Home / Poker News February 2009 / EPT’s blinds structure revamped for next season
EPT’s blinds structure revamped for next season
Posted by: James Carter. - Sat, 2009-02-21 11:10
Following player complaints that its events weren’t really deep stacked tournaments and thus offered an unfair advantage to those riding the luck factor, the EPT’s John Duthie and Thomas Kremser decided to do something about the starting stack sizes and the blinds structure.
One of the voices of discontent was that of English professional player Neil Channing who has repeatedly stated that the EPT was doing no one a favor by maintaining its 10,000 chip starting stack policy and the current blinds structure. According to Channing, the EPT was “masquerading” as a deep stack series, while it wasn’t one in the true sense of the word.
In the wake of these allegations,
EPT Tournament director Thomas Kremser and founder John Duthie turned to French poker professional Arnaud Mattern and backgammon expert Francois Tardieu to come up with ideas for a new tournament structure for EPT Main Events.
The two designed several such solutions and one of them was quickly picked for the 6th season of the series. After a few tweaks by their team, Duthie and Kremser agreed that they wouldn’t wait till season 6 to implement the improvements: the
new tournament structure will be put to use at this season’s Grand Final in Monte Carlo.
The new structure is hailed to eliminate the shortcomings of the old one and in the same time to place a bigger accent on skill over luck. The 30,000 chips starting stack will effectively triple the ammo at players’ disposal in the beginning of the tournament, and there will be 15 minutes added to blind levels after the first day. The blinds themselves will be tweaked as well.
According to experts, this new setup will make for more ‘name’ pro presences in the final stages, and will lead to an increase in professional player victories. After all, people do want to see the likes of Allen Cunningham emerge victorious after a battle of highly refined skills rather than a no-name player after a shove-fest.
The same structure tweaking has been implemented in the
WSOP’s events last year, and it has indeed led to an increase in pro victories and final table presences.
