PokerStars Championship Sochi! $2.5 million guaranteed in Main Event!
Poker gods have heard our prayers and sent us gift of PokerStars Championship Sochi! We’ve barely had time to enjoy new records of EAPT nor discussed enough an upcoming tournaments with million dollars guaranteed prize fund (held in Sochi) before getting an official information from PokerStars: in May, Russia will hold the most expensive series in history!
That is not an exaggeration!
Buy-in of the Main Event will be $5,590 or 318,000 rubles. This sounds scary but is big poker. Guaranteed prize fund of the main event is corresponding – 150 million rubles or $2.5 million.
We really believed, bought a bunch of votive candles and realized that Sochi has to explode the poker market of CIS. We believed but were afraid to jinx it. We’re not afraid anymore as it has already happened!
Recently PokerStars Pro teams was joined by the Russian highroller Igor Kurganov. We haven’t fully realized this step back then and now got the puzzle in pieces!
Where and when
Dates: May, 20 – 31, after all the major holidays in May (International Workers' Day, Victory Day) but right in time of the vacation of many. The place of residence is still “Sochi Casino", Krasnaya Polyana, Gorky-Gorod.
PokerStars Championship Sochi Schedule
The official schedule looks like this:
- No Limit Hold’em: May 20-22 - RUB 618,000 (approx. $10,850)
- PokerStars National Championship: May 20-25 – RUB 66,000 (approx. $1,160)
- PokerStars Cup: May 20-25 - RUB 19,800 (approx. $350)
- PokerStars Championship Super High Roller: May 23-25 - RUB 3,000,000 (approx. $52,700)
- PokerStars National High Roller: May 24-25 - RUB 132,000 (approx. $2,320)
- PokerStars Championship Main Event: May 25-31 - RUB 318,000 (approx. $5,590)
- No Limit Hold’em Single Day: May 26 - RUB 1,530,000 (approx. $26,880)
- PokerStars Championship PLO High Roller: May 27-28 – RUB 618,000 (approx. $10,860)
- PokerStars Championship High Roller: May 29-31 – RUB 618,000 (approx. $10,860)
- PokerStars Open: May 29-31 – RUB 13,200 (approx. $230)
Live Boeree, Bertran “Elky” Grospellier, Chris Moneymaker and Igor Kurganov announced their arrival to Sochi. They are certainly not the only guests at the historical event!
Satellites
There are plenty of satellites. All of them take place at PokerStars of course. Look for the tab “Tournaments” then filter by type – "Satellite". Then put “Sochi” into the search tab and you will get the list of relevant Satellites, like this:
Buy-in begin from $0.33 in rebuy tournaments. Nothing special, the selection is huge. One could steadily go to his goal from the chip satellites to the more expensive ones or begin right away from the expensive ones.
What’s also relevant, PokerStars launched the special Spin-n-Go tournaments with $8 buy-ins, where jackpot is replaced with PokerStars Championship Sochi package worth $7,500!
Player’s reaction
Most of the people were extremely shocked to say the least. We so got used to the tough conditions, narrowing the poker borders, pressure of the authorities and regulators, we now see this event like some sort of a miracle.
“F*ck!” – is the most capacious commentary which describes the reaction of Russian-speaking poker community
People also write this:
“Affordable buy-ins available for everyone,” – they’re being sarcastic. Buy-ins really look frightening, especially in ruble equivalent.
“Fedor Holz, you can’t beat this field.” – a nice commentary. It would be fun to watch how our players will compete at international arena with much tougher opponents.
More interesting and useful articles from the world of poker you can read in our blog. Also search for poker clubs in the country or city, get to know about upcoming poker tournaments or cash games at PokerDiscover.com portal.
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