mikelbyl;316487 wroteYeah it ended up being 9 total. Word around the room is that 20 people cancelled last week - and it seems clear now that they would have had to have at least 35 locked-in players - but if they had, it might have grown quickly.
It was a SICK 9 players. JP Piquette, who won, also won the $2.2K last week for over $100K in winnings last week! Timex was there, as were Samuel Chartier and Scott Montgomery. Add to that some local high-stakes cash players and really good local tourney player Arthur W who cashed in last year's WSOP Main event.
I'd like to think this could work next year, but the problem with this size of tournament is always getting enough money into the overall ecosystem. That means satellites galore, and preferably an online tie-in. The problem is that Pokerstars is so dominant that they might be the only reasonable option, and I doubt they'd be interested. I guess Party or 888 could be an alternative, but if players aren't there...
There are other things like the monthly TLB and stuff, but when you dig in to the numbers there isn't really a clear way to add enough seats that way that would create a secondary market for tickets - so it's tough to get to the 30 or so required to open the floodgates that might be operating.
And since Playground is already aligned with Poker JK who is their Marketing as well as for 888 in Canada, Stars most likely won't be an option on that end.
And even though they are all connected via Cookie who is obviously tight with Party, again 888 is most likely the only option.
WPT comes back to Canada or forget 10ks. That's pretty much the scoop. WPT won't likely be coming back to Canada as they would want to satellite online and no casino save Riverock would even entertain that, unless when Ontario does set up with a 3rd party for their online, in which case Fallsview could actually happen.