The world’s leading online poker giant, PokerStars has announced in a press statement that 6+ Hold’em (the company’s Short Deck Poker game) will be making its debut as multi-table format during the upcoming SCOOP series.
It follows the successful launch of 6+ Hold’em cash games which were deployed across the international player pool in January.
The room has confirmed that three 6+ tournaments have been scheduled to run on May 17 at 14:30 ET with buy-ins of $22, $215, and $2100. These events will be available as side events to the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) but won’t be officially part of the series.
It is expected to be part of the room’s weekly schedule following the completion of SCOOP on May 27.
Additionally, 6+ Hold’em will also be available in the form of On-Demand Sit & Gos during the month. They will be available at $2.50, $7, and $15 buy-ins.
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Additional Details on PokerStars 6+ Hold’em MTTs
Although the variant is live in the form of cash game across various licensed jurisdictions of PokerStars, the MTT version will initially be limited to just a few markets including dot-COM, dot-UK and dot-EU clients.
While details surrounding its tournament structure and format have yet to be revealed, we have reasons to believe that the MTT version of 6+ Hold’em could use the same structure (i.e., Button Blind structure) that has been implemented for cash games. In this structure, there is no Big or Small Blind, instead, every player on the table pays an ante while the Button pays an additional ante that acts as the only blind.
Hints of 6+ tournaments making their debut on PokerStars were first revealed by pokerfuse back in March after the game was launched as a cash game in Italy. Web describing 6+ Hold’em on the Italian website suggests that the game will be deployed in tournament format too.
Then last week, there were further signs after pokerfuse spotted new filters that appeared under the “Tourney” tab, suggesting that the room is preparing to launch 6+ Hold’em in a tournament format. New filters also reveal that the room will be bringing back some of the last year’s novelties such as Showtime and Fusion in an MTT format. No details have been revealed regarding their launch.
6+ Hold’em will become the first variant in the recent wave of cash game novelties by PokerStars to become available in a multi-table format. According to the operator, the launch of 6+ MTTs is “a first for the online poker industry.”
Other Short Deck Poker Offerings
Indeed, it will be the first regulated major operator to spread the stripped deck variant of Hold’em in such a format. Other networks which offer this variant such as iPoker and partypoker are known to spread the game as cash games only.
However, partypoker which recently launched Short Deck also plans to offer the game in tournament format soon, a company representative told Poker Industry PRO.
Short Deck has been around the poker community for several years. However, interest in the game picked up only recently after it made its first televised appearance during the 2018 Triton Super High Roller Series in Montenegro. Since then, the game has proliferated across both the live and online fields. PokerStars organized its first-ever 6+ NLHE live tournament at the Monte Carlo EPT stop last month.
In the online world, the game recently made its debut across three different networks including the Latin-based Aconcagua Poker Network, US-offshore Chico Network and the Indian market of PokerStars.
The game also caught the attention of the World Series of Poker organizers. It is set to make its debut at the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Series this summer and at WSOPE in October. The first-ever Short Deck WSOP bracelet event will cost $10,000 to enter and will be held on June 2.
Meanwhile, PokerStars is gearing up for its upcoming flagship series, SCOOP. The series kicks off on May 12 with a record-breaking $75 million guaranteed prize pool spread across 201 tournaments spanning two weeks. The series culminates in six Main Events (both NLHE and PLO) with a combined guaranteed prize pool of over $13 million.
