May heralds the start of all of the spring tournament series from the online poker operators—so here we take a closer look at who is doing what.
PokerStars
- What? Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP)
- When? May 6 – May 21
- Total Guaranteed? $65 million
- Number of Events? 183
Returning for its 10th Birthday celebration is PokerStars’ Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP). Promising the largest poker tournament series ever hosted online, $65 million will be guaranteed over 183 tournaments.
To make SCOOP even more appealing to players, PokerStars will be running at least one tournament a day offering $1 million in guaranteed prize money.
The $65 million guarantee now means that SCOOP knocks its companion series, WCOOP, off the top spot to claim the title of largest tournament series ever held online. WCOOPs last outing was back in September 2017 when the series guaranteed $60 million making it the biggest tournament series at the time.
As is tradition during SCOOP, each event has low, medium and high buy-ins. This makes sure that players off all abilities are able to join in the fun and play the events. With this in mind there will be three main events playing out on Sunday, May 20. As in previous years, these will have $1 million, $4 million and $5 million guarantees respectively.
Partypoker
- What? Powerfest
- When? May 6 – May 20
- Total Guaranteed? $40 million
- Number of Events? 366
Powerfest from partypoker returns with its biggest guarantee to date, offering $40 million in prize pools to players over the course of the series.
Making Powerfest bigger and better than ever before positions the festival as a top competitor to PokerStars’ SCOOP—that will run over the same dates next month.
Sundays will prove to be the biggest days within the Powerfest schedule. $5.8 million will be guaranteed each Sunday including three Championship events that each have a $1 million guarantee.
Buy-ins range from $1.10 to $25,500, again creating an accessible tournament series that will suit all levels of players. Low, medium, high and high roller events will run during the series with a mix of freeze-out, knockout and re-buy formats.
Players can also qualify for Powerfest events via satellites from just $1.10
888poker
- What? XL Inferno
- When? May 10 – May 20
- Guaranteed? $3 million
- Number of Events? 34
XL Inferno, which forms part of 888poker’s online Championship Series, also returns this month. Almost $3 million in guarantees will be spread over the course of 34 events.
A $1,000,000 main event caps off proceedings.
In the hopes of boosting participation in the series, 888poker is running a variety of side promotions including
one that offers between $1,000 to $1 million in additional prize money to winners of multiple tournaments.
In addition, the Champion of Champions leaderboard promotion will send the top performer of XL Inferno to play in the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas. Second and third place finishers will win packages to the WSOP’s 888-branded Crazy 8s event.
iPoker
- What? iPoker Festival
- When? April 28 – May 7
- Guaranteed? €400,000
- Number of Events? 40
The iPoker Festival made its come back at the end of April, slightly earlier than its competitors. The series features €400,000 guaranteed over 40 events.
The festival has a mix of rebuy, re-entry and multi-entry tournaments with buy-ins ranging from €10 to €200, but broadly the schedule stays very much the same as previous editions.
A promotion running across all iPoker rooms called Perfect Pairs is giving away tickets to the Festival along with cash prizes and promotional coins that can be used as part of the loyalty program.
MPN
- What? Universal Championship of Online Poker or UCOP: Full Throttle
- When? May 6 – May 20
- Guaranteed? €500,000
- Number of Events? 67
This is the first time players will see UCOP on the May schedule, this time round called UCOP: Full Throttle. In past years, UCOP only ran in September.
The series will include four PLO events with the rest being made up of No Limit Hold’em tournaments.
In addition to the €500,000 guarantee, a leaderboard promotion called Pole Position will be running, offering winning players an additional €5,000 in cash prizes along with a once-in-a-lifetime motorsport prize.
