PartyPoker Live Tour Announcement

(Photo: Worldpokertour.com)

As the EPT is retired and rebranded as the more international PokerStars Championships, the first leg of which recently wrapped up in the sunny Bahamas, it looks as though PartyPoker are stepping into the ring with their own set of live, branded tournaments.

The tournaments are featuring heavily Party’s satellite schedule allowing you to win your way in for as little as $0.01. This is being coupled with the kind of live / online integration that was trialed by tournaments at Nottingham’s fromDusk Till Dawn in the past, with some day ones played online.

Some of the tourneys also introduce the idea of the ‘phase one’ in which you can play a sort of day zero with lower buy-in and fewer chips, your stacks then carrying over into day one.

The PartyPoker Live Tour website is a little tangled at the moment, with a fifth event still to be announced. So here’s what you need to know if you’re hoping to play in any of the announced tournaments, each of which will have multiple Day 1s and allow for multiple reentries.

(Photo: Partypoker.com)

Stop One - Grand Prix Ireland, Cork

The first stop will be Ireland in February at the Macau Casino Club in Cork. Broken up into two stages, with online day ones starting on the 16th February and the live days starting on the 23rd. It looks like this one, like the rest will allow for multiple reentries.

There will be a guaranteed €100,000 prize pool at the Grand Prix and if you don’t manage to satellite in via Party Poker or the live satellites the Macau Club will be hosting, then you can still buy-in for €340.

Stop Two - PartyPoker MILLIONS, Nottingham

This is the first of the tournaments with a Phase One, and the biggest of the tournaments overall. The guaranteed prize pool of £6,000,000 will be split with at least £1,000,000 going to first place.

For £550 you can play a phase one online at Party or live at Dusk Till Dawn. You’ll start with T100,000 in chips and play nineteen half hour levels.

Once the phase one’s are over the players carry their chips into day one, where they’ll be joined by people buying in directly for £5,300 and getting T1,000,000. Phase ones are already running, while day ones start around mid-April, continuing until day two on the 23rd April.

(Photo: Partypoker.com)

Stop Three - Grand Prix Canada, Montreal

If your budget doesn’t extend to the £5,300 buy-in for the Millions, or if you live on the wrong side of the Atlantic, there’s still some Partying to be done in the Americas, starting with the Grand Prix Canada hosted by the Playground Poker Club, Montreal.

With a direct buy-in of CA$220, the Grand Prix will have a guaranteed prize pool of $500,000. This tourney doesn’t look like it will be doing an online component or a phase one, so you’ll need to actually be in Montreal for kick-off on the 27th April.

Stop Four - PartyPoker Million North America, Montreal

The 2017 tour then rounds off in May with another trip to the Playground Poker Club. This will be using the Nottingham Millions format with a CA$5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool generated by phase one buy-ins of CA$550 and day one buy-ins of CA$5,300.

Precise dates for this one are still TBA.

Online vs. Offline

This sort of online/offline hybrid with the phase one adding mixed buy-ins, seems like an interesting idea. It might undermine the idea of poker tourneys as a sport where isonomy is key. But it seems like it might be a good format for getting lower buy-in players into bigger tournaments game, perhaps getting some of the online grinders out from under the artificial lighting of their screens and into the artificial lighting of the casino.