Partypoker has unveiled the first details of the fall 2017 Powerfest online poker tournaments series, a series which will feature an insane 330 events (more than that, actually), a dozen Championship events, and $35 million in guaranteed prize pools. Powerfest will run September 3rd through September 24th.
“Powerfest just keeps getting bigger and better so this time it was only right to increase the guaranteed prizepool again to $35,000,000,” said partypoker Managing Direct Tom Waters on the partypoker blog. “I hope that the players like the changes that we have made and continue to support us. The new championship events were added to give a little prestige to the headline tournaments and each of the winner will receive a trophy. Starting with a buy-in of $11, everyone has the opportunity to be crowned a Powerfest champion.”
Though the lowest priced championship event is $11, buy-ins for Powerfest on the whole get as low as $5.50. They also get as high as $25,500 for the $3 million guaranteed Super High Roller championship event, which is schedule to last two days.
Patrick Leonard, partypoker ambassador, seems excited for Powerfest, as one would expect him to be, as he is, after all, the site’s ambassador:
I remember playing Powerfest at the start of the year and it was great to play some ‘pure’ poker. No gimmicks, just good structured tournaments. In May everything exploded, it was pure poker again but super-sized with insane guarantees and bigger buy-ins than ever before. I got an email this week and saw the schedule for this series in September, I helped make a couple of tweaks and I think it’s without doubt the best schedule partypoker has ever had. Bigger buy-ins, bigger guarantees, 2 day tournaments and the software will be improved making it easier for players to find the right tournaments and their experience will be better than ever before on the tables. I’ll be playing every day and cannot wait.
Partypoker says that “phased” events were so popular last year, that the poker room has made twelve tournaments phased events for Powerfest. These tourneys are essentially like regular events, but with an optional satellite. Players can play in Phase 1 of a phased event and try to survive to the final phase, which takes place on a later date, or buy-in to the final phase directly for about ten times the Phase 1 buy-in. If there are multiple Phase 1 tournaments – and there usually are – players can enter as many as they would like and take their largest ending stack with them to the final phase.
The schedule for the championship events has been published by partypoker, though the entire 300+ event schedule has yet to be released. I must say, though, that the championship schedule is a bit confusing. It shows the first two championship events to be Powerfest 111 and Powerfest 112, both on September 10th. These are listed as Phased Events, with Phase 1 buy-ins of $109 and $530, respectively, and direct final phase buy-ins of $1,050 and $5,200.
The next two Sundays are Powerfest 218 and 219 on September 17th and Powerfest 323 and 324 on September 24th, with the same phased buy-in structure as the first two phased championship events. The odd thing is that they are listed as “Final Phase” as opposed to 111 and 112, which are just “Phased.”
My initial thought was that something was missing, as the way it was worded made 111 and 112 seem like the Phase 1 events. As I think about it though, I think it is just inconsistent wording. Each of those six championship events are the final phases and the Phase 1 tourneys play throughout the week leading up to Sunday. Hopefully that will be made clearer in the final draft of the schedule.
