The High-Roller Events That Continue To Impress
This year's 2015 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final €25,500 High Roller attracted 215 total entries, with 162 of those being unique entries, and then 53 reentries. That's quite the plump field for an event priced at €25,500 per entry, and it generated a prize pool of €5,267,500.
Just how big is this event, though?
In term of total entries in the field, in order to be ranked in the top 10 largest events with a buy-in of $25,000 or €25,000, one would have to have a field of 214 or more. Last year's EPT Grand Final High Roller attracted 214 total entries and was the event of this buy-in with the 10th-largest field size in history.
Now that this year's field topped last year's by one, it's the new standard to break into the top 10, as seen in the table below.
| Rank | Event | Entries | Winner | Prize Pool | First-Place Prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2007 WPT World Championship | 639 | Carlos Mortensen | $15,495,750 | $3,970,415 |
| 2 | 2006 WPT World Championship | 605 | Joe Bartholdi | $14,671,250 | $3,760,165 |
| 3 | 2008 WPT World Championship | 545 | David Chiu | $13,216,250 | $3,389,140 |
| 4 | 2005 WPT World Championship | 453 | Tuan Le | $10,961,000 | $2,856,150 |
| 5 | 2004 WPT World Championship | 343 | Martin De Knijff | $8,342,000 | $2,728,356 |
| 6 | 2009 WPT World Championship | 338 | Yevgeniy Timoshenko | $8,172,250 | $2,143,655 |
| 7 | 2015 PCA High Roller | 269 | Ilkin Garibli | $6,456,000 | $1,294,460 |
| 8 | 2014 PCA High Roller | 247 | Jake Schindler | $6,051,500 | $1,279,880 |
| 9 | 2011 WPT World Championship | 220 | Scott Seiver | $5,309,500 | $1,618,344 |
| 10 | 2015 EPT Grand Final High Roller | 215 | --TBD-- | €5,267,500 | €1,114,000 |
With the Euro being valued higher than the U.S. Dollar, the prize pool for the €25,500 High Roller at the EPT Grand Final is usually always a bit higher than the $25,500 High Roller held at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure each January. But, the event in January tends to get a larger field.
As previously written in Four Exciting Things To Watch For at the European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monaco, "The EPT Grand Final €25,500 High Roller and the PCA $25,500 High Roller are very similar in field-size history. This year will be the seventh installment of the EPT Grand Final €25,500 High Roller, and the PCA $25,500 High Roller had its seventh installment earlier this year in January. Minus one down year for each event, the fields sizes have gotten larger each edition."
Adding in the field from this year's EPT Grand Final High Roller, the following table looks at the two events side by side.
| Year | PCA $25K Entries | % Change | EPT GF €25K Entries | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 48 | -- | 79 | -- |
| 2010 | 84 | +75% | 113 | +43% |
| 2011 | 151 | +79.8% | 58 | -48.7% |
| 2012 | 148 | -2% | 133 | +129.3% |
| 2013 | 204 | +37.8% | 158 | +18.8% |
| 2014 | 247 | +21.1% | 214 | +35.4% |
| 2015 | 269 | +8.9% | 215 | +0.47% |
| Average | +36.8% | +29.7% |
The one decline in the EPT Grand Final High Roller field was mainly due to the event being held in a different location. In 2011, the event was held in Madrid, and the turnout suffered because of it. Other years, it has been held in Monte Carlo. The PCA High Roller and the EPT Grand Final High Roller when held in Monte Carlo have seen increases in the field size each year. That's an extremely positive trend for events of this buy-in size, and we wanted to find out a little more as to why they're always so successful.
"I think super high roller events continue to grow for two reasons," stated Chad Holloway, managing editor at PokerNews. "First, both high-stakes players and wealthy amateurs don't want to grind weeklong tournaments, which is the length of many of today's premiere main events. They'd rather play for three days or less for a chance at a seven-figure score. Second, super high roller events are the new standard in prestige. It's there that you're guaranteed the highest level of play against the best players in the world. That's appealing."
As a regular member of the media at these tournaments, Holloway makes some very good points. Another regular at these stops is EPT tournament supervisor Luca Vivaldi. Like Holloway, we also talked to Vivaldi about the success of these events to see what he thought.
"I think the players kind of know that it's going to be a big number in these events, so they tend to come and play these tournaments," Vivaldi said. "Maybe they save some buy-ins from other tournaments because they know how big these fields are going to be. That's the most simple reason that I can give you. Everybody seems to like the structure as a three-day event and it attracts a lot of players."
After speaking to a member of the media and a tournament official, we also wanted to get the view from a player's perspective. For that, we caught up with Matt Waxman, who happens to be building quite a contending stack in this event.
"With these events in particular, it's because of PokerStars," Waxman said. "When they have their own tour, they're able to facilitate all of the high-stakes players very well so that they can just use their online accounts to come to these events and buy in. That's very convenient. Not to mention the destinations are nice, too. You get to go to the Bahamas, which is pretty nice for vacation, and Monaco is very nice as well."
Big fields, large payouts, player-friendly structures, elite competition, and impressive locations all seem to play a hand in making these events as successful as they are. In a poker world where tournament field size numbers can jump around like an electrocardiogram, it's refreshing to see a healthy, positive trend in the realm of these high-stakes events.