The online poker market in New Jersey hasn’t been nearly as effective as players, operators and regulators had hoped up to this point. Much of that can be blamed on the inefficiency of the Garden State’s geolocation technicians, software developers and marketers. With the virtually guaranteed entrance of PokerStars looming in the not-too-distant future, time is running short to grab the attention of the online poker playing masses. With that surely in mind, the Party Borgata Network is taking a huge leap in the right direction with the introduction of a massive tournament series that is promising a minimum $1 million prize pool.
Deemed the Garden State Super Series – GSSS for short – the online poker tournament will run for two weeks starting on September 7th. The schedule has been gracefully designed to work around the land-based operator’s star attraction, the Borgata Poker Open. Much like the most renowned international online poker series, the GSSS will feature three tiers of buy-ins for each event on the roster; a low buy-in, medium buy-in and high buy-in with scaling guaranteed prize pools.
The Garden State Super Series is by far the most elaborate online series slated to occur in New Jersey since the market launched in November of last year. The tournaments will be networked across both of Party Borgata’s poker sites, Party Poker and Borgata Poker, and due to the alignment with state’s most prestigious live poker series, the Borgata Poker Open, there should be plenty of interested players in town to avoid any substantial overlays.
This isn’t the online poker network’s first attempt at delivering a massive online poker series on the east coast. The New Jersey Championship of Online Poker (NJCOP) that took place in April was a valiant effort, but fell well short of expectations due to some major scheduling errors; namely the late start time of its largest events and less than appealing range of buy-ins. It appears the online poker network has finally learned its lesson as the GSSS features a lot more of what the state’s players have been begging for.
Each of the 2 events scheduled to take place over the two week period comes with a triad of buy-in levels to suit low, mid and high stakes players. The cheapest tournament incurs a mere $5 buy-in, while the most expense will cost $1,000 to partake in. Such a wide scale is common of online poker networks that draw significant traffic. While Party Borgata is only averaging 150-200 players, by offering a series akin to larger networks, it could draw a much greater deal of attention and potentially drive the operator into that higher class. That’s the perceived goal, anyways.
Most of the weekday events are slated for 7-8pm start times, but with many 6-max and freezeouts on the schedule, they shouldn’t last until the wee hours of the morning like the NJCOP. The larger weekend events have slightly earlier start times as well. Although the $1,000,000 GTD online poker tournament series does have some continued drawbacks, it’s a lot more affable than Party Borgata has been known for in the past. For now, the reaction from the NJ online poker community has been a positive one.