Is Tournament Poker Reaching Meltdown?

Years ago, we had the World Series of Poker as the one and only main focal point of the poker calendar. Every year in Las Vegas, the best poker players on the planet gathered to play a number of events that totalled no more than about twenty. That number has steadily grown but then again so has the number of poker tournaments and also the number of poker tours.

We have the World Poker Tour, The Asian Poker Tour, The European Poker Tour, then we have smaller tours like the GUKPT and Gala Poker Tour that have been popular within the United Kingdom recently. With the number of high profile events now reaching fever pitch, the question has to be asked if we are not in danger of reaching a meltdown with regards to how many tournaments that there are on the poker calendar.

Years ago, it was possible to be able to remember all of the major poker tournament winners. This is clearly not the case now and the World Series of Poker now has more than fifty bracelet events all by itself. It is very difficult to remember even one quarter of the bracelet winners from this years series.

The question is “how much further can this go”, just how many high profile poker tournaments can the poker economy sustain? A few years ago, some players managed to attain some very big sponsorship deals on the back of winning high profile events. These days there are so many tournament winners that getting any kind of sponsorship deal is difficult.

Even the $10,000 main event at the WSOP is now no longer the real main event as that has been surpassed by huge $40k and $50k events in recent years. Only the very best play these huge buy-in events and they have almost become the new “main event”. It is difficult to see where tournament poker is going to end up but there is always a fine balance that needs to be achieved with anything and tournament poker is no different. I really hope that we don’t push the boat out too far and spoil what we have.