Lowest turnout since 2006 at PokerStars EPT Grand Final

Posted by Steve Ruddock on May 08, 2013 Posted in Poker News | No Comments »

ept_monte_carloAfter an anemic 108 players registered for Day 1a of the EPT Grand Final, which is the biggest tournament of the year on the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) schedule, it was pretty obvious the final attendance number would be bad, but just how bad nobody quite knew. Fortunately, on Tuesday a total of 423 players showed up for the EPT Grand Final Day 1b flight, putting the final tally at a disappointing (but could have been a lot worse) 531 players.

The 531 entrants is the lowest turnout for the EPT Grand Final going back to 2006, when the tour was still in its infancy (Season 2 to be precise) and drew a field of just 298 players. This also marks the fourth straight year attendance has dropped for the EPT Grand Final; a disturbing trend to say the least.

When the Poker Boom reached a crescendo in 2006 attendance numbers had nowhere to go but down (which they did for the most part) but the European Poker Boom was just getting started and the PokerStars EPT managed to buck the trend for a number of years until 2011 when their own attendance numbers started to dip.

Here is a look at attendance numbers for the EPT Grand Final historically (in 2011 the Grand Final was played in Madrid, Spain, otherwise it has always taken place in Monte Carlo):

* Season 1 (2005): 211 entries

* Season 2 (2006): 298 entries

* Season 3 (2007): 706 entries

* Season 4 (2008): 842 entries

* Season 5 (2009): 935 entries

* Season 6 (2010): 848 entries

* Season 7 (2011): 686 entries (Madrid)

* Season 8 (2012): 665 entries

* Season 9 (2013): 531 entries

Still, despite the shrinking attendance numbers the EPT Grand Final attracted the biggest names in poker; several of whom will go into Wednesday’s Day 2 among the chip leaders. Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts from both Day 1 starting flights:

Day 1a

1. Dan Smith — 136,500

2. Pablo Fernandez — 135,900

3. Freddy Deeb — 133,900

4. Arlo Dotson — 127,100

5. Jake Cody — 119,000

6. El Khazen Youssef — 111,700

7. Paul Volpe — 110,800

8. Jan Bendik — 108,900

9. Dmitrii Grinenko — 108,100

10. Ignat Liviu — 98,800

Day 1b

1. Victor Sbrissa — 224,800

2. Noah Schwartz — 204,600

3. Calvin Anderson — 198,100

4. Oleksii Kovalchuk — 145,000

5. Andrew Lichtenberger — 137,800

6. Danilo Donnini — 137,800

7. Victor Ramdin — 134,400

8. Marcin Horecki — 134,100

9. Igor Kurganov — 127,900

10. Ekrem Sanioglu — 126,200

Day 2 will get underway at noon local time on Wednesday, with 268 players still in the hunt for the coveted title. We should also have the official payout schedule early on during Day 2.

Resources: www.wikipedia.org, www.europeanpokertour.com

 



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