With so many different poker tours popping up around the world and a seemingly jam-packed annual schedule of events, it can be difficult to get excited about new concepts. But it’s hard to ignore the goings on in Sydney this week as The Star casino joins forces with the Asian Poker Tour and the National Poker League for what promises to be one of the biggest tournaments ever held in the Asia-Pacific region.
December has long been The Star’s time to shine. Between 2007 and 2010 it was home to the Asia Pacific Poker Tour grand final which regularly drew the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem to fight it out for the $1 million first prize. More recently it has hosted the Star Summer Series, which was also popular amongst the locals but certainly suffered for numbers without the backing of PokerStars which the APPT brought with it.
However, this year sees The Star Summer Series join forces not only with the National Poker League (NPL) but also the Asian Poker Tour (APT) – becoming the seventh stop on the APT’s 2013 schedule.
The benefits of this are huge. The NPL is Australia’s biggest pub poker league and for the past few months players around the country have had the opportunity to satellite their way into the main event. Many of them would never otherwise play in an event of this magnitude so already we can expect a few hundred new players to be heading to The Star to try their luck.
Likewise, the inclusion of the APT provides significant leverage across Asia as a whole and the hope will be that many more players make the trek to Australia this week to take part.
The Star has also dropped the buy-in from AU$5,000 last year to AU$2,000 which will open the door for a bigger player pool.
Those factors combined mean The Star is expecting a huge increase in players and although the fact this is the very first running of the event makes it difficult to predict numbers, early suggestions are as high as 800 players. Even the most conservative estimates sit around 600, but a figure of around 700+ seems likely – creating a prize pool of almost AU$1.5 million.
It promises to be an exciting week and we look forward to letting you know how it all goes.
