The WSOP.com Online Super Circuit just ended, so WSOP.com figured it was as good of a time as any to start up another big tournament series. And the Spring Online Championships is much, much bigger. Starting today, April 1st, and running through May 3rd, the Spring Online Championships feature more than 100 events and over $4 million in guaranteed prize pools.
The schedule is a bit strange. There are technically exactly 100 events – “Spring OC” #1 through #100 – but those do not start until this coming Sunday, April 5th. Before those there are a dozen “Spring OC Warmup” events. Honestly, I can’t really see any difference between the twelve this week and the 100 after that.
The Spring Online Championships Main Event is on the final day of the series, Sunday, May 3rd. The buy-in is $525 and it has a $300,000 guarantee. It is also a re-entry tourney.
The rest of the Sundays of the series include a Sunday Special Edition event which costs either $215 or $320 to enter and has a guaranteed prize pool of at least $100,000.
The other special days of the Spring Online Championships are April 26th and May 3rd (well, I guess May 3rd already had significance, as it has been mentioned twice previously), as they are the days of the two Player Appreciation tournaments. In these $100 buy-in, $100,000 guaranteed tournaments, 16 players will receive random cash prizes. Two will get $500, four will win $250, and ten will receive $100. Player appreciation!
The WSOP.com Spring Online Championships is open to players in New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada, still three of just four states with legal, regulated online poker rooms. Pennsylvania has online poker, but PokerStars is the only site up and running. A couple other states have legalized online poker, but no sites have launched yet.
Two Spring OC Warmup events ran today, the first day of the Championships. In fact, as of about 11:20 ET, they are still going. The $30 buy-in, $25,000 guaranteed No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack has attracted 758 players, with 1,494 re-buys and 340 add-ons. The guarantee was absolutely destroyed – the prize pool is over $70,000.
The other April Fool’s Day event is the $100 buy-in, $20,000 guaranteed No-Limit Hold’em tourney with re-entries. This one brought in 330 players and 168 re-entries for a prize pool of almost $46,000. It looks like WSOP.com won’t be ponying up overlays in the Spring Online Championship. If there is a silver lining to everybody having to stay home because of the coronavirus pandemic, I suppose this could be one of them.
