888poker’s ChampionChip Games Smashes Guarantees

While most online poker series are aimed at the higher end of the bankroll range, 888poker’s recent ChampionChip Games bucks that trend. With a median buy-in of $11, the series was aimed at the lower end of the range, and it awarded nearly 10% more in prizes than promised.

With over 30 games attached to the ChampionChip Games, including 25 numbered events, the series had a guarantee of just over $500k before it began. While it only made its guarantee in slightly less than half the games, it still collected more money than initially promised, even with the overlays calculated.

There was just under $20k in overlays across the week-long series, but for games where the guarantee was met, more than $40k extra was collected. In addition, more than $50k in fees was collected, no doubt softening the blow of the overlays considerably for the operator.

When the dust settled, just under $550,000 was awarded to players across the series. With the overlay removed, the series collected just over $525k in total prize-pool money, which was still significantly higher than the original guarantee on the Games.

The Final Tally from the ChampionChip Games

The week-long ChampionChip Games is now complete, and 888poker will undoubtedly see it as a success. While the operator had to pay some overlay for slightly more than half the games, the full overlay was less than half the value of the fees collected in the series.

There were over 31,000 entries across the 31 events, meaning there were slightly over 1,000 entries per game on average. There were nearly 25,000 unique entries included in that number, so the format clearly appealed to many players.

Players from Brazil dominated the series this time, winning a third of the events and taking home 10 ChampionChip titles. One of these players was 'BritoPoker22’, who became the first two-time winner, taking down the $5 Made to Amaze event first, and then $22 Marathon Deepstack a few days later.

2022 ChampionChip Games Final Summary

Standout Events

It will come as little surprise that the Biggest Prize Pool Award for this series went to the Main Event. With a $200,000 guarantee, it accounted for around 40% of the original guarantees, so it was always destined to be the showstopper event with $212,850 in total prizes.

The first-place prize of $26,202 went to a player from the UK, who mastered quite a comeback after starting the final table as the second-shortest stack. The runner-up took home $18,709.

That was only about 6% over the original guarantee. Several other events did significantly better than that in terms of guarantee percentage Event #10 – Shooting (PKO 8-Max) ended up beating its guarantee of $10,000 by nearly 50%, thanks to 991 entries. In comparison, Event #4 and Event #25 put over 35% extra into the prize pool.

Ten games ended up with over 1,000 total entries, with the Main Event again topping that list with a whopping 3,870 entries, including 3,386 unique players. That was far and away the most extensive field and the only attendance to top 2,000. However, both Made to Amaze events and the Micro Main Event attracted well over 1,500 entries.

With prize pools almost 10% above their guarantees and attendance of more than 31k entries, the ChampionChip Games was a success, showing the strong demand for tournament series prices in a more affordable range.

2022 ChampionChip Games Full Results