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PokerStars’ Lee Jones, Bryan Slick Talk WCOOP $102,000 Super High Roller
- Updated: September 7, 2016
This Sunday, September 11, 2016, will go down in the online poker history books, if there were such a thing. At 12:30 Eastern U.S. Time (18:30 Central European Time), the biggest ever buy-in tournament commences on PokerStars. Players are going to buy in for a whopping $102,000 for the 8-Max Super High Roller event number 28 on the World Championship of Online Poker schedule. With a guaranteed $2,000,000 prize pool, it’s the second biggest event on the schedule, only outdone by the Main Event.
Last year, the Super High Roller format debuted online as part of WCOOP 2015 with a $51,000 buy-in event. Ben “Ben86” Tollerene took down the tournament, beating a field of 46 to walk away a $616,518.34 winner after striking a deal with Jose “Cejakas14” Angel Latorre (second, $560,412.13) and Nikita “fish2013” Bodyakovskiy (third, $594,069.53).
We sat down with Head of Poker Communications at PokerStars Lee Jones and Senior Manager of Online Championships at PokerStars Bryan Slick to get all the details on this event.
After the $51,000 Super High Roller during SCOOP last year, what made you decide to have a $102,000 this time?Bryan Slick: When we put the $51,000 out last year, we did so with the intention of upping the ante in 2016, given there was success with the $51K and demand to go higher in 2016. The goal is to continue to push the envelope with the highest buy-in tournament in online history, to have an event that is extremely high-profile and that brings the elite stakes players out to play.
We ran an extensive survey of nosebleed stakes players to determine what they wanted and the $102,000 Super High Roller and $21,000 6-Max Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller emerged.
Lee Jones: The survey was sent to everyone that played a $10,000 or bigger event during TCOOP, SCOOP or WCOOP in the last year. We got 450 responses and those indicated there was really a demand for a $100,000 event. Unsurprisingly, the next popular choice was a PLO High Roller.
Were even bigger buy ins considered?Slick: We considered $200,000, but only briefly.
Jones: We do what the players want us to do in these kinds of matters. That’s the business we’re in. We did the survey after last year’s event and we did what the players got back to us. I’m sure we’ll do a survey after this one. If the players say ‘Let’s do a million dollar one!,’ we probably are going to say no though. I kind of doubt we would do an event that big.
This is the largest event in online poker’s history if you’re looking at the buy-in. I think that we’re uniquely qualified to organize such an event and we’re incredibly excited to be running it. The option to be able to run the biggest buy-in event in the history of online poker is a big deal to us.
Will a Super High Roller be a fixture on the WCOOP …
