The Onyx Cup: Full Tilt's New Highroller Tour

Wicked Chops broke the basics of this story in a post last Friday, and today, Full Tilt Poker released a 9-minute video (which you can watch here) announcing a new highroller poker tour called the Onyx Cup.

Lance Bradley summarized the news in an article on BluffMagazine.com:

On Monday Full Tilt Poker announced the creation of the Onyx Cup Series, a series of six tournaments with buy-ins from $100,000 to $300,000. The first five events will be preliminary events with the sixth event being the $250,000 buy-in Grand Finale.

The events are open to any players wishing to play who can afford the six-figure buy-in and all tournaments will be No Limit Hold’em. The top three finishers in each event will be awarded Onyx Cup leaderboard points and the player with the most points after the Grand Finale will be awarded the Onyx Cup and a luxury sports car.

The video press release from Full Tilt is somewhat surreal. After a 2-minute introduction from Ali Nejad about the basics of the Onyx Cup, the format changes to that of a talk show with Nejad asking questions of five Team Full Tilt players (Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Gus Hansen, Erik Seidel, and Tom Dwan). The players take turns complimenting each other and talking about what a great idea this is, but their body language tells me that they're bored. Or maybe I was just bored watching them. 

Point 1: Full Tilt needs a quality spokesperson

While the basic concept sounds exciting on paper (the best of the best competing at the highest possible stakes!), the only energy in their discussion of it came from Ali Nejad, and even he was low-key by his standards. (Nejad, one of the best announcers in poker, could probably power the light on top of the Luxor Casino by the sheer force of his personality.)

While Full Tilt has always distinguished themselves in the poker world by their very slick (and very effective) marketing, they are definitely lacking for a quality spokesperson like Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke, or Phil Hellmuth. As you watch the video, imagine how much more engaging it would be if Phil Hellmuth were talking about this new tour. Team Full Tilt doesn't have anyone like that, and this video announcement suffers because of it. Sure, Mike Matusow can be high energy, but not in the predictable, polished way that you need for something like this. (I'm starting to think that could be reason enough for Full Tilt to start drafting a hefty offer for Hellmuth's agent.)

Point 2: Will PokerStars players enter?

The first tournament is scheduled to be in Las Vegas on May 11-12, and the fact that it's a two-day tournament should give you some idea of the expected field size. (Small.) On the calendar, it falls a couple days before the $25,000 WPT World Championship, also in Las Vegas, and that's certainly no coincidence as they hope to attract some of the same players. However, the Onyx Cup does overlap the final days of the EPT Grand Finale in Madrid, Spain, creating a potential conflict for PokerStars players. 

Which leads to an obvious question -- with the increasing rivalries between the online sites, will PokerStars allow their players to enter events that are so heavily branded with Full Tilt? And if they don't, how much credibility will a tour have if it's the same 15-20 players pushing each other's money back-and-forth?

Point 3: Yes, I know you'll be taping it, but will anyone broadcast it on TV?

According to the video, the Onyx Cup "will be broadcast in more than 20 languages and 40 countries." While that sounds great, they offer no details. If anyone ever creates a rulebook for reading poker press releases (BJ's Pocket Guide to Poker Press Releases), Rule #1 will state that nothing is a TV show until there is a distribution deal in place with a TV network. Of course, Full Tilt could always fall back on time-buys, paying networks to broadcast the episodes as if they were 60-minute commercials. 

And, based on the info we've seen so far, that's ultimately what these are -- commercials. The Onyx Cup was, not surprisingly, designed for Full Tilt's players more than anyone else, giving them a relatively easy opportunity to rack up millions in additional earnings over the next few years to dominate the top of the all-time money lists. 

Thankfully, the best live tournament trackers in the business over at the Hendon Mob database have updated their all-time money list to restrict the results to open events with buy-ins of $50,000 or less. And Bluff Magazine recently changed their Player of the Year points system to downplay the impact of ultra highroller events.

I have little reason to doubt that the first event will take place in May as scheduled, and that Full Tilt players like Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, etc. will enter. The big question is who else will enter, and will the field sizes be large enough to make these events feel different than those single-table site-specific invitationals that filled the airwaves in 2006 before the UIGEA hit.