In many places of the world people are still not supposed to have large gatherings, but everyone’s fatigued and want to leave their homes. The northern half of the world is having the start of a beautiful summer and you don’t want to sit inside when it’s warm and the sun is shining.
Most poker players live in the northern hemisphere and it is to expect that online poker traffic is going to go down significantly, because of the above reasons and also maybe some economic issues.
After a couple of months of online poker booming, operators don’t want to give up on it just yet. The summer is packed with online poker series across many different sites and blessed are those with good mobile experiences so players do have the option to play from beer gardens and beaches.
21st to 29th June: 888poker Freezeout Series
1st July to 6th September: WSOP Online
5th July to 2nd August: PokerStars Stadium Series
17th July to 8th September: WPT World Online Championships
GGPoker / Natural8 – The World Series of Poker Online
The most discussed online series this summer, and maybe this year, is of course the WSOP Online. The most prestigious poker tournament series in the world is not going to take place in its usual live version this summer in Las Vegas. Officially it’s still only postponed until autumn, but nobody really knows if it’s going to go ahead or not.
To give at least some kind of WSOP action, the series went online for this summer, splitting 83 events from 1st July to 6th September between two different online poker sites making sure to cover most of the world – for a true “world” series.
WSOP.com (1st July to 6th September): Only for players in Nevada and New Jersey – 31 events with buy-ins from $400 to $3,200
GGPoker – Natural8 (19th July to 6th September): Cannot be played from the U.S.. The schedule has not been announced yet, but we know there will be 52 of them.
There will be an overlap. So players that want to take as many chances to win a bracelet this year can through travel take part in events on both sites, but will not be able to play every single event.
Event Highlights so far:
- $600 MonsterStack – 10th July
- $500 The BIG 500 No-Limit Hold’em – 12th July
- $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em Championship (‘Main Event’) – 31st July
WPT World Online Championships
The biggest competitor to the WSOP Online series will be the WPT World Online Championships, running from 17th July to 8th September. The series consists of 12 championship events with a combined guaranteed prize pool of $100 million.
The WPT World Online Championships will be held on partypoker and so have an advantage to the WSOP run on WSOP.com and GGPoker/ Natural8 – they can offer mixed games. According to the schedule they didn’t capitalize on this too much as there are only three events that are not Hold’em or PLO.
Almost all championship events are available in three buy-in levels, the normal buy-in, a mini and a micro version. And to give it all a bit more of a live feel, real names will be used at the tables.
Event highlights:
- $1,100 Mini World Championship Main Event ($5 million GTD) – 22nd August (4-day event)
- $10,300 World Championship Main Event ($10 million GTD) – 29th August (4-day event)
- $102,000 World Championship Super High Roller ($5 million GTD) – 7th September (2-day event)
Join partypoker – Free Play offer up to $30
PokerStars Stadium Series
PokerStars’ Summer Series has just concluded and immediately a new online poker tournament series was announced: The Stadium Series. It will run from 5th July to 2nd August and offer a total of 102 tournaments with different buy-in levels, low, mid and high.
The Stadium Series buy-ins range from $5.50 to $10,300 and offers a total guaranteed prize pool of $50 million. Every week there are heats for the events leading into the Sunday finals.
PokerStars will offer a Cards-up Live stream on Twitch with James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton.
Event Highlights:
$5,200 (H) Stadium Series Grand Final [8-Max] ($5 million GTD) – 2nd August
$10,300 (H) Stadium Series Wrap-up ($1 million GTD) – 2nd August
888poker Freezeout Series
Even 888poker, who has been fairly quiet around the recent online poker boom, is offering a new short tournament series from 21st to 29th June, the Freezeout Series.
As you can guess from the title, the events are all without re-entries. There is a guaranteed prize pool of $665,000, buy-ins range from $5,50 to $109 and are not offering any of the “exotic” variants.
Event Highlight:
$109 FO Series #24 Main Event ($200k GTD) – 28th June
