That particular deal now looks dead in the water and low and behold the huge tournament at Wembley Stadium, which nobody at Wembley Stadium actually knew about when we contacted them last year, has been postponed until at least the end of May 2013.
The tournament, which would have cost €600 to enter, would have had scores of satellites filtering into it and the final 30,000 players would have all met up at Wembley Stadium to play out the latter part of the tournament on tablet computers in the stands of the home of English football. Then once these players had been whittled down to around 3,000 the surviving players would have completed the tournament from the pitch of the newly built venue.
Laurent Tapie of the ambitious group spoke to CardPlayer Magazine and revealed the project was being postponed until May 31, 2013 at the earliest but was adamant that the prize pool of the tournament would be around €20 million with a first place prize of around €10 million.
As a fan of poker I would love to see this event take place but one cannot help but look at all the obstacles the organisers would face to host such a massive tournament. To have 30,000 players in the final they would need an online poker platform to host the satellites and their deal to buy Full Tilt Poker looks dead in the water right not. Then you have to consider the fact Wembley Stadium, a sports venue, would need a server or servers installed that could cope with at least 30,000 players. And do not even get started on the weather in the British capital during May!
At the moment it looks like yet another empty promise from the French businessmen but it will be interesting to see what, if any, developments are made in the coming 12 months.