GGPoker Adds Weekly Leaderboard for New Battle Royale SNG Format

GGPoker has taken yet another step to diversify its game offering with the launch of the new Battle Royale: A blend of various classic online poker formats to create a unique game type where 100 players battle through three stages to find who is the last one standing.

To promote the new game, right out of the gates the new and innovative variant features a weekly leaderboard in which more than $15,000 in prizes will be awarded.

To participate, new and existing players just need to play Battle Royale games—you earn a point every tournament you play, whether you win or lose. There are also special evening Happy Hours to earn 1.5x points.

There are four leaderboards—one for each buy-in—and the top grinders each week will win a cash prize.

The additional weekly leaderboard further bolsters the line-up of available leaderboards with cash prizes for active players which cover practically all of GG’s game types. However, notably, all other currently active leaderboards run daily, where’s the Battle Royale is weekly for now.

These additional rewards for high-volume grinders have likely played a pivotal role to vault GG into an undisputed second place in global cash game traffic and they may even threaten the top spot of PokerStars. The unique new game format will likely further propel the operator onwards and upwards.

First Impressions of the new SNG Format

Players can register for the four different stakes in the main lobby of Battle Royale via a flashy red button. The new SNG variant doesn’t feature a blind lobby—the upcoming four games for each buy-in are listed, and all registered players can be seen.

Registered SNG show at the very top and provide the option to unregister; ongoing and previously completed games are listed at the bottom.

It does not take long at all for the 100 entry cap to fill up: These games are firing off very quickly right now. Moments later, the first “rush” stage already kicks off. The 15-minute time limit is often not reached: players in the top 50 are often determined well ahead of that deadline. As the field reduces one by one, the top right corner shows a “kill feed” of all eliminations in Fortnite-style during the fast-paced three-minute levels.

Likewise, the same level duration continued in the Shootout Stage and leads to quickfire action. If more players were eliminated during the final hand of the first stage, some Shootout tables may also commence with fewer than five contenders.

The finalists were able to pick their seats in order of how quickly they locked up the seat for the final table, from slowest to fastest. That’s when things got quite tense, as each level features just three hands each. With sizeable bounties up for grabs in the final stage, this may lead to push or fold sooner rather than later.

When the new SNG format went live, players only had 25 big blinds for the first stage—that has since been increased to 50 big blinds. However, the action on the ten-handed final table remains quite shallow with an average of fewer than 20 big blinds.

Weekly Leaderboards with $15,000 in prizes

Battle Royale went live on Thusday, June 10 and immediately featured a weekly leaderboard. So far, all players earn 1 point for each game they participate in and can unlock extra prizes.

With the daily reset at UTC-8 on Thursday mornings, the weekly leaderboards will conclude as well. GG’s daily happy hours two hours prior to the same reset will credit 1.5x points throughout the entire competition.

On the official GG Discord channel, a representative of the operator already confirmed that they are exploring new ideas for the scoring system. Among others, the number of knockouts (kills) is being considered.

More than $15,000 in prizes will be awarded across the four available stakes. The lowest $0.25 tier will pay up to 200 spots whereas the $10 tier pays a maximum of 50 spots. All standings can be tracked in real time by clicking the Battle Royale promotional banner in the software client.

As far as the bounty portion is concerned, only for the $0.25 tier is it 50%. For all higher buy-ins, the PKO portion of the prize pool is slightly higher than the cash prize since the 5% fee is deducted from the total buy-in. The rake percentage is lower than the 7% GG charges for the Spin & Gold jackpot SNG, which features daily leaderboards.

In fact, all currently offered cash game variants except for the high stakes VIP Games offer daily leaderboards with cash prizes up for grabs. The line-up is certainly the most comprehensive among all major online poker sites.

Meanwhile, the operator has continued the drive for innovation and introduced several new game types in the current year. Its prior hit was Flip & Gos, introduced by GG earlier in 2021. Notably, these did not feature a leaderboard when it launched; however, that changed a few weeks later when first adjustments were made.

Just recently, the operator removed the Daily 100 hands bonus from its All-in or Fold game type. Instead, a daily leaderboard was introduced with more than $50,000 in prizes spread across the Hold’em and Omaha tables.

With the introduction of the weekly Battle Royale leaderboards on launch day, it increases the number of available individual leaderboards to more than 70 in total. They commence each Thursday and run for seven days in total. More than $15k in cash prizes are awarded across the four available stakes.

Current Leaderboards on GGPoker