Defending Colossus: 2015 Champ Cord Garcia Feeling Good, But Anti-Sweating Field Size

There was at least one player in the field of the first of six starting flights for the 2016 World Series of Poker’s $565 Colossus II on Thursday that was secretly hoping the event would not break the field size record it set last year.

However, Cord Garcia, who won the inaugural Colossus at the 2015 WSOP for $638,880, outlasting a record 22,374 entries, really can see it from two different perspectives.

“Yes, I’m anti-sweating the player field,” he told PokerNews with a smile. “For the good of the game, I would rather see it grow and get bigger, but for my own selfish reasons, I really would rather keep the record (for winning the biggest live poker tournament in history) for as long as I can.”

A number of changes were made to the structure of the event heading into its second year, and Garcia seems to think they were all good ideas.

“The only thing people really complained about last year was that there wasn’t $1 million for first and they’ve changed that,” he said. “They’re playing so deep into the money on Day 1 now and I like that they’ve changed that format. I think it’s a lot better for the tournament. Adding two more flights is obviously good for us, too.”

The structure is certainly faster out of the gate than the 2015 edition, but Garcia says even that is more player friendly than it might appear.

“Either you want to build a big stack early or start another tournament, so that’s probably better for us, too,” he said. “I like that it slows down later in the tournament when there’s less people. All of this is good for us.”

Few players can even conceive of the idea of winning a …

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