"The tournament sucks," said outspoken East Coast grinder Will "The Thrill" Failla. "The structure sucks (and) the tournament's bad. Even the satellites haven't been as good as they normally would be."

"People don't like Foxwoods," said Amnon Filippi. "It's in the middle of nowhere and the staff are semi-par."

Only 259 players made the trip to Connecticut for this year's event, down substantially from the 344 unlucky souls beaten by Erik Seidel in WPT Season 6.

One big problem the Classic faces this year is scheduling. The tournament finds itself in the middle of a busy period for poker.

"I think the key reason for the lower numbers is the timing," said Daniel Negreanu. "Bellagio is running prelims [for this month's WPT Championship] already, but more importantly, a huge base of players that would normally travel are instead playing [the PokerStars] SCOOP series since they have high buy-ins and such variety."

Mike Matusow, who final-tabled this event in 2008, agreed.

"This is a bigger turnout than I expected," he said. "There's like 300,000 people playing SCOOP and Bellagio is going on at the same time. I was begging for 250 people to show up here."

"The Bellagio $25k is coming up and so is the WSOP," said Filippi. "People are saving their money and looking for better opportunities."

The timing, certainly, could be better. But reports from the ground suggest it's more than just a scheduling concern.

"The floor people don't know what's going on," said Failla. "As a for instance, they say you can't talk in the hand when it says right there in their rules you can. My whole game is talking in the hand. The floor people aren't educated about the rules.

"They just don't make it player friendly. They skip levels in the structure. So what if you get ($30,000) chips if the structure's bad? They should just download the Borgata structure and copy it.

"Really, though, nobody runs a tournament like Matt Savage."

Negreanu, meanwhile, took issue with the casino's tax policy after taking 35th for $21,320 in last November's World Poker Finals.

"They changed their tax policy for Canadian citizens so they are withholding taxes totally unnecessarily and that upset me last time I was there," he said. "It's absurd."

Negreanu vowed never to return to Foxwoods and didn't return for the Classic. But ever the diplomat, he argued the tournament's relative lack of popularity was due to more practical concerns.

"Foxwoods is a bit tougher to get to, travel-wise, with no airport close by. Also, the 'vibe' for the younger players may be a bit more tame."

Whatever the reason, at least one East Coast pro simply cannot fathom why nobody would want to play in the Woods.

"I don't know why they wouldn't show," said New York's Joe "Bobo" Cappello. "The players are so ****ing bad.  If you miss this tournament, you should kill yourself."

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