WPT Online Main Event and Rob Yong open letter

Author

Vargoso

Published

7/8/2020

Updated

9/20/2021

WPT World Online Championships and WSOP Online will run almost simultaneously on partypoker and GGNetwork, respectively. Rob Yong announced a change to the World Poker Tour schedule, fulfilling the promise that his site would never clash a Main Event, and right after that he shared an open letter to the tournament players.

Major poker series online: Main Event clash

Competition between the leading poker sites in terms of tournament series in recent years often overlaps their events. GGNetwork has done this several times: late last year, they held the Winter Holiday Series and High Roller Series at the same time as traditional PokerStars events.

In the case of WPT World Online Championships and WSOP Online, both events will cross paths this summer. partypoker announced their series earlier, but the start date was moved up two weeks ahead, then the WSOP Online Schedule was announced.

In the end, both major online events will be played simultaneously: the start is from July 17-19, and the end is from September 6-8, 2020.

But, the Main Events of WPT Online and WSOP Online will not be held at the same time. This is thanks to Rob Yong, who stated that he promised World Series of Poker organizers that even if they went with a competitor, his site would never clash a main event.

Rob Yong WPT ME

After viewing GGNetwork's WSOP Online schedule, Rob Yong decided to postpone the WPT Main Event to September 5-6.

Recall that World Series of Poker Online Main Events will be held from August 30 and run for three days, and WPT ME was initially scheduled for August 29 – September 2.

With this move, partypoker should get at least a thousand entries (the event has only one re-entry), so transferring to a later date is a logical decision and proper insurance against possible overlays.

Rob Yong has appealed to all tournament players

Rob Yong has been very active on Twitter fighting what he considers to be erratic actions taken by online poker rooms to inflate guaranteed prize pools. In May, he called the biggest poker sites to limit re-entries, but no response was received to his proposal.

Now, he "attacked" again with an open letter appealing to all players to defend the industry:

Rob Yong vs. Reentries

What is wrong with modern MTTs?

More day 1 / phases / flights;
Increasing the number of re-entries;
Increased late registration period;
Added additional blind levels.

At the same time, poker rooms are fighting for bigger guarantees, but in the end, amateurs are the ones who most suffer, because they lose their bankroll faster, and MTTs get much longer.

According to Rob, this will lead to a major crisis in long-term online poker.

What does Rob Yong propose?

No more than two starting days;
Limit re-entries to 1;
Entering a tournament at the end of the late registration period must give a stack of at least 30bb.

Yong said partypoker is ready to implement all of these changes, but he needs the player support to push other sites to make the right choices instead of keeping chasing bigger prizes for marketing purposes.

In general, the British businessman didn't write anything new, but for the first time, he appealed directly to the players, after no receiving direct responses from the poker sites. However, it's difficult to expect a significant impact on the industry from a tweet with only a few interactions.

Therefore, the WPT World Online Championships will show us how much players like Rob Yong's ideas.

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