- A look back at online poker giant Winamax’s epic journey and major milestones of 2021.
Winamax Series Sets New Highs with €20 Million Festival (January 2021)
Top line: “French online poker leader Winamax has kicked off the new year with the largest edition of its flagship tournament festival, Winamax Series.”
Key takeaways:
- Its 29th installment shares the record in the European market with PokerStars, which hosted its €20 million Winter Series in 2018-19.
- The buy-in range is wider than in the past, starting at €2 and, for the first time, going up to €2000.
- With just under 200 tournaments on the slate, the average guarantee per tournament exceeds €100,000 for the first time.
Winamax’s King 5 WSOP Las Vegas Promotion Attracts Record Turnout (February 2021)
Top line: “France’s leading regulated online poker room Winamax is currently running its long-established and ultra-popular King 5 promotion.”
Key takeaways:
- French leading regulated online poker room Winamax is currently running its long-established and ultra-popular King 5 promotion.
- King 5 is a team-based competition format where 300 teams share guaranteed prize money of €200,000.
- Winamax has been successfully running this competition since 2008.
- This year, despite the uncertainties around the WSOP taking place this Summer, thousands of players have flocked to qualify.
Winamax Celebrates 300 Million Expresso Tournaments (March 2021)
Top line: “French global operator Winamax is celebrating its 300 millionth Expresso tournament this month with a special promotion.”
Key takeaways:
- On average, three Expressos have been dealt every second, every day over the last year.
- Gold bars are being dropped every 10,000 tables, multiplying players’ prize pools in the run-up to the big milestone.
- The more players play on Expresso tables between Gold bar drops, the higher their multiplier will be.
Winamax’s 30th Series Was By Far the Largest in its History (April 2021)
Top line: “The 30th installment of the French operator’s flagship Winamax Series is in the books. By all accounts, it was a great success.”
Key takeaways:
- With 12 days of play and €21 million guaranteed over 199 tournaments, the series finishes with €28,640,448 in prize money.
- It makes it the operator’s most successful tournament series in its history as never before this prize money has been paid in a single festival.
- It even outdid the Winamax Series that ran at the heights of the COVID lockdown last year.
Hold-Up: Winamax Launches New Cash Drop Promotion at Fast-Fold Tables (April 2021)
Top line: “French and Spanish online poker market leader Winamax has become the latest operator to introduce a “cash drop” feature, distributing random prizes into pots at the cash game tables.”
Key takeaways:
- French online poker market leader Winamax has become the latest operator to introduce the 'cash drop’ feature.
- The new Go Fast Hold-Up went live on Monday, April 26, and is available on selected stakes of the fast-fold variant.
- The new feature has only been enabled for the operator’s fast-fold variant “Go Fast”.
- Winamax is the second major operator in 2021 to launch the feature.
Winamax Revives Expresso x UNO for Second Outing of Popular Mini-Game (August 2021)
Top line: “French online poker giant Winamax has revived its successful Expresso x UNO mini-game at the lottery sit and go tables.”
Key takeaways:
- The second running of the promotion — an official collaboration with Mattel and its family-favorite card-shedding game — got underway on August 2.
- There are a few tweaks to the prize payouts, but the rules remain much the same as in the past.
- It is the fourth branded collab between a global board game company and Winamax for a special LSNG promotion.
Winamax’s Flagship Series Grows Again, Guarantees Now Set at €23 Million (August 2021)
Top line: “Winamax has announced details surrounding the 31st outing of its flagship tournament festival, Winamax Series, which will kick off in early September with a record-breaking €23 million series guarantee.”
Key takeaways:
- The series will kick off in early September, with a record-breaking €23 million in guarantees.
- This will be the third time the series has run in 2021 and the fourth consecutive time that the guarantee has steadily increased.
- “The Winamax September Series will simply be the biggest series in the history of Winamax, with €23 million in guarantee,” Aurélien Guiglini, Winamax Head of Poker, told PRO.
Winamax Approaches Three Billionth Cash Game Hand Milestone, Deals Fastest Billion Hands Since Inception (August 2021)
Top line: “Winamax is about to reach another milestone: it will soon deal its three billionth real money cash game hand.”
