The WSOP Circuit Deep Stack Extravaganza
Another BBT5 final table, another 5th place finish. It was more than a little frustrating since I felt I was the second-best player at the final table. If I had won the key pot (my QQ v. Linda G's AK) I probably would have taken at least 2nd place.
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Tomorrow the $5,000 "Main Event" starts for the WSOP Circuit series at Caesars here in Las Vegas. I'll be covering it for PokerNews as a tune-up before the real WSOP starts in four weeks. Given that only 231 players came out for Saturday's $2500 "Main Event" at the Venetian for the 2010 Deep Stack Extravaganza II (compared to 280 last year), and given that last year 187 played the Caesars Main Event, I'm expecting about 160 players tomorrow. I doubt the tournament will remain a 4-day event as currently scheduled.
In general, the field sizes throughout the WSOP-C and the DSE have been unimpressive. The WSOP-C's $230 NLHE events attracted an average field of 292 players; the $340s drew 224; and an average of 165 turned up for the $550s. The two non-NLHE events, $340 LHE and $340 PLO, did even worse, failing to crack 60 players in the field. Venetian drew an average of 251 for their $340 NLHE tourneys (slightly better than the WSOP-C) and 151 for their $550s (slightly worse).
The two series certainly have sapped each other's player bases. But even if only one series was running, and the fields were perfectly consolidated, tournament poker still seems to be on the decline somewhat here in Vegas (at least the small market, non-televised type of tournament poker). JDN played the last $550 NLHE of the WSOP-C yesterday at Caesars and had this to say about it: "I won this tourney 2 years ago when there were 650 runners. Today: 135."
Counter-programming is, in general, harmful when the product being offered is virtually indistinguishable. All it does is splinter the market. That helps nobody: not the poker rooms running the tournaments and certainly not the players. Sometimes it can be hard to determine exactly who is competing with whom for players, but the TDs in overlapping geographic markets really need to sit down and figure this out. The boom days are over.