APPT/ANZPT Sydney numbers declining

[GMan]

Has anyone noticed the drastic decline in numbers of these two events. Even the prelims, apart for the opening event, have fallen way short. Saturday's event should have attracted over 200 yet it struggled to get 150. I'd be very surprised if they eclipse last years total of 446
Last years APPT ME attracted only 289 with the year before 396

Also, is there any live reporting on this ME?

Your thoughts....

[steve_farha]

PokerStars Blog - News and Live Poker Tournament Coveragehas updates.

I think there was talk that the numbers were down once they took away the guaranteed $1M first place. Obviously there are people in the know that would have more of an idea than me though

[SwoopAE]

Its nothing to do with that and everything to do with there being less money on the aus live poker scene with some pros calling it a day and others simply not attending the full anzpt schedule as travelling costs are prohibitively expensive almost with the low buyin events if you're playing for profit especially if you miss out on a few days of grinding online as well

Crown live event numbers are down too thats just the way the industry is going atm

Also a lot of live event series have awful, awful structures so the online grinders (me, etc) only go to a few of them rather than all of them as we did in the past

[grunter]

Numbers of runners for poker tournaments in Australasia are down across the board, in every casino.

The simple fact is that the market is so saturated now.

Only a few years ago the only majors were Aussie Millions, Melbourne Champs, Vic Champs, PNews Cup, APPT and perhaps one or two state championships.

We now have SA and WA running two major (non Stars affiliated)championships, we have 8 ANZPT's, 3 Macau Millions events a year, 2 or 3 JHDS series per year, a Sydney Championships, a FTP NPL500, Queensland about to have their own State championships, as well as ridiculously large online series in SCOOP, WCOOP and FTOPS x 4.

Poker players now pick and choose a little more as most players can't afford to attend every stop on the tour. Less Victorian/SA/QLD/WA guys travel up to Sydney as they have their own championships and don't need to travel to get their 5 times a year fix anymore and vice versa.

I think it is remarkable that the Sydney ANZPT will still go close to 400 runners to be honest all things considered.

[thret]

Well, taking Grant's theory at face value, anyone have the time/resources to actually calculate how much is spent in live MTTs each year in Australia? That's the only real way to see if it is declining or not.

I'd guess it's increasing at Crown, every year since 2005.

[Starcitybust]

It seems like twenty years ago we were all lining up at the downstairs poker desk at 9am to get seated at 10 am, or be stuck waiting up to five hours for a table. This was only twomyears ago, right when star city went upstairs, real poker in Sydney died.....suddenly. There use to be big cash games on there, same people every day, completely packed out....only about five, maybe ten of those daily grinders playing the bigger limits are still there, that place went to the dogs.
Poker downstairs was brilliant, atmosphere, something to look at when card dead, now it a shitty room that's either too hot or too cold, with pathetic table management.
Everyone use to complain when poker was downstairs, but Jesus Christ I miss it now, we didn't know how good we had it. I would go back to eating outside the rail anyday to have poker back downstairs. Downstairs you could make money, you could turn $200 into $2000, now we sit upstairs with the exact same faces in the exact same seats, everyone knows everyones time schedule and we all just loan each money for a few days and then pay it back and make bugger all money.
We use to have to wait hours to be able to sit at a table, now the table waits hours to get a single name on the list.

You know, after writing this post, I'm feeling pissed off now...Fuck you star city! You guys fucked a game that was starting to take off in Australia. Myself included, I use to play daily, now I sit at a cash game one or twice a month cause the idea of going up to that shitty poker room makes me wish I had a vag-ina so I could just sit at home and play with myself all day.

Anyway, if anyone wants to get a really fkn good summer of poker going, I have full availability to a 96 foot multi million dollar boat with rooms galore on any given day other than those special days for free, special days cost tens of thousands to hire out, it costs a hundred k just to fill up with gas, but sitting out in the harbor playing some top notch poker would be class, we also have 60 plus foot boats for days of interest. Apparently the law is if the person runnIg the game takes a rake, it is illegal, but if not then it is legal?

Anyway, someone with good organization skills wants to get in touch, lets make it happen $200 a head to sit down on boat $5 / $10 blinds, the $200 pays for catering, minimum of 20 people.... With a smaller boat to ferry in and out...here's the thing, the guy who runs the boats, doesn't believe their would be interest hence why he ain't doing iT yet, but I beg to differ....anyone keen?
Surely if we got it going we could get some decent stakes of poker being played, without sitting in a shitty room where we cant use our phones to run our companies.