After over a week of play, there are still three events left in partypoker’s New Jersey Championships of Online Poker (NJCOP) that will offer $250,000 in guaranteed prize pools that includes the Main Event. To this point of the schedule, the turnout has been excellent for the events and ten champions have been crowned.
“We’ve been pleased with the player response for this first-ever event,” Warren Lush, the Head of Public Relations for bwin.party Entertainment, stated to Poker News Daily. “We only missed the guarantee on one event (Event #3’s $100,000 guaranteed No Limit Hold’em tournament) and it was only by $7000. Today’s action is the BIG DAY, so to speak!”
The very first event of the NJCOP, a No Limit Hold’em Freeroll, especially drew well. 2290 players stepped up for the tournament and offered buy ins for other NJCOP tournaments to the 819 players who made the money in the event. The final table was especially lucrative as the nine players at the final table all received buy ins to every event on the NJCOP schedule and the top three spots added a bit of cash to the $2000 package to every NJCOP tournament. After six hours of battle, the appropriately named ‘ItStartsHere77’ walked off with the top prize of $500 and the $2000 in NJCOP buy ins.
Event #5, a $20,000 guaranteed Bounty NLHE tournament, was also notable in that one of the Team partypoker Pros was able to take it down. Scott Baumstein was able to outlast the 356 player field in that tournament to take the crown. Baumstein and ‘ItStartsHere77’ have been joined on the Champions’ Stand by ‘yankees85,’ ‘ForgotMyDonkey,’ ‘LuckySpewy,’ ‘Charlie Brown,’ ‘sps8710,’ ‘ColdKid,’ ‘KingFi’ and ‘jaywentz1976’ (results from Saturday’s action, with $50,000 in guaranteed prize pools, were not available at press time).
For the first ten events of the NJCOP (leaving off Saturday and today’s action), the player numbers and prize pools have exceeded what was being offered. A total of 5216 players have taken part in the NJCOP’s first ten tournaments that offered a total of $300,000 in guaranteed prize pools. That figure was obliterated by the outpouring of players; other than Event #3’s minor shortfall, the entirety of the NJCOP’s first ten events have generated prize pools totaling $363,555.
It is going to be a busy day on the virtual felt of partypoker in New Jersey today as three events will be taking place. The final satellite for the $200,000 Guaranteed Main Event will begin at 2PM (Eastern Time) and will offer a minimum of 25 seats to the Big Dance for its participants. The players who are able to satellite into the Main Event won’t have much time to rest as, at 5PM, the Main Event will begin (those that haven’t gotten in for the cheap will have to pony up the $200 buy-in).
While the Main Event is going on, the $30,000 Guaranteed High Roller event will take the stage at 6PM. With a $500 buy in and a good sized prize pool, there might be a chance for an overlay here, but it would be the exception rather than the norm for the NJCOP. Wrapping up the NJCOP (while the Main Event and the High Roller are doing battle) will be a $20,000 Guaranteed tournament.
Overall, the first-ever New Jersey Championships of Online Poker have to be considered a success. That success arguably translates into a validation of the barely five-month old New Jersey online poker scene, which should only grow as the fledgling industry gains respectability and the players take part in their offerings.
