ISPT debut pushed back to 2013
First event of hybrid poker tour will still take place at London's Wembley Stadium.
The first event of the International Stadiums Poker Tour will now take place in May 2013, tour president Laurent Tapie and chief executive Prosper Masquelier have confirmed.
It will still take place at Wembley Stadium in London, the location of last week’s eGaming Review B2B Awards, but has now been delayed twice after Tapie had initially hoped to hold the inaugural event this month.
“We had to consider an exceptional set up, a location that can host 30,000 people. Wembley seemed like the perfect option,” said Tapie and Masquelier in a statement, adding that “We hope that this event will be fondly remembered by the participants and that it breaks all records.”
It is unclear whether or not the rescheduling is due to the failure of Tapie-led Groupe Bernard Tapie (GBT) to complete its proposed acquisition of the assets of Full Tilt Poker, a deal which GBT was forced to pull out of last month following wranglings with the US Department of Justice.
Laurent Tapie told eGaming Review earlier this year that he had other software options for the ISPT if the Full Tilt deal failed to materialise, and this is not understood to be a reference to the breakaway company he sought to form following the collapse of that deal.
A hybrid poker tournament, the first ISPT event would see 30,000 players take part on tablet devices before 10% of the field remains to continue the tournament in a live poker format on the football stadium’s pitch.
According to poker magazine Bluff the tournament would carry an initial buy-in of 600 while Tapie has revealed to eGR that the prize pool is set to top 20m.
(Photo courtesy of Martin Pettitt, obtained under Creative Commons licence)