Online poker room partypoker has revealed the dates and total guarantees for its upcoming three major tournament series set to run in the first three months of 2019.
The first of the trio series will be the return of operator’s Knockout Series set to run in February. It is expected to be followed up with operator’s low-stakes series—Monster Series with a modest $2.5 million in guaranteed prize pools. In March, the operator’s flagship series, Powerfest will return in a new slot with $20 million in guaranteed prize pool.
$15 Million Guaranteed KO Series
Originally announced to run in late January, partypoker has rescheduled its Knockout Series, moving it to February 3 through February 17 with reduced guarantees. It now guarantees $15 million, down from the originally announced $20 million.
While the details and buy-ins have yet to be announced, all the tournaments (as the name suggests) will be played in the very popular progressive knockout (PKO) style. In PKOs, each player in the tournament starts with a bounty, and when they are knocked out, a percentage of that bounty (typically 50%) is given to the player that knocked him/her out and the remaining percentage is added to the bounty of the player that knocked them out. There will be no rake on bounties as the operator axed the rake in May.
PKO tournaments have increased in popularity significantly over the last few years. In this exciting format, half of the buy-in goes into the prize pool and the other half as a bounty on each player’s head. Thus as the game progresses, bounties can grow quite large, adding a significant extra layer of tension and excitement to the final tables.
This would not be the first time partypoker has scheduled a series wholly dedicated to the Knockout format. In 2018, it ran KO Series three times with each boasting $10 million guaranteed.
The previous edition of KO Series ran in November. The series paid out $11.4 million across 244 tournaments over a period of eight days. Buy-ins across five-different levels ranged from $1.10 to as high as $1050. A similar kind of schedule but with bigger guarantees and more tournaments can be expected in the January edition.
KO Series for the dot-com player pool will run from February 3 through February 17.
Monster Series for Low Stakes Players
Following the KO Series, partypoker is expected to follow it up with a tournament series dubbed Monster Series, focussed mainly on low-stakes players. Originally partypoker had planned to run it starting February 24 with $3 million in guarantees. After announcing the dates, the operator rescheduled it in late January with $2.5 million guarantees. Now, the operator has once again made changes to its schedule, but this time it has completely removed the dates.
The series made its debut in October 2017 focusing on the lower stakes players and featuring small buy-in tournaments but with bigger guarantees. The inaugural Monster Series featured $5 million guaranteed across 70 tournaments but unfortunately, the series overlayed heavily. The last edition saw the room pay out just over $3.5 million across 144 tournaments.
Dates for Monster Series are expected to be announced soon.
$20 Million Guaranteed Powefest
The next series to follow is Powerfest, partypoker’s flagship tournament series. Usually, the series runs three times a year—in January alongside PokerStars’ TCOOP/Turbo Series, in May along with SCOOP and in September competing with WCOOP. However, this year, the room has scheduled the first edition to run in March featuring a $20 million guarantee.
According to the operator, this will be its ninth edition of Powerfest, and it will be double the size of the series that ran in January 2018, though it will see a reduction from the May 2018 version due to January being a quieter time of the year.
The last edition of Powerfest, held in September was the operator’s biggest ever MTT series. It paid out nearly $70 million across a staggering 669 tournaments.
Powefest IX will commence on March 31 and run through April 14.
Elsewhere, PokerStars also announced the dates and schedule for its upcoming fast-paced tournament series called Turbo Series. It will return for its second iteration from February 3 to February 17 with over $25 million in guarantees. Two Main Events have been scheduled to run on the last day of the series with combined guarantees of $3 million.
