Casino business news at a glance

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Welcome to the Big Leagues - Where the Poker is Real

Play Money Poker has changed.

For the first ten years of PokerStars it provided new and inexperienced players with training wheels to get used to the look and feel of online poker before committing themselves to real money. However, in the last few years things have dramatically changed. The standard of play has increased, as have the average game stakes. The poker room has evolved along with the players, with the introduction of the Billionaire Club, the World Cup of Poker, and special play money tournament series. We also have some big tournaments like the daily Big Stacks and of course the weekly flagship Sunday Billion.

Our biggest and best players are taking their game very seriously, and nowhere is this more evident than in our daily high stakes tournaments. These daily nosebleed tournaments are reminiscent of a private high-stakes room; a select few players sit down at tournaments with an eye-watering buy-in, and play down to a single winner. While these tournaments are for play money, the poker is real and the competition is fierce.

To provide an added incentive for these players, we are creating the Big Leagues leaderboard. This leaderboard will recognise the best high-stakes tournament players in the world. But it is not just about the bragging rights; each month from March to December 2016 we will give the player at the top of the leaderboard one billion play chips, and the players in 2nd through 9th place will also receive a substantial prize.

The tournaments that qualify for this leaderboard are the four daily 50M Super High Rollers and the three daily Centurions. That's close to two hundred tournaments every month, so it will require both skill, stamina, and a baller bankroll, to get your name in lights.

List of daily tournaments that contribute leaderboard ranking points: