PokerStars, the world’s leading online poker room, has quietly unveiled the full schedule for the New Jersey Spring Championship of Online Poker (NJSCOOP), the operator’s major tournament series in the New Jersey online poker market.
Touted as one of the Garden State’s richest online tournament series, NJSCOOP returns for the fourth iteration with another seven-figure guaranteed prize pool totaling just over $1 million and further cementing the US PokerStars presence.
NJSCOOP 2019 Details
Starting May 4, NJSCOOP consists of 41 High and Low events, spanning a variety of poker variants and formats. The series is designed to appeal players of all bankrolls and skills, with buy-ins ranging from $5 to $1000. In total, there are 82 tournaments spread over more than two weeks.
While the majority of events are No Limit Hold’em, NJSCOOP 2019 also offer players a wide variety of mixed games including 8-Game, Stud Hi/Lo, a mix of NLHE/PLO, 5 Card Omaha, NL Omaha Hi/Lo and of course PLO events.
The schedule also comprises of novelty formats including Win the Button, Escalating Antes, Marathon events, Bubble Rush and various standard format such as bounty tournaments, rebuys and deep stacks.
The flagship Main Event High with a buy-in of $500 will carry a slightly reduced guaranteed prize pool of $130,000 while the Main Event low boasts $40,000 guaranteed prize pool for just $50 buy-in. Both the Main Events will be played as 2-day events giving players unlimited entries.
Other standouts include two Sunday Special edition tournaments with both featuring $55,000 guaranteed prize pool. They will run on May 5 and 12 and will also allow unlimited entries. A $1000 buy-in High Roller has also been scheduled to run on May 14 boasting a guaranteed prize pool of $45,000.
Promotions, qualifiers, and satellites to accompany the spring series are expected to be announced soon on the website.
How it Compares
NJSCOOP 2019 will be the operator’s third tournament series in the market this year.
It kicked off 2019 in January with Winter Series, guaranteeing $300,000 prize pool across 15 tournaments.
It then followed this up with Turbo Series in February which had a total prize pool of $200,000 spread over 28 tournaments.
As seen in both, the guarantees in the upcoming spring series have also come down compared with the last year. NJSCOOP 2018 had a guaranteed prize pool of $1.3 million with an average guarantee of $16,250.
It was the largest NJSCOOP schedule to date. This year, the average guarantee has also come down to $12,628.
NJSCOOP 2018 Results
The declining guaranteed prize pool comes as something of as a surprise, as last year NJSCOOP easily covered its overall guarantees and paid out more than $1.5 million.
Out of the 80 tournaments held, 70 of them exceeded their guarantees. The largest turnout was for Main Event: The Low attracting 1173 entries to amass a prize pool of more than $50,000. The Main Event: High drew 416 entries but fell short of its guarantee by $4010.
PokerStars Team Ambassador, and the man who started an online poker boom, Chris Moneymaker, had a great outing last year as he won two NJSCOOP 2018 titles and final tabled a couple more. He will look to repeat last year’s performance in the upcoming NJSCOOP.
WSOP/888 Network Gearing up for WSOP 2019
Elsewhere, WSOP and 888, which combine to operate the All American Poker Network (AAPN), recently concluded its fourth online tournament series of this year, Spring Online Championships had a guaranteed prize pool of $1.5 million. The series concluded on Sunday, April 14.
It is now gearing up for the 50th anniversary of the world’s richest live festival poker series, the World Series of Poker. It kicks off on May 28 and runs until July 16.
Online satellites and qualifiers are underway on the site including a 25 Seat Scramble satellite that will give away at least 25 seats to the $10,000 Main Event. The satellite will run on June 30 at 4 PM (Pacific time). A freeroll giving away 50 seats to the Big 50 worth $500 buy-in has been scheduled to run on May 11. Players can earn their seat to this freeroll by earning at least 50 APPs.
The organizers of the WSOP have also increased the number of online bracelet events to 9. There will be one online bracelet event that will be held on each of the Sundays for seven weeks and two more events taking place on Wednesdays (June 19 and July 13). Each of them is scheduled to run at 3 PM (Pacific time). Buy-ins range from $400 to $3200.
However, the eligibility for New Jersey players is still to be determined.
NJSCOOP 2019 will run from May 4 through May 20.
