand is running on Stars, with full guarantee, 2,244 players and a $112k prizepool. The Sunday Million has had $500k dropped from it’s guarantee (to $1m) but things seem about as normal as they could be, given the circumstances.
In all this is difficult to speculate on how long (if ever) it will take to get US players back online, but will people keep sponsorship deals, TV shows, training sites and other activity in operation in the hope that if they keep going they’ll be around and ready for a second poker boom if poker gets legalised?
Party Poker looks to be in good shape now. That $300m or whatever they paid to the US government doesn't look so bad now...
Online Marketing – It doesn’t look good for forums, poker podcasts, affiliate sites and anything that pretty much relies on two or three main sites as sources of income. I guess these types of income could be replaced by non-poker advertising for products likely to appeal to the poker player market, but with a potential reduction in traffic this might be a hard sell.
Player Sponsorship – Apparently Viffer was a couple of days away from signing a big deal with PokerStars. I wonder what will happen to all the ‘paid’ pros at FTP and Stars? The Red Pros at FTP have fairly basic rakeback type deals they they’ll simply lose out on those, but some of the deals must be fully contracted, monthly payment deals. I think we’ll see a few more players getting dropped.
Poker on TV – The PokerStars Big Game, Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker. The TV shows that bring poker to the mainstream on TV are on the whole sponsored by Stars and FTP. These shows were a key way for these sites to market to an audience that they don’t have access to via traditional marketing and advertising activity. I’m interested to see what happens to these now.
Live Poker - It seems likley that there will be an increase in live play in the US, but the WSOP should be interesting this year, as online sites were a common route to the Main Event. We could see a field of 5,500 or less this year. There may also be a knock on effect on the prelims if money in online accounts remains frozen. Many players would have been cashing that out to play this year.
Non US players - I think we'll continue to see a strong market, especially on Stars. Even tonight, the Daily Ninety Grand is running on Stars, with full guarantee, 2,244 players and a $112k prizepool. The Sunday Million has had $500k dropped from it’s guarantee (to $1m) but things seem about as normal as they could be, given the circumstances.
In all this is difficult to speculate on how long (if ever) it will take to get US players back online, but will people keep sponsorship deals, TV shows, training sites and other activity in operation in the hope that if they keep going they’ll be around and ready for a second poker boom if poker gets legalised?
Party Poker looks to be in good shape now. That $300m or whatever they paid to the US government doesn't look so bad now...
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