World Series of Poker Europe Limps In

By most indicators the World Series of Poker Europe 2012 was a bit of a damp squib. Numbers across the seven bracelet events in Cannes were down 30 percent to 1,831 in 2012 from 2,626 last year.

Two championship events attracted less than 100 players with the pot-limit Omaha championship event numbers down by almost 50 percent. The main event saw numbers fall 30 percent to 420.

British and Irish players stayed away in droves as did many French players who chose to travel to Dublin to play in a €550 buy-in shorthanded tournament rather than stay on home soil.

People talk about the WSOP bracelets losing their allure now there are so many of them but this is unlikely — witness Phil Hellmuth’s joy at winning a record 13th bracelet for taking down the main event (see feature in this issue). What’s more probable is that the type and buy-in level of the tournaments was out of touch with what players want in these straitened times.

Coupled with the fact that the ring-fenced French online poker market may be showing signs of fatigue, and the negative taste left in everyone’s mouth by the Partouche Poker Tour guaranteed prize pool debacle, it’s perhaps time for a re-evaluation.

It’s likely the organisers will have learned valuable lessons and equally likely that this is the last year we see the WSOPE in Cannes.

Howard Lederer Live!

Many of you will have watched on with mixed emotions as former Full Tilt Poker boss Howard Lederer recently began to pop his head above the parapet with interviews to the poker media and dip his toes in the shark infested waters of the high-stakes cash games at Bellagio and Aria in Las Vegas.

While his decision to answer questions about his role in and knowledge of the collapse of Full Tilt Poker is a welcome development the sharp-as-tacks poker community was not letting him off the hook that easily.

Anger swelled when it became clear his main line of defence was “I don’t know” and “I didn’t know.”

While Ray Bitar ran the Full Tilt show on a day-to-day basis and is rightly going to face the music in the U.S., Lederer, whose real knowledge of goings on at Full Tilt will probably never be known, is wandering around Las Vegas trying to get back into action and gain succour from the poker community.

Of course everyone is innocent until proven guilty and with the Department of Justice still trying to get its hands on Lederer’s vast wealth, accumulated on the back of Full Tilt, his day in court might yet come. Regardless he faces an uphill PR battle with the poker community and one has to wonder what the reaction would be if he walked into a regular tournament rather than the rarefied and high security world of Las Vegas high roller cash game rooms.

Time will tell if Lederer’s brass neck is longer than the poker community’s memory. ♠