World Poker Tour faces unique payout dilemma
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What do you do when you guarantee a million dollar first place prize for a tournament, but the entire prize pool for the tournament ends up being just about a million dollars?
That’s the tough situation recently faced by Tournament Director Jack McClelland at the World Poker Tour Turks & Caicos event. Further complicating the situation is that the World Poker Tour doesn’t allow deals to be made in tournaments.
The resolution, described by BJ Nemeth in his WPT blog:
Tournament Director Jack McClelland felt that the best solution was to have the players vote on the prize structure — did they want to keep the million dollars for first place, or spread the wealth a bit? McClelland offered separate prize structures based on paying the top 9 or 10 places, the top 6, or keeping it as winner-take-all.
In the first round of voting, just 16 out of 99 votes were cast to keep the winner-take-all format. The majority voted for either paying nine or six places, so a runoff was held between those two options. In the second round of voting, 72% of the players chose to pay the top nine places. Here is the agreed-upon official prize structure:
1st: $436,675
2nd: $225,000
3rd: $125,000
4th: $70,000
5th: $50,000
6th: $30,000
7th: $25,000
8th: $20,000
9th: $15,000
Mark Seif leads the tournament after Day 1.
