PokerStars are celebrating their return to the New Jersey online poker market by hosting a Run It Up! Special in the Resorts Casino Hotel in partnership with Jason Somerville and a host of other PokerStars Team Pros.
PokerStars are forgetting their Amaya woes for one evening only as they leverage the super stardom of Jason Somerville to host their first live/online combo event since returning to New Jersey after a five-year hiatus.
The world didn’t end when lawmakers booted online gaming companies out of America in 2011, but it did change. Back then, PokerStars were duking it out with Full Tilt Poker, in a bid to become the undisputed market leader. These days PokerStars own Full Tilt, and is the dominant global market leader with no indication of that changing in the near future despite customer satisfaction seemingly at an all-time low.
PokerStars entry into the New Jersey market came 2.5 years later than their competitors, and yet according to several media sources, it took them less than a week to become the most prominent member of the new club. They aim to increase that reach with a little help from one of the most influential men in poker.
The signing of Jason Somerville as a member of PokerStars Team Pro is the most significant deal since Daniel Negreanu joined the team. He was the first poker player to grow his personal brand on the live streaming platform Twitch, and recently surpassed the 10 million total views mark.
Somerville’s show is called Run It UP! and over the years he has teamed up with west coast parties such as Peppermill to join fans in a series of Run It Up! live events. It’s this angle that PokerStars are using to advance their footing in the east coast market.
The first Run It Up! live event to take place on the east coast will be held at the Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, May 14. The evening is being billed as PokerStars celebratory return to New Jersey and carries the name: PokerStars Run It UP Resorts Rumble.
Somerville will be streaming live on Twitch that entire weekend, as well as competing in the events, and taking part in specially organized Q&A sessions with other members of PokerStars Team pro such as Vanessa Selbst, Jennifer Shahade, Chris Moneymaker, and Liv Boeree.
The Main Event will be $30 buy-in online events where players will compete live on electronic devices rigged up in the Resorts Casino. Players can qualify for the event online at PokerStarsNJ.com. There will be a special after poker VIP party in The Landshark Bar & Grille Restaurant.
It’s going to be interesting to see how PokerStars New Jersey presence settles over the next few months. As players gear up for the World Series of Poker (WSOP), online numbers generally dwindle, although PokerStars will be rolling out their first New Jersey Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) next month where you can expect to see more cash handed out than at any other time since online poker returned to the state 2.5 years ago.
