Sunday Majors Feature Reduced Fields, Guarantees

While the loss of USA poker players dealt a serious blow to major poker sites this past weekend, the business of online poker did go on – including the major “Sunday Major” tournaments that highlight the weekly poker schedule. While guaranteed prize pools had to be reduced for these tournaments this week, these events did still bring in plenty of players from around the world – and each one met its new guarantee.

Click Here For Sites Accepting USA Poker Players

For instance, the biggest weekly event at PokerStars is the Sunday Million. The tournament, which features a $200 + $15 buy-in, typically features a prize pool of over $1.5 million. In last week’s edition, help on April 10, the tournament brought in 8,273 entries. That number was cut to “only” 6,475 for April 17, but that was still enough to create a prize pool of nearly $1.3 million.

Meanwhile, Full Tilt Poker saw a similar dip in participation for their Sunday Brawl. This weekend saw 1,703 players participate, a steep – but not disastrous – decline from the 2,676 players who too part in the tournament last weekend. The Sunday Brawl features a buy in of $240 + $16; the first post-shutdown Brawl saw a prize pool of just over $400,000.

As ESPN Poker’s Andrew Feldman pointed out, there was actually one event on FTP that saw an increase in entries after the USA shutdown. That was Event 1 of the latest edition of the FTOPS. Last time the event was run, Feldman reported, the event drew 6,607 entries; this time around, it was up to 6,953. However, it’s worth noting that these numbers may be skewed by the fact that it was a multi-entry tournament, giving players the opportunity to enter several times, thus driving the numbers up somewhat.

The real bellwether may come two weeks from now. While next weekend’s numbers may be difficult to gauge due to Easter, the following Sunday should gave a fair impression of where the Sunday majors truly stand. If numbers hold where they were on this most recent Sunday, it will likely be seen as a success for the sites; further drops would instead be a source of great concern.