Home / Poker News October 2010 / WSOP-C is back in the house
WSOP-C is back in the house
Posted by: Randy Williams - Wed, 2010-10-13 06:45
The WSOP’s Circuit has been one of those tours where younger and less financially endowed players could prove their worth for years. Lately however, there has been a marked decline for the WSOP’s small cousin. Even those who didn’t actually crunch any numbers could tell that player number were dwindling from year to year and that prize-pools were going southward in a similarly dramatic fashion. The buy-ins were simply too small to raise any interest in “name” players, and way too big for the everyday Joe to jump into the fray.
This season, positive change has apparently come for the WSOP-C. Attendance numbers are once again increasing and so are the prize-pools. Players also appear to value the National Championship Points system that has been added to the circuit, which provides another dimension to the outfit.
The way this positive change was accomplished was through the halving of the buy-ins. This way, while high profile professionals would obviously not gain any more interest, the circuit’s events would carry much more appeal for the masses. The lowest point of popularity for the series was reached during the 2009-2010 season, when only 125.6 players would show up for every event on average, generating an average prize-pool of $170.8k.
While the halving of the buy-ins meant that prize-pools would become smaller too, the larger starting fields of the current season meant that players would battle it out for more buy-ins than before, thus getting a much bigger bang for their individual buy-ins.
The first stop of the season, the Council Bluffs one was a perfect illustration of the new system at work. With the buy-in cut to $1,500, there were 251 players who thought it worth their while to take part in the action. The winner, Blair Hinkle took home more than 59 buy-ins worth of dough.
