Lottery Sit & Go tournaments are standard fare at online poker rooms now, but it is strange to realize that they have only been around a short time. PokerStars only introduced its version of the Lottery Sit & Go, the Spin & Go, in September of last year. And now, to celebrate the Spin & Go’s one year anniversary (albeit slightly late), PokerStars is introducing two new buy-in levels, both the chance for players to win $1 million.
For those who haven’t played Spin & Go’s or possibly even heard of them, the concept is simple. They are three-handed, hyper-turbo, single table tournaments, that are typically winner-take-all. The big twist is that the prizes are not known to the players until the game starts. Once the three players are registered and seated, a prize spinner appears and reveals the prize pool. Most of the time, it will simply be twice the buy-in with the winner getting all of it, but it can be 4x, 10x, or even 12,000x the buy-in, based on pre-set probabilities. For the top three prize tiers, the prize pool is split amongst all three players, though the winner still gets the lion’s share.
Now, for a LIMITED TIME ONLY (sorry, felt necessary), PokerStars has added two buy-in levels with a grand prize of $1 million to the winner. Of course, the chances of winning the million is almost zero, but hey it’s something. Here are the two new buy-ins and their associated prize probabilities:
Bronze – $0.50 Buy-in
2,400,000x buy-in multiplier ($1,000,000 first prize) – 3 in 100,000,000 (yes, ONE HUNDRED million)
240x – 4,000 in 100,000,000
120x – 8,000 in 100,000,000
25x – 50,000 in 100,000,000
10x – 100,000 in 100,000,000
6x – 7,500,000 in 100,000,000
4x – 17,477,003 in 100,000,000
2x – 74,860,994 in 100,000,000
Silver – $5 Buy-in
2,400,000x buy-in multiplier ($1,000,000 first prize) – 3 in 10,000,000 (note that this is TEN million, not that it matters)
240x – 400 in 10,000,000
120x – 800 in 10,000,000
25x – 5,000 in 10,000,000
10x – 10,000 in 10,000,000
6x – 750,000 in 10,000,000
4x – 1,897,703 in 10,000,000
2x – 7,336,094 in 10,000,000
The gold buy-in level is $100, but that, along with the prize probabilities, is standard for PokerStars Spin & Go’s and remains unchanged.
So yeah, you’re not going to win the million dollars, or anything in the upper prize tiers, for that matter, but it’s there and you will likely get annoyed when somebody else wins it.
Each day from October 19th through November 1st, players can also complete daily challenges to win entries into one of the special Spin & Go’s. There are three daily challenges: play in three real-money Sit & Go or Spin & Go’s, play in one scheduled tournament, and play in 30 real money ring game hands. Each time a player completes a challenge, he wins one Spin & Go ticket, which will be for the Bronze level 95 percent of the time. 4.9 percent of the time, it will be for Silver, and 0.1 percent of the time, it will be for Gold.
