Barry Carter: The Future is Mid-Stakes

In his third column, Barry Carter discusses the rise of mid-stakes poker tournaments on the live circuit.

If you pay attention to poker media and forums, you would probably be under the assumption that we are currently in the darkest period in the history of the poker industry.  It is hard to argue against such a claim, every day it seems there is a new scandal that takes a shot at poker while it is down.

These are troubling times for the game, but amidst the dark clouds of the Black Friday era of poker, there are some rays of light. One such example of which is that the live game is in better health than ever before, particularly if you are a mid-stakes player.

The High Roller is No Longer King

There was a time that being a mid-stakes live poker player was to be a second class citizen. Casinos didn’t really want to put poker tournaments on in the first place, because they stopped people playing the house games, so the only players that got looked after were the high rollers in the WPTs & EPTs. Anyone who wanted to play a tournament for under €1,000 usually had to put up with bad service and poor structures.

Sean Getzwiller won Event #8 of the WSOP for $600K

Pre black Friday it was starting to look like live poker was going down the super-high roller route, with two six-figure buy-in events at the Aussie Millions, $50k events at the WSOP, and the announcement of the Full Tilt Onyx Cup, which of course never materialized.

Such big buy-in events may have furthered the belief that poker was all about the nosebleeds, but the reality is that mid-stakes poker has enjoyed a boom of its own in recent years, so much so that I would say it is the lifeblood of live poker.

Of course mid-stakes is a relative term, but most people seem to agree that events between €100-€500 is roughly what constitutes a mid-stakes event, although you could also include any event under €1000.

The reason why these events are now so important is because they are commanding such large fields. This is both down to a grass roots surge in the popularity of live poker and also because the online poker rooms have been getting involved; marketing the events, providing online qualifiers, and guaranteeing large prize pools.

Small Buy-in, Large Fields, Huge Prizes

The result of which is that events are created that appeal to a cross section of the poker community. The lower stakes players can justify a €500 buy-in once in a blue moon, and treat the event as if it is ‘their WSOP’. The pros can enjoy softer fields than they are used to, and although the buy-ins might be smaller, the sheer number of players means that the prizes at the final table are still close to what they could expect in larger events (and in some cases eclipsing them).

To take some recent examples of the kind of tournaments I mean. The recent record breaking Grosvenor Goliath had a buy-in of £100, 1765 runners, and a first prize of £32,705. The PokerStars UK & Ireland Poker Tour Nottingham had a £500 buy-in, 1058 runners, and a first prize of £109,000. Event #8 at the WSOP had a $1,000 buy-in, 4178 entries, and a $611,185 first prize.

These are all extreme examples, but there are lots of events out there with this level of buy-ins and very large fields. D4 Events run a series of deep stack and short-handed events with €500 buy-ins across Europe that regularly command 500+ runners. Dusk Till Dawn in the UK has a monthly £300 main event that features over 300 runners a time. There are numerous mid stakes regional tours from the likes of PokerStars, Betfair, Blue Square, and many more, every week across Europe.

Then there is the fact that the European attendance record seems to be getting broken several times a year, thanks to Dusk Till Dawn, the Grosvenor Goliath, and the soon to take place Boylepoker IPO in Dublin.

I could go on for a very long time highlighting just how many of these events there are, but you get my point.

World Class Experience

Lee Rawson turned £100 into £32,705

The great thing about just about all of these events is that despite the relatively modest buy-in, the tournament experience is still usually world class. The first thing that usually would suffer in these instances would be the structures of the events, but not only is a deep stack expected, it is usually where these particular events stand out from bigger buy-in events.

It has got to the point where a 10,000 stack isn’t considered deep any more, and with events like the European Deepstack Tour boasting 50,000 starting stacks, player experience is the top priority.

Deepstack events are a logistical nightmare usually for casinos, especially when the field sizes are so large, but when an online sponsor steps into cover some or all of the operational costs of the event, everyone benefits.

And it is not just the structures that are making mid stakes players feel like high rollers. These events are getting televised in a lot of instances, or at least being updated live and making the front pages of poker news websites. I can vouch for the fact that getting deep in some of these events, and having a rail watching, and TV tables, and being interviewed, and having your friends able to watch your progress online, is actually a real thrill for a modest player like myself.

For years now we have all been asking ‘when will the next poker boom be?’ and now more than ever it would appear that we need one. To those that think that poker is on the ropes, I say the future is bright; the future is at the mid-stakes.

by Barry Carter