Words simply cannot describe the epicness of the fail that will rain down over this abortion of a poker tournament
Background reading:
http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...ur-new-website
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...000-a-1107003/
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Words simply cannot describe the epicness of the fail that will rain down over this abortion of a poker tournament
Background reading:
http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...ur-new-website
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...000-a-1107003/
Wow, this is awful.Quote:
Originally Posted by Belly Buster
I knew it would be a fail when announced, but not THIS bad.
Cliffs:
- Initially, the ISPT was supposed to have 30,000 people in a LIVE tournament setting, scheduled for June, 2013. The "first round" would consist of people playing on their laptops (what?!), live in Wembley Stadium in England. It was announced in June, 2012.
- It would then move on to be a live tournament after most of the field was eliminated in Day 1.
- The website was full of spelling errors, such as "paticipate" and "comming".
- There were no contingency plans if it rained in Wembley Stadium!
- Co-founder Prosper Masquelier claimed that it had a a 20 million Euro guarantee, in this interview:
http://www.hochgepokert.com/2012/07/...siv-interview/ (make sure to click "Translate" if you don't read German!)
The video of Tapie, of course, has been deleted by now. The above was said by Masquelier in July, 2012. In October, 2012, he said this:Quote:
Q: The ISPT 2013 at Wembley Stadium will be the biggest ever live poker tournament. Is the total prize pool of 20 million guaranteed or is this just an expected prize pool?
A: The prize pool is guaranteed for the entire tournament. the video of the press conference confirmed this already Laurent Tapie. During the press conference, at the 3rd September in Cannes during the Partouche Poker Tour, there will be more details on the payouts of the main and side events.
http://www.pokerlistings.com/ispt-s-...uarantee-70461Quote:
Originally Posted by Prosper Masquelier
- Tons of fail then occurred. Here's a paragraph from a 2+2 user which sums it up well:
Quote:
This tournament is an absolute joke. It's not even close to what it was first advertised as. Everything from the whole concept, value, guarantee, dates, structure, blind structure, venue, stack size, payout, tournament type, tournament buy-in, timing, satellites, estimated no. of players, advertisement, people involved etc.. etc.. have changed on practically a daily basis.
- Other shady stuff happened. A guy on 2+2 posted this recently:
Quote:
hey guys,
im a french player and i'm a student in a communication school. prosper masquellier and his friend asked me to be a community manager for 4 month for ispt. i said yes, posted on the forum, but i had not signed any contract at this point . so i call prosper and he tells me "well, we don't need you anymore" wtf?
u can then consider my previous posts as "non official".
- The tournament's Day 1 was then moved completely online (NOT to be played in the stadium), taking place on various sites in February, 2013.
- The turnouts have been a complete fail. The partouche.fr Day 1 got 130 entrants, and 13 moved on:
http://i.imgur.com/lZ12vLe.png.
Lock Poker got 2 (!!) people for their Day 1 taking place on Feb 17th, and canceled it before it got much closer for "technical reasons":
http://i.imgur.com/DNu62oZ.png
- Michael Mizrachi, current Lock pro and former Absolute Poker pro, is associated with even more fail. He's the "ambassador" of this awful tournament series, and even recently tweeted the wrong date for Day 1A on Lock!
- From the ISPT web page, as of today:
http://www.ispt.com/en/what-is-ispt/concept/Quote:
SPT is the biggest poker event ever organized, mixing online and live gaming. The main event is starting online in February 2013 and continuing live in June 2013, in the stadium of Wembley, London.
The most innovative poker tournament ever will take place in a prestigious environment, gathering thousands of players and broadcast live in more than 38 countries.
- Current banner ad, highly misleading:
http://i.imgur.com/UDwtzFu.png
- Lock Poker has been heavily promoting ISPT.
Right now, this 30,000 person stadium tournament will have 13 people, and even if you count the online players, it's only at 130.
:facepalm4
Wembley is a great stadium. But here's the thing. Who want's to sit here for 10 hours:
Bad enough sitting for 90 minutes.
Playing poker on the pitch? Watch how quickly the weather can change in not-so-sunny England. I was at this match and it was a monsoon for 10 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_NbUcOyvA
This was the original video from 2011 which someone has grabbed and reuploaded. It quite clearly has the $30m guarantee. It also had a 2012 date which was pushed back a year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm0B4gPrP1A
This is a hilarious trailer, aside from the highly misleading and inaccurate $30 million guarantee text.Quote:
Originally Posted by Belly Buster
There is some serious delusion going on here, and it seems to extend far past typical marketing fluff.
I really believe that one of the ISPT organizers has had visions like the scene depicted in this video, while lying in bed with the covers pulled over his head.
The whole thing, starting with the "zoom in from space", just reminds me of the fevered dream of some wide-eyed child, rather than the careful planning of a responsible adult.
