Three hooks from PokerStars including the creation of a French National Championship, Power Up Championship, and Niklas ‘Lena9000’ Astedt wins another major tournament.
A trio of short stories from the world’s largest online poker room beginning in a place where people are clueless of the existence of corned beef and cans of tuna.
The PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) Monte Carlo intrudes into our life April 25 – May 4, and we have a brand new tournament to talk about.
The €1,100 buy-in French National Championship runs from April 26 – 29, and you can earn a €2k package qualifying online at PokserStars in mid-April.
Here is the promotional video:
Another slight tweak to the Monte Carlo festival involves a reduction in the bare minimum buy-in for online satellites from €5 to €1. These cheap as chips qualifiers begin in the French and Spanish markets on Sunday, February 10th, with the .com market arriving on Sunday, February 17th. Main Event packages are worth €8,200, including a seat into the €5,300 Main Event.
Last year in Monte Carlo, Guillaume Diaz conquered a 1,501-entrant field to win the €250,000 first prize in the €1,100 EPT National, Steve O’Dwyer battered 41-entrants to win the €676,300 top prize in the €50,000 High Roller, Sam Greenwood vanquished 46-entrants to win the €1,520,000 first prize in the €100,000 Super High Roller, and Nicolas Dumont beat 775-entrants to win the €712,000 first prize in the €5,300 EPT Main Event, with David Peters (4th), Patrik Antonius (6th), and Ole Schemion (8th) making the final table.
PokerStars’ First Power Up Championship; PokerStars VR Lunar New Year Makeover.
It’s been 16-months since PokerStars thawed the frozen fish within us by releasing the world’s Esports/poker hybrid: PokerStars Power Up, but it hasn’t come alive in the way many people thought it would.
However, plenty of innovative poker games have come and gone in that time, but not Power Up, and to celebrate, PokerStars is hosting a first of its kind PokerStars Power Up Championships.
Qualification for the championship is currently underway in a unique challenge format, with the final scheduled for February 23rd. The organisers are putting up $5,000 in the prize pool, guaranteeing $3,000 for the winner.
From Esports to Virtual Reality (VR), and PokerStars VR has added a new theme to celebrate the Lunar New Year as recognised by Asian countries such as China, Japan and Korea. It’s the second new theme that PokerStars has launched since the launch of PokerStars VR in September, the first being a Festive option rolled out in December.
Lena900 Wins a Second Turbo Championship Title
One man you won’t find on the PokerStars VR tables is Niklas “Lena900” Astedt.
The PocketFives World #1 has his fun battering the world’s greatest online multi-table tournament (MTT) players, and he recently added a second Turbo Championship title to his World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP), Bounty Builder and High Roller Club titles.
Astedt followed up his $215 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Progressive Knockout (PKO) win with a 1,805-entrant $109 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em victory for $27,276.89.
The win closes the gap between Astedt and Chris Moorman at the top of the Most Money Ever Won in Online MTTs Leaderboard to $14,000,640.67 v $15,702,454.52, and given the fact that Moorman lives in the US, you get the feeling that it’s only a matter of time before Astedt overtakes him.
Two other stars of the game who picked up Turbo Championship wins recently include the partypoker World Poker Tour (WPT) Montreal Main Event winner Patrick “prepstyle71” Serda winning the 164-entrant, $530 buy-in 8-Game for $19,680, and the Finnish online star, Sami “Lrslzk” Kelopuro winning the 652-entrant, $1,050 8-Max No-Limit Hold’em PKO for $56,224.96 + $49,822.22 in bounties.
