WPT Championship attendance drops dramatically!

• Author: Qid
• Filed under: Bertrand Grospellier, ElkY, High Stakes News, Poker, Poker Tournament, Uncategorized, WPT
• Date: Apr 21,2009

Last year 545 entered the WPT season ending tournament, but this year only 338 players started the event. Attendance is down 38 % from last year, that is quite alarming figure considering how much troubles WPT has gone through already in past couple of seasons.

Elky is hunting for a second WPT win.

After two days of action, a not-so-famous player Jean-Noel Thorel leads the group with 743,500 chips. Many more familiar faces are trailing him, Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier being closest in second place with 678,300 chips. Steve Billirakis (672,400) comes right behind Elky. Dan Heimiller (655,700) and Justin Young (621,800) concludes the top five.

The leaderboard is packed with poker superstars, as almost every player in the list is famous. It is actually harder to find a player you don’t know than a player you know. That is for sure a result of low attendance, as amateur players have stayed in home but pros still comes to play.

Because of low attendance the first place finish will give the winner “only” $2.1 million. It can be considered only, as first prize is down $1.3 from last year. First prize hasn’t been this small in WPT Championship since the inaugural season finale, when Alan Goehring won the tournament for million dollars.

Live updates of the tournament (day three is running right now) can be found from the WPT website.