PokerStars is bringing its popular Winter Series to Ontario! The operator will award over $1.3 million in prizes across 61 numbered events which will kick off on December 26, just a day after Christmas, an occasion called “Boxing Day” by the Canadians.
2022 Winter Series
The 2022 Winter Series will run on PokerStars Ontario for 16 days, until January 10, 2023. Ontarians have plenty of tournaments to choose from, with buy-ins ranging from $3 to $2,000.
The festival is filled with many events offering huge value to players, with some $3 buy-in tournaments likely awarding as much as $500 in guarantees. There is an event for everyone, as most of the tournaments will come in three buy-in tiers – Low, Medium, and High.
Main Event
The schedule is headlined by the $300 buy-in Main Event which features the biggest guarantee of $150,000. Ontarians should make sure not to miss out on this key tournament as it is a one-day affair, taking place only on January 8.
Among other highlights on the schedule is the opening event which offers the best value in the festival. It is a phased tournament costing just $50 to enter but comes with a $30K guarantee.
PokerStars has informed players in New Jersey and Michigan of a scheduled outage on Dec 12 and 13. Players in both states will not have access to online poker, casino or sports betting services as the online poker operator is carrying out server maintenance work. PokerStars will resume normal services from Dec 14.
Merging of NJ and MI Markets
PokerStars has confirmed that the scheduled downtime is to update software services to ensure that the New Jersey and Michigan markets get merged under the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA).
Michigan signed the MSGIA agreement in April 2022 and there has been speculation for months as to when PokerStars would add Michigan to the New Jersey market. PokerStars has confirmed services will resume on Dec 14 but has not confirmed from when Michigan players will be part of the inter-state liquidity pool as of now.
Once the upgrade is made official, players will have access to bigger prize pools, more tournaments and higher guarantees which was a key part of the MSIGA agreement. PokerStars Michigan will be the first operator to capitalize on the MSIGA agreement as the WSOP and BetMGM have yet to confirm any software upgrades as of this writing.
Poker rooms in Texas have been under the scanner for the last couple of years as the authorities have carried out sting operators on these social club poker venues to see if any of these poker rooms are breaching gaming laws. Texas does not allow gambling in public but does permit poker to take place inside private clubs.
River Room Social Club Poker Room
Poker players in Houston will get access to the new poker room at the River Room Social Club. The poker room celebrated its soft launch on Dec 10 and held a $350 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em even with a $10,000 guarantee as part of its soft launch activity.
The new poker room is huge with a total of 60 poker tables as of now. The poker room has 30 big screen television sets, automated shuffling machines and a special VIP room enclosure as well. The River Room Social Club is now operating on a 24/7 basis and has confirmed that its poker room will proceed with an official grand opening in January 2023. The exact date for the grand opening will be confirmed most likely after the holidays!
The official schedule of the PokerStars 2023 European Poker Tour (EPT) is finally out, with two new stops added to the list – France and Cyprus. EPT action kicks off in February 2023, with the final event scheduled for December.
2023 EPT Schedule
For the first time in seven years, the EPT returns to Paris, France for the first stop of the 2023 tour which takes place from February 15-26. The Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile will play host to the action in partnership with Le Club Barrière Paris.
EPT Paris will be followed by EPT Monte-Carlo which will run from April 26-May 6. The tour will then head over to Barcelona (August 21- September 3), before holding a new stop in Cyprus from October 11-22 at the Merit Royal Hotel Casino & Spa. The venue is no stranger to hosting major tournaments. Back in September, it hosted the Triton Poker Coin Rivet Invitational which was won by Sam Grafton for $5.5 million.
No EPT London Stop in 2023
The final stop will be in Prague, running from December 6-17. There will be no London event for 2023, despite a successful return of the popular stop in October this year.
BetMGM New Jersey’s software platform has received a major upgrade to match its Michigan counterpart, in a move that would make it easier for the operator to merge its players across licensed states in the US once shared liquidity gets up and running in the Wolverine State.
BetMGM New Jersey Software Finally Upgraded
BetMGM Poker is powered by the partypoker software which has undergone major updates over the past few years. The changes, which scrapped the use of screen names and aliases and introduced the Run It Twice feature in cash games, were applied across BetMGM Poker’s platforms in North America, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ontario. But for some reason, its New Jersey platform had been left untouched.
However, with Michigan inching closer to shared liquidity, BetMGM finally decided to make its New Jersey software on a par with the rest of its US platforms. The changes have also been deployed to sister sites Borgata and partypoker.
Shared Liquidity Coming Soon to Michigan
It’s the latest signal that online poker operators are preparing to combine their player pools in New Jersey and Michigan after the latter officially joined the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) in early 2022. The Michigan Gaming Control Board (MGCB) has yet to provide a timeline as to when shared liquidity will finally go live in the state, but that could happen by next year given the recent developments.