Sunday April 18th saw the commencement of the eighth World Poker Tour Championship Event at the Bellagio hotel and casino complex, Las Vegas. The $25,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament, won in previous years by the likes of Alan Goehring, Carlos Mortensen and Yevgeniy Timoshenko, marks the pinnacle of the WPT calendar and was designed as an alternative to the World Series of Poker, the unofficial “World Championships” of poker.
Attendance this year was dramatically down. With record numbers attending European Poker Tour and North American Poker Tour events in recent weeks, the disappointing turnout of 195 players at this year’s World Poker Tour Championship Event would suggest that the WPT’s popularity is on the wane. Last year’s tournament attracted 337 players, while 2008 drew 545 and in 2007, 639 players created the largest ever prizepool outside of the World Series of Poker Main Event.
Team PokerStars player Daniel Negreanu attributes the decline in participation to the lack of satellites for the WPT events, stating “[The WPT] need to compete and get these events populated by running online satellites. All the PokerStars tours work because of the satellites”. Jack McClelland, Bellagio’s Tournament Director, claims that it’s not that simple though, due to America’s confusing and ever-changing laws surrounding online poker. “All the online sites that would like to send us players can’t”, claims McClelland, adding “Our financial people say we can’t take the money”.
Despite attendance being lower than usual, there wass still a $4.7 million prizepool to play for, with a hefty $1,530,537 first prize for the eventual WPT Champion. Some star names turned up too, with Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Isaac Haxton, Gus Hansen, Carlos Mortensen and defending champion Yevgeniy Timoshenko, to name but a few.
Day One closed with 2007 WPT Mandalay Bay Champion Shawn Buchanan leading the field. Fresh from his final table appearance at the NAPT Mohegan Sun High Roller event, Buchanan ended the day comfortably ahead of Brian Lemke and David Benyamine in chips, with Phil Ivey and Timoshenko also present amongst the top ten stacks.
Buchanan had clearly brought his “A” game along to the WPT Championship Event, playing some aggressive poker and ending the second day’s play still amongst the chip leaders, just 500 tournament chips behind Day Two leader Faraz Jaka.
With just 98 players remaining, Day Three will play down to 35 players before Day Four thins the field to just a final table. There are still some extremely capable poker players left, including Phil Hellmuth and Justin Bonomo and despite the disappointing initial field size, we look certain for an exciting climax to the World Poker Tour.
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