If you asked the average 10-year-old to picture the scene of a huge poker tournament played in a big stadium, I bet he would come up with something exactly like this.
It's been announced on the Blonde Poker forum today that respected UK poker room Dusk Til Dawn have partnered with the ISPT and are guaranteeing the prizepool, which is apparently now 5 million Euros, with 1 million Euros going to first place.
The initial reaction of the UK poker community is one of bewilderment. Dusk Til Dawn have a good reputation and the owners are considered to be smart businessmen, meanwhile the ISPT has been seen as little more than a laughing stock since it was announced.
Can the DTD rescue the ISPT? Personally I'm very skeptical. I just hope the failure of ISPT doesn't take DTD down with it.
http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=60473.0
Makes more sense to partner with a UK-based bricks and mortar club than crap like partouche.fr and Dusk Til Dawn is just the type of operator to turn around this event from the total fail that he gone before.Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryQQQ
As long as DTD don't have any liability (except maybe reputation) this could work, but this is one fucking big rabbit that needs to be pulled from a very small hat.
This is off and running now. Instead of 30,000 runners and a 30m prize pool guarantee, they have 416 runners and a 1m 1st place guarantee. With only 1.1m in the prize pool, looks like there is at least a 500k overlay.
Wow, I stopped following this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Belly Buster
So was anyone eligible to buy into the main event, or did you have to win your way in?
If anyone could buy in, why didn't more people show up and take advantage of the overlay?
you could buy-in directly for $3k. I think most people gave up on this tournament long ago and made their preparations to go to the WSOP instead (First mistake, holding the event concurrently with the WSOP). hey also hyped it in the leadup as having a good shot to reach their guarantee, so unless you could travel the day before you probably weren't going to get there.
I think most people couldn't get past the fail, even with the overlay. Given they have reneged on all the guarantees so far, what "guarantee" is there they won't do the same again.
The latest guarantee was different because it was put up by Dusk Till Dawn, one of the top poker rooms in the UK. The million dollar guarantee was iron-cladQuote:
Originally Posted by Belly Buster
I have no doubt DTD will honour the huge overlay, but their fingers must have been very badly burnt. Bear in mind there was also heaps of overlay in satellites, loads of seats were given away in various freerolls and social media promotions, advertising costs must have been huge.
No matter how they paint it this event has been a huge fail. Surely the ISPT is dead and buried, never to be seen again?
I don't really know if they'll scrap it just yet. When DTD was brought into the mix about 6 weeks (?) before the tournament they had something like 13 players; if DTD had been involved for 3 months, and had moved the tournament to just before the WSOP I think it would have been a pretty strong showing, maybe 1,500-2,000 players. The thing was FAIL from jump street, but if DTD remains involved I think it can be a pretty good idea... nothing like the 30,000 players when it was conceived, but I could see this thing pulling in 3,000 players per stop in the futureQuote:
Originally Posted by GaryQQQ
With Dusk til Dawn involved, they should have just run it at their own cardwoom. With the 400-odd runners, they can cope with that.
DTD is a trusted outfit. ISPT is an embarrassing fail. DTD would do well to keep well away.
I understand there are no refunds for booking Wembley, and it required a 1.5 year lead-time --- thus there was no real attempt by ISTP to quietly disband this whole disaster...instead they went the other way and got Dusk 'til Dawn involved. Hey, if you gotta pay (for the reserved venue), you might as well TRY to at least hit a single and reach the much reduced guarantee. There was seemingly no good way out for these guys...here is a funny promo video leading up to this "massive event"...
Apparently Mike Mizrachi is captain of the ISPT Air Force...Oh yeah, and what's with the made up catch-phrases "IWemPlay' and "MyPokerSquad"...can't say these ISPT guys ain't tryin'...just not succeeding --- at least stateside...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7pF33G2MWc
I live in London just a few miles away from Wembley so why didn't I play? A number of reasons, the primary one being that the buyin (3000 + 300 euros) was just way out of my comfort zone for a new tournament run by shady people (Epic not DTD) who had shown a worrying unwillingness to acknowledge their original plans were absurd. If they'd structured the tournament differently and had a direct buy-in in the 1000 euro range they could have got several thousand instead of the woeful 761. The second reason is that I would have had to book time off work to participate, like most recreational players, and I'd normally book it about 6-8 weeks in advance. At that stage the ISPT was still in shambles mode and not looking likely to even happen. So you've pretty much reduced the field to a small number of pros and qualifiers - precisely the opposite of their original aim of 30,000 players. With hindsight, yes there was a lot of overlay. I saw a claim of 600,000 which works out to about 780 euros each, but once you've subtracted the 300 euros juice and factored in the very real possibility that you might not get paid then it wasn't that great. The WSOP Main Event still offers a far more +EV proposition for competent players for example.