The popular poker tournament called PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, which won the hearts of thousands of players worldwide, has been discontinued after 16 years of being active. One of the best international live poker stops organized by PokerStars will be no more.
The news comes from a report published on PocketFives, and one of the sentences that really sums up the reason for the discontinuation comes from Marketing Director of PokerStars Eric Hollreiser.
He said in the report that it was no secret that PokerStars Caribbean Adventure had been “losing momentum,” after 15 successful years. Moreover, he added that they had received a lot of criticism regarding the location of the tournament, so they wouldn’t return to the Caribbean in 2020.
How It All Started
PCA began back in 2004. The tournament took place on a cruise ship, and a total of 221 players took part in it. The winner of the inaugural event was Gus Hansen, who managed to get a total of $455,780 with a $7,500 buy-in.
PokerStars Caribbean Adventure found its new home one year after that, settling at Atlantis Resort, which is a big facility that takes up almost half of Paradise Island. The tournament lasted there for years, and it even evolved to become a part of PokerStars’ European Poker Tour, and the buy-in required for it would go up to $10,300. Eventually, it would become one of the few live main events that would require at least $10k for the buy-in.
However, the buy-in was later dropped to $5,300, and the tournament was rebranded. The new name was PokerStars Championship Bahamas, and that was its official name back in 2017.
The biggest prizes in this tournament were back in 2009. That year, a Canadian called Poorya Nazari managed to win the first-place trophy along with a prize of $3 million.
When it comes to the total number of entries, the most players applied for tournaments two years after Nazari won the first prize. In 2010, there were 1,529 entries, and there was a total of 1,560 entries in 2011.
The Main Event was not the only thing that was popular, as a $25K High Roller tournament was also attended by numerous popular poker players.
After that peak attendance in 2011, the numbers started going down. There were not enough satellite tournaments for the players in North America, and the number of entries dropped to 1,071 back in 2012.
In 2015, the number of players dropped approximately 20 percent, as only 816 players applied for the tournament. The official runners decided to lower the buy-in to $5,300, which had a small effect, bumping the numbers for about a hundred.
Nevertheless, the numbers continued to drop over the years, as only 582 entries were recorded in 2018.
The final attempt to revitalize the tournament was this year when the PokerStars Players No-Limit Hold’em Championship was added to the list of events. However, it was only a short-term solution, and it seems that the tournament will be no more.
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