Natural8 has been making headlines recently with its N8GGS3 tournament series, which gets underway on September 8th. This series alone, with its $50 million guarantee, is enough to suggest Natural8 is looking to improve its standing in the pecking order of global online poker rooms. However, the latest offerings from Natural8 are not a one-off extravagance. The micro stakes schedule has also been given an overhaul, with 30 brand new tournaments with guarantees on offer each day for those who like to grind MTTs.
Elemental Daily Series
The Elemental Daily Series will ensure that whatever time of day you log into Natural8, there will be affordable tournaments running with solid guarantees attached to them.
These tournaments will command buy ins of between $0.30 and $4, making them suitable for the masses of micro stakes enthusiasts, but also an option for those who want to multi table and want to throw in a $4 tournament with a $200 guarantee or a $3 with a $150 prize pool. Tournaments for this daily schedule are colour coded and named to reflect buy ins and format, with turbos, hypers, bounties and slower tournaments all represented in this new schedule.
With more than one tournament getting underway each hour on average, the tournaments are too many to list individually, but we will list the main highlights of the daily elemental schedule with a weighting towards the higher buy in tournaments. The start times given are based on UTC+8 times as listed on the website.
- 11am – $4 Elemental Wood – Standard Speed ($200 GTD)
- 6pm – $3 Elemental Fire – Hyper-Turbo ($150 GTD)
- 7pm – $3 Elemental Water – Turbo ($140 GTD)
- 8pm – $3 Elemental Water – Turbo ($140 GTD)
- 8:30pm – $4 Elemental Wood – Standard Speed ($150 GTD)
- 9pm – $4 Elemental Water – Turbo ($200)
- 2:30am – $2 Elemental Water – Turbo ($70 GTD)
- 3am – $4 Elemental Wood – Standard Speed ($200 GTD)
These events cover the bigger buy ins and prize pools, but bounty events are also listed at 6am, 4pm and 1am, with many other smaller buy-in tournaments across different formats getting underway throughout the day.
Elemental weekend tournaments
In addition to the excellent selection of events during weekdays, Natural8 has also put together an attractive micro-stakes tournament schedule for the end of the week too, which covers many of the same formats as on weekdays, but with larger buy ins and prize pools included.
Here are some of the more exciting events from Natural8’s Sunday schedule:
- 7am – $3 Sunday Elemental Wood – Standard Speed ($120 GTD)
- 10am – $3 Sunday Elemental Metal – Slow Speed ($360 GTD)
- 11am – $8 Sunday Elemental Wood – Standard Speed ($400 GTD)
- 2pm – $3 Sunday Elemental Fire – Hyper-Turbo ($280 GTD)
- 2:30pm – $3 Sunday Elemental Water – Turbo ($140 GTD)
- 6pm – $6 Sunday Elemental Fire – Hyper-Turbo ($300 GTD)
- 7pm – $6 Sunday Elemental Water – Turbo ($280 GTD)
- 7pm – $3 Sunday Elemental Fire – Hyper-Turbo ($260 GTD)
- 8pm – $6 Sunday Elemental Water – Turbo ($280 GTD)
- 8:30pm – $8 Sunday Elemental Wood – Standard Speed ($300 GTD)
- 9pm – $8 Sunday Elemental Water – Turbo ($400 GTD)
- 2:30am – $4 Sunday Elemental Water – Turbo ($140 GTD)
- 3am – $8 Sunday Elemental Wood – Standard Speed ($400 GTD)
This extensive list of tournament opportunities will now occupy the MTT schedule at Natural8 during the foreseeable future, bringing something for every type of player regardless of bankroll.
Natural8 continues to strengthen when it comes to tournaments
Tournaments have become a real focal point for Natural8 lately, with the Good Game Series set to make its third appearance this year on the 8th of September. The series has been very popular, a fact which has helped elevate the total series guarantee to $50 million for this latest edition. The series has also been accompanied by promotions and a leaderboard for results collected during its course, which will only help to boost the participation numbers further and consolidate Natural8’s position as a growing industry force when it comes to tournament offerings.
Tournament innovation: Bubble protection and tournament staking
It isn’t just the quantity of tournaments or the focus placed on MTTs which has helped Natural8’s tournament reputation lately, but also their ingenuity in the field. One recent example of this is the bubble protection system implemented by Natural8 recently. With increasing numbers of players late registering for tournaments, this new initiative helps restore some balance by offering a refund of the tournament buy in to any player who bubbles a tournament and was also registered for it before the tournament began.
Another innovation which is unique to Natural8 is tournament staking which is integrated into the poker room software rather than being dealt with by a separate outside staking website. Natural8 allows players to set up a staking page once they are registered for a tournament to sell whatever percentage of their action they wish. Players buying action have winnings automatically credited by the site and can select any player in the tournament to back, provided the player has chosen to sell action.
These great, yet simple ideas are just some of the reasons why Natural8 is becoming one of the favoured smaller poker rooms in the industry, and with the expansion of tournament offerings in progress too, the popularity of this poker room will likely continue its upward trend.
Article by Craig Bradshaw
