In this column we deliver you the latest and most interesting online poker industry news from across the world and all platforms.
Successful online series all around
The biggest online poker season of the year has concluded, but who knows what other highlights this year will bring us. For now, most online poker providers report on successful spring events all across the board.
PokerStars SCOOP
This year’s Spring Championship Of Online Poker was the 13th installment of the prestigious online festival and it didn’t disappoint. The guarantee was set at $100 million, but ultimately almost $140 million were paid out to players around the global .com market.
Natural8 Spring Festival
The GG Network had surprised the poker community once more by guaranteeing $150 million for this year’s Spring Festival. But as GG has done in the past, even this surpassed all expectations. The overall paid out prizes were almost $180 million, and that despite an overlay in the Main Event.
888poker WPT Deepstacks London
The WPT Deepstacks London Online Series was not marketed as a spring series, but considering all the action on the other sites at the same time, it still deserves mentioning how well 888poker’s event did. The series generated $2.2 million in prizes, meeting the guarantee with no problem.
Winamax Series
The 30th ever Winamax Series also wasn’t a spring themed online poker festival (it had a spooky ghost theme), but we’ll add it here to the list of successful poker events. It ran from 4th to 15th April, paying out over €28 million, making it the operator’s most successful series in history.
BetMGM and Borgata launch in PA
It’s getting hot in Pennsylvania. Competition is a good thing and now PokerStars, who almost had a monopoly in the Keystone State, is feeling the heat as BetMGM and Borgata enter. The two sites are BetMGM skins and they launch under the partypoker US Network brand. So, after 18 months of PokerStars reign we will see how much fire partypoker can start.
One might say that any movement in the US is good movement as all new offerings and licenses move us closer to a fully operational online poker market in the once so strong online poker market.
The Netherlands license process
And obviously this doesn’t just count for the US. Many other countries in the world move towards legislation and regulation of online gambling and online poker.
In their efforts to tidy up their own market, the Dutch gaming regulatory board Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) has now received 28 license applications from gambling operators. The Dutch Remote Gambling Act was officially introduced on 1st April, but the go-live date for the online operators will be 1st October this year.