Key takeaways:
- To celebrate the occasion, the leading French online poker network is giving away thousands of euros in prize money.
- Players will be rewarded with a jackpot cash prize every 100K and 1 million hands dealt leading up to the final milestone.
- A total of 101 jackpot hands will trigger, with the billionth hand expected to be dealt in mid or early September.
Winamax Makes Tentative First Steps Back Into Live Sphere (September 2021)
Top line: “France and Spain’s online poker market leader Winamax is making a return to the live poker scene, with the sponsorship of the Marca Poker Live event that will take place in Madrid, Spain in November of this year.”
Key takeaways:
- The event is the live companion to the popular daily Marca Poker morning radio show, also sponsored by Winamax.
- Winamax is not the only operator to make tentative first steps back into the live poker sphere in southern Europe.
- The CNP and CEP tours in Spain have resumed.
Winamax’s Official Miniature Online WSOP Series Returns alongside Live Festival (September 2021)
Top line: “With the in-person WSOP festival making a return after over two years, the miniature online version that runs alongside the live series is also making a comeback in partnership with Winamax.”
Key takeaways:
- Winamax’s miniature WSOP online series returns with the arrival of the live WSOP series.
- This will be the fourth edition of Mini WSOP with each event replicating the live schedule.
- A total of 88 events are scheduled with total guarantees of over €2 million.
Winamax Brings Back Monopoly Mini-Game for Third Annual Outing (October 2021)
Top line: “In what appears to be a new annual tradition, Winamax has launched Expresso x MONOPOLY — its officially branded tie-in mini-game at its Expresso lottery sit and Go tables — for the third time.”
Key takeaways:
- The leading French and Spanish online poker operator has a long-standing partnership with Hasbro.
- Players vie for a card representing a square on the classic Monopoly board.
- Prizes vary from tickets to a €25,000 freeroll and VIP points up to cash prizes worth 100 times the buy-in.
Magic-Themed Online Tournament Series Pokus Returns on Winamax With Increased Guarantees (October 2021)
Top line: “Winamax has announced it will be bringing back its other-worldly online tournament series, Pokus, for a second time this October.”
Key takeaways:
- Pokus first made its debut last November with €7 million guaranteed across 141 events.
- The forthcoming series will guarantee €8 million across 157 events over a two-week period, with the action kicking off on Halloween.
- Pokus remains the largest online series run by Winamax outside of the flagship Winamax Series brand.
Winamax Ambassadors Excel at WSOP 2021 Live Series (November 2021)
Top line: “The World Series of Poker has finally wrapped up in Las Vegas, and even operators without a presence in the United States are bathing in the live events afterglow.”
Key takeaways:
- French online poker giant, Winamax, had three of its ambassadors win World Series of Poker gold bracelets.
- All in all, the French operator’s ambassadors made over 350 tournament entries, reached in the money 68 times, and averaged an impressive ROI of 108%.
- Taking home three titles was not the limit of Winamax’s success: Nine more final tables were made by players representing the French operator.
Winamax Celebrates Uno’s 50th Birthday with Third Expresso x Uno Promotion (December 2021)
Top line: “Winamax has launched another round of Expresso x Uno, the promotional mini-game at its lottery sit and go tables that distributes extra prize money to regular Expresso players.”
Key takeaways:
- It is the third such promotion in just four months, with Uno 2 coming last August and Expresso x Monopoly in October.
- The opportunity to play a card only comes during 2x multiplier Expresso games.
- The rules are exactly the same as before, but tables have been rethemed.
Winamax Flagship Series Continues To Break All Records (December 2021)
Top line: “French online poker operator, Winamax, has announced details surrounding the 32nd edition of its flagship Winamax Series which will run in Spanish and French markets.”
Key takeaways:
- French online poker operator Winamax has announced details surrounding the 32nd edition of its flagship Winamax Series which will run in Spanish and French markets.
- It will be the first tournament series from the operator to run in 2022.
- The prize money will also be spread over the biggest slate of events, 211 total are on the schedule — up from 199 events in September when the Series previously ran.
