The problem? They overestimated the number of entries (perhaps expecting 10,000?), and guaranteed not one, but TWO million dollar prizes.
Unfortunately, they only received 7,190 entries, so...
Well, here were the final table payouts:
1st $1,065,403
2nd $1,000,000
3rd $500,000
4th $366,787
5th $276,632
6th $210,112
7th $160,725
8th $123,828
9th $96,091
Notice a problem?
Yep... 1st place is just $65,000 more than 2nd, for a laughable 6.5% pay bump between the two places. Compare that to the 100% pay bump between 3rd and 2nd!
I've never seen anything like this before. It's almost like this was a super-satellite to the top 2 spots. Talk about anti-climactic!
The ridiculous thing is that this could have been modified in various ways to look less ridiculous.
First off, they paid 1079 places. They could have raised several hundred thousands of dollars by just cutting off like 5% from each of the payouts of all but 1st and 2nd, and then putting those payouts on top.
Instead, they just let the computer spit out these weird numbers, and that became the prizepool.
Embarrassing. They really need to do a sanity check before posting payouts.
Remember last year's Colossus debacle, where 1st place out of 22,000 entrants received somewhere around $600,000? That was universally panned, and yet the WSOP didn't realize there would be a negative reaction when the prizepool was announced.
Same thing here.
The event just concluded. Surprisingly, an amateur player (a female kindergarten teacher) finished 3rd.