NJ Online Poker Players Are Getting A Third Tourney Series In October
It’s official: All of the operators in the New Jersey online poker market have a tournament series this month with the inclusion of the WSOP NJ Fall Poker Festival.
The Fall Poker Festival, at a glance
The tournament series takes place Oct. 9 through Oct. 16. It is not a giant one — the $65,000 guaranteed over eight events pales in comparison to ones being held at PartyPoker / Borgata, as well as PokerStars NJ.
The NJ Championship of Online Poker at PokerStars guarantees $1.2 million; the Garden State Super Series V guarantees more than $1.1 million.
Still, it’s yet another reason for NJ poker players to get online this month, as all three major poker networks are vying for attention. Players can play big tourneys at both WSOP and PartyPoker for that week in October; the GSSS V and the NJCOOP overlap the next week.
Inside the WSOP series
This is the third time that WSOP.com is holding its Fall Poker Festival in New Jersey.
The highlight is the main event on Sunday, Oct. 16, and guarantees $35,000. The buy-in for that event is $200.
The winner of that event will also earn the “Champion’s Ring,” akin to the hardware players win in the WSOP’s circuit events and bracelet events in Las Vegas.
The first Sunday features a $200 buy-in event with $15,000 guaranteed.
[i15-table tableid=20717][i15-table tableid=19346]Traffic likely up everywhere for October
All of the tournaments with guaranteed prize pools likely mean good things for traffic in cash games and the bottom lines of all the sites.
WSOP’s tournament series is obviously a lot smaller than its competitors, but a huge portion of the active poker-playing population will likely be online for those two weeks in October when the series overlap.
While the numbers for September aren’t out yet, the online poker market will try to build on some of the momentum from August.
What is clear is that none of the three networks is prepared to concede the market to one or two of the others quite yet.