GPInterview: Neil Johnson Part 2 | EPT10 Q+A

In the second part of our GPInterview featuring PokerStars Live Poker Manager Neil Johnson, we discuss Season 10 on the European Poker Tour:

A NEW SEASON

Neil, you must feel like a child on Christmas Day. The start of Season 10 on the European Poker Tour is upon us, how excited are you to get things going?

Barcelona is going to be amazing this year. I think everyone was caught be surprise last year. Everyone was a little nervous combining the events with National Tours (Estrellas Poker Tour in Barcelona) because it’s hard to ask people to go somewhere for two weeks – being in a hotel, being away from their families, being away from their jobs.

But we came out of Barcelona with both the EPT Main and Estrellas Main getting over 1,000 players – we underestimated so poorly that we ended up cancelling six events and needed to cap off other events because the response was so overwhelming, which in a way is a good problem to have! The acceptance and the way players took off for the rest of Season 9 was great.

Satellite and direct buy-ins for the EPT Main Event are already at over 400 and the Estrellas is already at over 500, which is just insane – normally our satellite numbers end up being about 30% of the field. If that’s the case for Estrellas that’s terrifying because I don’t have any room for 1,500 players!

Barcelona will see the return of the Super High Roller event, which was a great success last year, plus, a 50K buy-in event is scheduled for EPT London, should we assume there would be a 50K buy-in event at each Season 10 tour stop?

No, the 50K is kind of unique. The Super High Roller started out as something that we worked out with our TV department. This was going to be a really nice addition to the EPT Television schedule, we already had the Main Events and at the PCA we were filming the 25K High Roller, in Monaco as well.

The 100K’s were just starting off at that point and time, I believe the Aussie Millions were the only ones to run one and Full Tilt Poker at the time was in discussion over the Onyx Cup.

Stars took a long time to look at it; at the time it wasn’t really what our brand was known for. If you think back to 2009, ’10 and ’11, Stars was the game for everyone and Tilt was the nosebleeds. It’s kind of why the Onyx Cup worked for them.

We had tons of communication with everyone for “what do they want” and “what do they expect” and is it feasible? Overall, one of the responsibilities of tournament organizers – same as online poker rooms – is to be aware of the liquidity of the market, eventually, do we suck all the money out?

London is a no-brainer, we had a 20K High Roller until Season 9. It’s very much an international destination for everybody. TV will film for London as well.

It kind of bookends the season in a unique way in that we open with the 50Ks in Barcelona and London, we do the 100K USD at the PCA and then we move into Monaco which is 100K.

TAKE THE DAY OFF

Late registration has changed to the start of Day 2 for some of your key events, can you discuss why that change was made? 

We’ve had a lot of discussion amongst the players. We were probably the most resistant out of all the tour operators to get into late registration.

The players’ argument has always been it doesn’t really cost you anything except keeping your registration people there, what do you care if someone buys in for 30bbs on Day 2. The concern from our tournament directors and myself is that most of us kind of disagree with that comment. This is a sporting event and all players are supposed to be playing against each other, shouldn’t the field be equal?

Yes, they sit down at a tremendous disadvantage of only having 30bbs or so but you know what, they didn’t need to fade the KK v. QQ hand that cost them their tournament life in Level 2. There are a lot of levels of tournament that they didn’t have to fade that are full of landmines and pitfalls.

I understand why players want it, everyone wants a bigger field and I know a lot of players who dislike playing 25/50 with a 20K stack and I get that. For the High Roller and the Super High Roller we were fine with it because that’s a totally different animal.

The only real complaint that we’ve had over the last two years on the EPT was from players saying we don’t extend the late registration long enough.

I laughed when you announced a new tournament “for the people” for EPT London, talk to me about the “Prince George Mega Stack”.

I threw out six names for that and I threw in that one at the end thinking no one would ever go for that but they did. There are so many local players in London that aren’t necessarily able to pony up 1K.

It’s decently structured, it’s not a turbo, but blinds go up every 20 minutes, players start with 25K chips and so they’re going to get a ton of chips to play. To me that’s brilliant for London players.

You recently blogged about the TDA’s recent decision to officially institute the “First Card off the Deck rule” and there was a lot of discussion about it during the WSOP and some players have spoken up against the rule at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open currently underway in Florida – why did the EPT adopt this rule a few years ago and what sort of growing pains did the tour go through with the addition of this rule?

It was an idea suggested by Toby Stone. We hashed it out for an hour or so and decided from an integrity standpoint, we believe that this was a good way to go. We started at the start of EPT8, we had difficulties in Barcelona and we acknowledged this. We got to London and I think we only had one issue and didn’t have any from then on.

What we’re charged with is protecting the overall integrity of the game. I know that over the course of last two years I’ve seen three players eliminated because the other player at that table knew their holding and used that knowledge to eliminate them.

This is only a situation where you walk by and see my A10 and you sit down to AJ, we don’t know about the situation where you sit down and you see my A2 of clubs and you have KQ of clubs, you see me fold my A2 and the flop comes with three clubs, you know you’re rolling with the nuts and you might end up busting somebody else.

This is overall better for the game.

PART 1 | GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Season 10 on the European Poker Tour opens this week in Barcelona where Neil and all of the PokerStars crew will be working hard – we wish Neil and the team a successful 2013-14 campaign!