PokerStars Turbo Series Exceeds All Expectations
The Stars Group, a leading provider of technology-based products and services in the global gaming and interactive entertainment industries, has announced that the recent Poker Stars Turbo Series exceeded its prize pool by nearly $10 million.
For the past six years, online poker players had the chance to participate in the popular Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) in January.
This year, PokerStars decided to rebrand it into Turbo Series and to push it into February since many rival sites hosted MTT series also in January. TCOOP had a great success and being well received among players, the event exceeded its guaranteed prize pool each year. Last year’s Main Event buy-in increased from $700 to $1,000 leading to the largest Main Event winner payout of TCOOP history of $489,076.
The Turbo Series took place from 18 February to 4 March and featured 74 events.
Buy-ins ranged from $11 to $5,200 and players with different bankrolls were able to participate. PokerStars even awarded Spin & Go tickets in the occasional Hot turbos and second chance freerolls for those who started playing and couldn’t cash.
Besides the $15 million in guarantees, three PSPC Platinum Passes were given away. Two of the packages were awarded to both Main Event winners and the third one to the winner of all-in shotout for all Turbo Series players.
A Platinum Pass is worth $30,000 and takes them to the PokerStars Players No Limit Hold’em Championship, a $25,000 buy-in event that will take place in the Bahamas next year in January. The original prize pool of $15 million was exceeded by nearly $10 million, ultimately paying out more than $25 million among the 46,581 unique players who participated in the online poker series.
Other PokerStars online tournaments had similar results.
The FRESH Series also exceeded its $5 million guarantee and awarded over $6 million to the winners. The FRESH Series was the first joint tournament series offered to French and Spanish players since the launch of the shared liquidity pool between the two countries.
The PokerStars Winter Series was also very successful, awarding $38 million instead of $25.4 prize pool guarantee and the 2017 World Championship of Online Poker (WSOOP) paid out even $90 million as compared to its advertised guarantee of $60 million.
With this WSOOP became the second largest ever online poker series, behind the SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) which paid out an industry record in 2017 of $93 million.
