BetMGM Poker USA is set to welcome the arrival of 2024 with a lineup of bounty tournaments, as it brings back its popular New Year’s Knockout Series.
Now in its third consecutive year, the mini-series is scheduled to kick off on Thursday, December 28, and will run through Monday, January 1. As the name suggests, the series is dedicated to the highly popular Progressive Knockout (PKO) format, promising an action-packed experience for players.
This end-of-the-year series will run in all of BetMGM’s operating jurisdictions in the US: New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The events will take place across the entire BetMGM network, featuring BetMGM itself, Borgata Poker, and partypoker. Borgata Poker USA is accessible in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania; partypoker is live only in NJ.
- Up to $75 in MTT tickets on top of the bonus
- Frequent MTT series with good guarantees
- Combined player pools in Michigan and New Jersey
No such series is planned yet for BetMGM Ontario in Canada’s largest province, where BetMGM Poker shares its player pool with partypoker and bwin Ontario.
The event schedule remains consistent across all three states, featuring identical events, buy-ins, and guarantees. A total prize pool of over $50,000 is guaranteed across each state.
A PKO tournament is scheduled every day. On New Year’s Eve, BetMGM will host a $5000 freeroll open to all players. On January 1, the final day of the series, there’s two. In total, five PKOs are scheduled, including one tailored for fans of the four-card variant, Pot Limit Omaha.
The series begins with a $320 buy-in event on December 28, offering $12,000 in guarantees. This is followed by a $55 buy-in event with a $3000 prize pool. On December 30, there’s a change of taste with a tournament in the PLO format, featuring a $215 buy-in and a $10,000 guarantee.
On December 31, a $5000 freeroll takes place at 4:00 PM ET, open to all players. On New Year’s Day, two events are scheduled: a $25,000 guaranteed event with a $535 buy-in and a smaller version themed around 2024, with a $20.24 buy-in and a $2024 guarantee.
Each event follows the same format, with half of the buy-in contributing to the prize pool and the other half to the bounty. Players win prizes by knocking out opponents, with the rewards growing progressively as the tournament progresses. With the exception of the freeroll, all tournaments allow unlimited re-entries.
BetMGM New Year’s Knockout Series 2023-2024 Schedule
| Date | Tournament | Buy-in | Gtd | Time (ET) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, December 28 | New Year Knockout #1: NLH PKO | $320 | $12,000 | 8:00 PM |
| Friday, December 29 | New Year Knockout #2: NLH 6-Max PKO | $55 | $3000 | 8:00 PM |
| Saturday, December 30 | New Year Knockout #3: PLO PKO | $215 | $10,000 | 8:00 PM |
| Sunday, December 31 | New Year Knockout #4: Freeroll | Free | $5000 | 4:00 PM |
| Monday, January 1 | New Year Knockout #5: NLH PKO | $535 | $25,000 | 8:00 PM |
| Monday, January 1 | New Year Knockout #6: NLH PKO | $20.24 | $2024 | 8:00 PM |
The New Year’s Knockout series follows the recently concluded Big Shots series, which guaranteed $750,000 in prize money across 23 tournaments in each state. The series included the monthly Six-Figure $100k guaranteed tournament.
Last Series Before Shared Liquidity?
The upcoming New Year’s Knockout series could very well be the last or one of the last tournament series before its two states are pooled together. In a recent business update, BetMGM announced that the launch of multi-state poker is “imminent.”
While specific states were not mentioned, it is obvious that the shared liquidity network will include New Jersey and Michigan, both part of the interstate online poker compact where BetMGM operates. Pennsylvania is the only state among the three that has yet to join the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA).
There’s also a possibility that BetMGM could go live in Nevada, another state in the compact, allowing for a tri-state shared liquidity network. West Virginia, the fifth state to join such a compact, is another potential member of BetMGM’s shared liquidity network in the future.
Currently, only two operators in the US take advantage of the multi-state online poker compact: PokerStars and the WSOP/888 network. PokerStars pools between PokerStars MI and PokerStars NJ, while WSOP has a shared player pool across three states — Delaware, Nevada, and New Jersey — though it will soon lose access to Delaware. It has yet to combine its Michigan player pool since its launch in March 2022.
The timing of BetMGM’s launch of a shared liquidity network remains uncertain. In a statement last month to pokerfuse, the operator stated that it would make an announcement about multi-state online poker “when the time comes.” There is a possibility that the network might merge BetMGM MI and BetMGM NJ by the first quarter of 2024.
BetMGM New Year’s Knockout Series starts on December 28 and runs through to January 1 in New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
