It's a Numbers Game
The final number for today’s field came to 394 players, meaning the total main event number has been confirmed at 665 players. This is down from the 686 attracted in Madrid last season and down even more from the 848 players that attended the Grand Final the last time we were in Monaco, two seasons ago. On the face of it this doesn’t look great, but the figures hide some key facts.
- Monaco is an expensive place and this is the first time we've been back here since Black Friday.
- Many more Nordic players turned up in Madrid last season as the tax penalties on playing in the EU are less severe than outside its boundaries. Monaco is technically outside the EU so those tax penalties put a lot of these players off coming.
- More localised PokerStars sites in Europe (eg. PokerStars.it, PokerStars.ee, PokerStars.fr etc) due to regulation means more split qualification pools and less qualifiers in total.
- Italians have made up a large number of the players on the EPT the past four seasons. Laws in Italy have changed so they have to pay more tax now on winnings outside Italy. This twinned with the fact that there is a €2k Italian Poker Tour scheduled next week has meany many have opted to stay away.
So basically the ground has shifted on the Grand Final and it's unfair to compare to past seasons' numbers. It's much fairer to compare it to the WSOPE held it Cannes a little more than six months ago. This is because it is the only other €10k Main Event to be held in Europe, Cannes has similar living costs for players to contend with, and it was held within a similar time period to be affected by by all financial implications the poker world and world in general are dealing with. They attracted 593 players so number here looks pretty good!