The festive season – and especially the milestone hand promotion, enabled Pokerstars NJ (New Jersey) to achieve its highest cash game levels yet, according to the publication Online Poker Report.
Pokerstars NJ launched in March last year and produced results initially thought by many as disappointing in the New Jersey regulated online poker market. However, over a 10-day period at Christmas the Milestone Hands promo kicked in with a vengeance, awarding players dealt into every 5,000th hand with $30 dollars in cash. The winner of the hand received an added bonus of $30.
Despite the low denominations, the formula clearly worked well, with 7-day average liquidity on PokerStars up from 122 pre-promo to 209 when it closed on December 28 (figures from the independent online poker monitor Pokerscout).
That’s a 71.3 percent improvement matched only in February last year when WSOP NJ achieved similar hikes in liquidity in a smaller market.
And Pokerstars excluded the fast-fold Zoom format and Heads Up tables from the promo.
The festive season also saw boosts in tournament activity at Pokerstars NJ, which temporarily increased its top guaranteed prize pools by 20 percent in the Christmas Festival Big Monday series of five competitions on December 26, attracting significant numbers of players and ensuring that the guarantees were well exceeded…in two cases by more than 50 percent.