The PCA Worldwide Pilgrimage
As you probably know, the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure is going on in the Bahamas, on the edge of Nassau. (I’m not yet following hand action on PokerStarsBlog or PokerNews for live reporting … just getting daily recaps from Tao of Poker.) In the two years since PokerStars has taken over this 7-year-old event at Atlantis, it clearly has become one of the big-big events in poker. Back in 2004, January poker was all about Tunica. Now, it’s kinda a joke around Vegas as to who’s not in the Bahamas. (Even Full Tilt and UB pros go.)
Anyhow, for a glimpse at how this non-European-EPT-event-turned-flagship-tourney of the new NAPT is catching on worldwide … here’s the breakdown of nationalities for the main event field (which currently has 405 of 1529 remaining):
Country Players
USA 739
Canada 164
Germany 100
Netherlands 60
UK 56
France 44
Brazil 37
Spain 27
Sweden 27
Argentina 21
Italy 21
Norway 18
Russia 17
Denmark 17
Hungary 15
Belgium 12
Finland 11
Mexico 9
Portugal 9
Romania 9
Australia 8
Austria 8
Switzerland 8
Ireland 6
Poland 5
Slovakia 5
Costa Rica 4
Estonia 4
Greece 4
New Zealand 4
Panama 4
Peru 4
Uruguay 4
Venezuela 4
Czech Republic 3
Israel 3
Lebanon 3
Bulgaria 2
Iceland 2
Malta 1
Ukraine 2
Virgin Islands (U.S.) 2
Belarus 1
Belize 1
Bermuda 1
Chile 1
Croatia 1
Egypt 1
India 1
Korea 1
Latvia 1
Lithuania 3
Monaco 2
Puerto Rico 2
Slovenia 2
Turkey 1
Turks and Caicos Islands 1
unknown 6
1529
BJ Nemeth says:
January 7th, 2010 at 5:53pm
On today’s episode of “The Poker Beat,” I claimed that the PokerStars events (like the European Poker Tour) tend to be regional, with a lot of locals and fewer traveling pros.
I’m not sure if I said this or not, but the PCA in the Bahamas is the clear exception to this rule. Less than half of the field came from the USA!
I didn’t mention this on the show, but I think the PCA will continue to be the largest live event in the PokerStars lineup for at least the next several years. It would be much more difficult to build up a new event than it would be to focus on continuing to grow the smash hit that is the PCA.
BJ Nemeth says:
January 7th, 2010 at 6:03pm
FYI, PokerStars has been behind the PCA since the inaugural event in 2004. The “two years ago” that you mention in this post is 2008, when the event switched from being a WPT event to being an EPT event.
Keep in mind that the WPT is more hands off with their tournaments, as they really only come in to tape the final tables. The WPT tournaments are actually run by the member casinos. (That differs from the EPT, where the EPT handles everything with much more consistency between tournaments.) So even when it was a WPT event, it was still being operated and managed by PokerStars. (The same relationship existed with UltimateBet and the Aruba Poker Classic.)
The 2004 tournament was actually held on a cruise ship that visited several countries around the Caribbean, and 2005 was the first year it was held at the Atlantis Casino in the Bahamas. (Where it has been ever since.)
To summarize: PokerStars has been behind the PCA for all seven years of its history.