Three stories from the PokerStars brand including a trio of titles for the Stars Group at the EGR Italy Awards, a new and improved online tournament schedule, and news from the Asian Championship of Poker in Macau.
The DIY gang at The Stars Group Italian branch are currently fitting a trophy cabinet next to the Jura Giga 5 Automatic Coffee Machine, and Eric Clapton signed 1958 Fender Stratocaster.
The Ikea shelving’s needed after The Stars Group walked out of the EGR Italy Awards at the Rome Cavalieri, Waldorf Astoria, Italy with Cheshire cat-like smiles after winning three of the five awards the team were shortlisted for.
The Stars Group beat Sisal to win the Poker Operator of the Year award, nudged Eurobet, Tombola, Sisal, Goldbet and Unibet out of the way to scoop the Social Marketing Operator of the Year Award, and crowned a splendid evening by taking down the Operator of the Year Award ahead of Sisal and Eurobet.
The only awards The Stars Group didn’t win were Casino Operator and Marketing Campaign.
In August, The Stars Group announced Q2 revenue of $305.31m, up 6.8% from last year’s $285.76 million. Full-year revenue is expected to fall between $1.2 billion & $1.26 billion.
PokerStars Change Weekly Tournament Schedules
Moving swiftly on from an Italian focus to a .com focus and PokerStars has announced a few changes to their weekly tournament structures. The changes came into effect on Monday and are a direct result of the Players Advisory Council (PAC) meeting held during the PokerStars Championship in Barcelona.
In a blog post written for the PokerStars blog, Tournament Team Manager, Luke Staudenmaier announced that some of the ‘key’ feedback from the PAC Barcelona pow-pow was a request for more high stakes action. PokerStars has responded.
There will be a $2,200 Sunday High Roller beginning at 13:30 (ET). There will also be a daily $530 High Roller at 15:00 (ET), and the Super-Sized Sunday will revert to a $530 buy-in and run daily as a “Bounty Builder High Roller.” Staudenmaier vowed to add more if proven there is a demand for the bigger buy-in events.
Another change is the streamlining of the tiered majors, so ‘Micro’, ‘Mini,’ and ‘Major’ tournaments all begin at the same times of 6:00, 14:00, and 19:00 (ET). PokerStars is also creating new daily majors including a 3-Max Progressive KO Zoom tournament with buy-ins of $2.20/$22/$215 beginning at 16:$5 (ET).
Stars are rebranding the ‘Big’ and ‘Hot’ tournaments to make them ‘Bigger’ and ‘Hotter’, the primary change being the introduction of the re-entry rule in these classic events. Also, the ‘Saturday Special’ Omania will also run on a Sunday rebranded the ‘Weekend Special.’
For a full round-up of changes, click here.
Wayne Yap Wins Single-Day High Roller at 2017 ACOP
One final move, this time from a PokerStars online product to a PokerStars live one, and Wayne Yap has won the HK$300,000 buy-in Single Day High Roller at the PokerStars LIVE 2017 Asian Championship of Poker.
A field of 68 entrants created a prize pool of HK$19,192,320 ($2.5m), and Yap defeated Nikita Bodyakovskiy in heads-up action to capture the HK$5,614,000 ($719,505) first prize.
It’s the second tick in the win column for the Singaporean. Last March, Yap defeated 114 entrants to take down the HK$80,000 High Roller Re-Entry at the Macau Poker Cup for $294,921.
Here are the ITM results for his latest endeavour.
1. Wayne Yap – HK$5,614,000 ($719,505)
2. Nikita Bodyakovskiy – HK$4,030,320 ($516,536)
3. Rainer Kempe – HK$2,620,000 ($335,786)
4. Justin Bonomo – HK$1,977,000 ($253,377)
5. Sam Greenwood – HK$1,535,000 ($196,730)
6. Adrian Mateos – HK$1,190,000 ($152,513)
7. Isaac Haxton – HK$940,000 ($120,473)
8. Erik Seidel – HK$730,000 ($93,559)
9. Christian Christner – HK$556,000 ($71,258)
