PokerStars Ontario rang down the curtain on its first-ever Ontario Championship of Online Poker (ONCOOP) last night, with the series ending on a high note. As Ontario’s regulated online poker market is segregated from the global player pool, the series was open exclusively to Ontario online poker players competing in a ring-fenced environment.
A little over CAD $2 million was guaranteed across 66 events, each split into two tiers — High and Low, totaling 132 tournaments with buy-ins starting at $5 and going up to $2000. Each event carried a guarantee starting from $770 to as high as $200,000.
After over two weeks of action, the series is finished and dusted.
Per numbers compiled by pokerfuse, the series generated nearly CAD $2 million in prize money and drew over 27,000 entries across the 17-day-long series.
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While initially the schedule featured $2 million in guarantees spread over 132 individual tournaments, a dozen tournaments had to be canceled, and some had to be rescheduled because of the multiple technical difficulties that the room faced. This meant that only 122 tournaments ran in the end and $300k guaranteed worth of tournaments had to be aborted, meaning the series ran with total guarantees of about $1.7 million.
With $1.94 million in prize money awarded, the overall series guarantee was surpassed by 13.5%
PokerStars ONCOOP Final Numbers
- Total Tournaments Ran: 122
- Total Prize Money Generated: $1.94 million
- Average Prize Money per Tournament: $15,902
- Total Entries: 27,754
- Average Entries: 227
- Biggest Entrants (Single Day Event): 724 — ONCOOP 61-L $50 buy-in [Main Event — Low], $40K Gtd
- No. of Overlays: 23 (18.85%)
- Total Overlay Amount: $77,044.30
- Biggest Overlay: $32,440 — ONCOOP 61-H $500 buy-in [Main Event — High], $200K Gtd
While many events drew huge turnouts, players also enjoyed lucrative overlays in some events, including the two Mains. Event #61-H, a $500 buy-in Main Event promising an ambitious $200,000 guaranteed prize money, attracted a decent turnout of 355 runners but fell short by $32K.
Its Low-tier Main costing just $50, also missed its guarantee. The tournament promising $40,000 gathered 724 entries — the largest turnout for a single-day tournament — but still ended up overlaying by $7K.
Nearly two dozen events missed their guarantees, though most were small ones, leading to a shortfall of $77K.
The Phased Events, with buy-ins of $10 and $50 featuring several Day 1s, drew 1325 and 775 entries, respectively, comfortably sailing past their guarantees. Event #17-L, a $10 buy-in PKO tournament, drew 550 entries — the second-most popular event entry-wise, amassing a prize pool of $5K.
Meanwhile, Event #14-H: a $2000 Super Tuesday High Roller generated the second-biggest prize pool after 42 participants entered the tournament, creating a prize pool of $80.2K.
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PokerStars Ambassador Crushed ONCOOP
As previously reported, PokerStars Team Pro Arlie “Prince Pablo” Shaban ran on a heater, winning five ONCOOP titles for total payouts of nearly $17,000. Three of his wins came in just two days, winning Events #41-L, #42-L, and #45-L.
While his excellent run continued to come, reaching more final tables in the last week, he could not convert his final table finishes into another win. The Ontario-native poker streamer reached the final nine over 15 times.
PokerStars will now look to host its fifth tournament series in what has become a very crowded market, with the latest entry being WSOP Ontario in partnership with GGPoker. Keep watching this space for more updates on PokerStars Ontario real money tournaments.
