PartyPoker is making good on its intentions to offer the biggest online poker tournaments in the business, announcing this week that its next Powerfest series, scheduled for September 3 and running for just over three weeks, will have $35 million in guaranteed prize pools over 330 events.
That represents a 75 percent boost to the guarantees on the previous Powerfest earlier this year, and almost four times the guarantees invested in last September’s festival.
The operator has calculated that the average guarantee on each tournament is worth $100,000…and this is just two years on from the launch of the Powerfest series, which had 80 events and guarantees worth a total of just $2.5 million.
Powerfest will have competition from rivals in the popular autumn period for tournaments; PokerStars has just revealed the outline for its latest World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), and 888Poker is rumoured to be planning another edition of its XL Series.
PartyPoker appears to enjoying a resurgence in popularity following the introduction of a new rewards system that appeals to ordinary poker grinders, cuts in rake, more weekly tournaments and better interaction with the player community through social media and forums. This may be the result of its consultancy contract with Bryan Slick, a former PokerStars tournaments manager.
PartyPoker has yet to release full details of the events in the enlarged Powerfest, although it has hinted that these will include twelve major championship events, with ten of them carrying $1 million dollars or more in guarantees.