by Mario Alfonsi | Published on Jun 16, 2012 | Updated on Jun 16, 2012When it comes to the International Stadiums Poker Tour, there’s really only one thing that everyone can agree on: it’s certainly ambitious. But depending on who you ask, the planned tournament is either going to be the grandest spectacle in the history of poker, or a flop even bigger than the Epic Poker League.This week, the ISPT released details on their first planned event: a massive poker tournament that would take place at London’s Wembley Stadium next year. The tournament is scheduled to begin on May 31, and would finish up on June 6. It’s not just the venue that makes this tournament so ambitious: the tournament is planned to attract a field of approximately 30,000 players, and is being billed as having a prize pool of €20 million.As details of the planned event first appeared, skepticism ran high among the poker community. That only intensified after the ISPT initially announced that they would be hosting their first tournament in autumn 2012, only to cancel that date and push the event back to 2013.To be certain, the ISPT has some big names backing it. The founders of the group include Bernard Tapie and Laurent Tapie, names that should be familiar to anyone who followed the ongoing Full Tilt Poker saga.Should the tournament go off as planned, it will certainly be a sight to behold. An expected 30,000 people will convene at Wembley Stadium for the first day of the tournament. While everyone will be in the same building, logistics will require that the first segment of the tournament will be played through an online poker interface. Buying into the tournament will cost €600, with additional €600 rebuys available throughout the first day.Players will also have the option of buying into the second day of the tournament for €6,000, for which they’ll receive whatever the average chip stack is at that point. After the field thins to around 3,000 players, the rest of the tournament will play out live on the field, with a projected 2,400 players cashing in the event.Whether the ISPT goes as planned or flops, it’ll likely be one of the biggest poker stories of the next year. The current plan is for the ISPT to host one event each year, perhaps rotating between different major stadiums.
