WPT Turks & Caicos

[BJ Nemeth]

The WPT event in Turks & Caicos was scheduled to start today, with two starting days. But a decision was made last night to start the entire field tomorrow (Wednesday). So coverage at WorldPokerTour.com and CardPlayer.com will begin then, starting at 12:00 noon EDT.

[It's rare for us tournament reporters to have any time off on the road, so an unexpected free day like this is precious -- and the Turks & Caicos are a great place to have a day off.]

Quite a few pros have already arrived, including Joe Sebok, Nam Le, J.C. Tran, Jonathan "FieryJustice" Little, Amnon Filippi, Sean McCabe, Mark Seif, James "KrazyKanuck" Worth, Phil Laak, and Jennifer Tilly. More are expected to arrive tonight, so this should be a pretty pro-heavy field.

The over-under on the number of entrants was unofficially set by two different people at 167 and 168, and I think that's a good line. There is no official word on the expected number of entrants.

I hope everyone who's interested is able to follow the coverage, and with an expected pro-heavy field, we should have a pretty great final table lineup for Sunday morning. (The WPT Final Table will start much earlier than normal, before noon, to take advantage of the sunny tropical background.)

For those who don't know, I'm the lead online reporter for the World Poker Tour. You can follow all the updates, chip counts, video interviews, etc. at WorldPokerTour.com.

[sapol]

Mark seif?? does he have access to hole card cams??

[sketchy1]

this is going to be the weirdest WPT event ever.

first is guaranteedto be $1m but the prize pool might not even crack $2m.

gg flat payout structure. hello first $1m and 2nd being like, 12x your buyin.

[entertainme]

Tough duty there BJ. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

For anyone interested, there's a live webcam that should be starting in about half an hour?

[BJ Nemeth]

Sorry, entertainme, but the inconsistent internet access is keeping us from providing the live webcam. :-(

In other bad news, our live updates are not transferring over from WorldPokerTour.com to CardPlayer.com. (The only thing transferring is Kimberly Lansing's video preview.) So for now at least, if you'd like updates, you'll need to check WorldPokerTour.com.

There are about 120 players registered for the event, and no official word on the prize structure. It will likely be modified, so it's not $1 million for first place and $0 for second. Nothing will be official until the prizepool is set after registration closes (around 4:00 pm).

There are a lot of pros here, and some pretty stacked tables. So it should be an interesting tournament. Thanks for watching!

[shaniac]

[ QUOTE ]
this is going to be the weirdest WPT event ever.

first is guaranteedto be $1m but the prize pool might not even crack $2m.

gg flat payout structure. hello first $1m and 2nd being like, 12x your buyin.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is definitely goofy. I sure hope they pay the entire 250K or whatever to 2nd, i.e. I hope they don't spread the leftover amount super-thin, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

Watching a WPT where first got a million, 2nd place got 250K and 3rd-6th got nothing, would be way more exciting than the usual.

[Todd Terry]

I think the buy-in was $7500, so there's barely $1 million in the pool (if $7500 includes the juice, it's less than $1 million). Winner take all?

[shaniac]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the buy-in was $7500, so there's barely $1 million in the pool (if $7500 includes the juice, it's less than $1 million). Winner take all?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, you're right. I think $7,500 was the entry, so it's barely more than a million before withholding. Still, they guaranteed a million to FIRST, that's how they should pay it.

[BJ Nemeth]

TD Jack McClelland is letting the players vote on the prizepool, letting them choose between paying 9 or 10 places, 6 places, or keeping it as winner-take-all.

In the first round of voting, the top two vote-getters were paying 9 places or 6 places, so there will be a runoff. Paying 9 or 10 players received 57% of the first round vote, so I expect that the prizepool will reach nine places.

If that's the case, there would be a little less than $500,000 for first, and it would drop from there. More information is available in the live updates at WorldPokerTour.com:

http://www.worldpokertour.com/tournament/?x=updatesnews

[BJ Nemeth]

The voting is complete, and they are paying nine players. Here's the breakdown:

1st: $436,675
2nd: $225,000
3rd: $125,000
4th: $70,000
5th: $50,000
6th: $30,000
7th: $25,000
8th: $20,000
9th: $15,000