US-Facing Bodog Skin Bovada Announces Golden Spade Poker Open
United States-based online poker players have plenty of tournament series action coming up in the near future. Among the festivities in store is the Bodog Poker Network’s Golden Spade Poker Open, a doubled series of events (“Contender Series” and “Championship Series”) aiming to offer something for the vast majority of online players.
The Golden Spade Poker Open, or just GSPO, was announced this week over at Bodog mouthpiece site CalvinAyre.com. A complete schedule for the GSPO has yet to be published, but it will run September 9th through November 3rd, with a combined guarantee for both the Contender Series (lower buy-ins) and Championship Series (higher buy-ins) of $1.5 million.
Each of the two halves of the series consists of 51 events — an opening kickoff event, 48 side events, and then a Main and Second Chance event in each series in early November to wrap up the whole affair.
The GSPO’s Contender Series events offers a total of $250,000 in guaranteed prize pools, while the Championship Series has a total of $1,250,000 in guarantees, including $300,000 guaranteed in the GSPO Main Event alone. That tourney’s winner will receive at least $58,500.
One question that needs to be resolved is the scheduling; the CA piece that at least three events will be run each day, though for right now, unless separate “Second Chance” tourneys will be offered in conjunction with each and every side event, it looks as though only two events each day are presently scheduled — one each in the Contender and Championship divisions.
Bodog has also announced that at least one event each day will start at or around 10 a.m. Eastern Time (ET), to offer an “Asian friendly” opportunity for Bodog’s growing player market in that region. Nonetheless, the majority of the series’ participants are likely to be playing via Bodog’s Bovada skin, from the US.
Also yet to be announced are the specific formats to be played, although the significant majority are likely to be full-ring no-limit hold’em tourneys. Expect Bodog/Bovada to toss in some rebuy events, along with short-handed events and shootouts, and a bit of Omaha as well. The series might even include one or two fixed-limit hold’em events, since Bodog occasionally includes that format in its regular daily tournament schedule.
Less likely to be included in the series is any Zoom format, Zoom being Bodog’s much-belated fast-fold poker format. Bodog was at least two years behind the curve in developing and releasing Zoom, as we mentioned in a recent post, given the format’s growing popularity on competing sites and networks. It’s possible a Zoom tourney or two will be on the schedule, but don’t expect it.
With competing poker series also on tap at two other US-facing networks, Merge and the Winning Poker Network, the coming months will be the busiest time for American online players in recent memory.
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