Should Main Event buy-ins be bigger or smaller?
Is it time to double the buy-ins for EPT/WPT/WSOP Main Events, or should we decrease them to attract more players?
Last week was an interesting one for the European Poker Tour. It's €50,000 Super High Roller attracted 85 players and 14 re-entries and the €10,000 High Roller attracted 401 entries and 105 re-entries. Most notably, John Juanda beat a record breaking 1,694 field in the €5,300 Main Event.
Despite these mind blowing numbers, the tour also announced that next year's PCA Main Event buy-in would drop from $10,000 to $5,000.
This leaves us with an unusual contradiction. It appears that the High Rollers (Buy-ins of $20,000 or €10,000+) are becoming so high in demand that one could consider them a Main Event in their own right. The Main Events are clearly thriving too. However, rather than increase the Main Event buy-ins, the EPT has gone the opposite way and decreased one of them.
A strong staking economy
The PCA is the only stop on the EPT tour on the American side of the pond, and this is probably mostly a sign of a weak market in America. US players still cannot qualify online to this event, and given they are the target market, it makes sense to reduce the entry fee as more entries will be direct buy-in.
However, in Europe, most of the High Roller entries are also direct buy-in. 506 total entries for a €10,000 High Roller is remarkable and it will no doubt beat some lower buy-in Main Events in the World Poker Tour this season. Is it time to perhaps reconsider whether the new 'Main Event' buy-in should be €10,000/$20,000?
It used to be that the €10,000 High Rollers filled a niche in the market and also gave tournament promotors a chance to get a well known final table for TV and press releases. Now the High Roller market is so big that we don't always get the household names there anymore (And thus, the Super High Rollers are the new High Rollers). The poker economy is strong enough, or at least the staking economy is, that these events can now attract hundreds of professionals.
The relative difference in buy-ins
In our recent interview with him, Daniel Negreanu said that there was no difference between $50,000 and $100,000 buy-ins for the Super High Rollers. What he meant was that anyone who can afford and/or get staked for a $50k can easily do the same for a $100k. The same is now probably true for the players who can get staked for $10,000 Main Events; they can also most likely get staked for $20,000 High Rollers, even though the fields are tougher.
Even though there is no real difference between $50,000 and $100,000, or $10,000 and $20,000, ironically the pay jumps are bigger, relatively, for smaller buy-in events. Just look at the WSOP Colossus, which attracted a record 22,374 players and proved that there is a big jump in class and/or risk aversion between a $565 event and a $1,000 event.
The difference is, of course, the gulf between recreational players and professionals. A $10,000 Main Event is about as far as most hobby players can justify, whether it's a one off indulgence, a satellite win or a well orchestrated staking proposal. This alone is the reason to keep the Main Events the level they are. $10,000 is still huge money and nobody in poker wants to alienate recreational players by pricing them out of the 'Main Event'. If anything you could make a case of reducing the Main Event buy-ins to cater for more recreational players.
Live poker is doing a fantastic job these days of keeping several parallel player markets happy at once, and keeping them at the venues for longer. You have the €1k events, the 'Main Events', the High Rollers and the Super High Rollers. The poker industry seems able to bare all these tournaments in the same event, and the players seem more than happy to be part of it.
Should Main Events be bigger or smaller? Let us know in the comments.
