1. 2 tournament types (Heats and Finals). The Stadium Series runs from July 5-26.The tournament series features over €3M in guaranteed prize pools. The event includes daily Heat tournaments and Sunday Finals.Players are also able to compete in the €250 Stadium Series Grand Final, on July 26, which features €500,000 guaranteed.
2. Still, Stadium Series will go down in history as one of the costliest PokerStars, or perhaps anyone, has ever run, with over $2 million in overlays for a series that was supported by an additional $2 million in ticket giveaways.
3. The creativity of Pokerstars when choosing names for their events is visible to the naked eye. Let’s talk about other features of the «Stadium Series». Key information about the new Pokerstars series: There are 102 events in the tournament schedule of the Stadium Series; The start is scheduled for July 5, and the series will end on August 2.

Stadium Series Tuesday update: Lena900 get his win as Grand Finals near conclusion. Kristian ‘BlueDucky45’ Leger pays off debt and buys kayaks with $48,916 satellite run in Stadium Series. 3 months ago ‘Aleks Better’ and Parker ‘tonkaaaa’ Talbot earn second titles in final weekend of Stadium Series. Link your PokerStars and Twitch accounts to be eligible for Stadium Series ticket giveaways, beginning July 2. $10K in tickets will be given away daily for watching streams on Twitch.

The absence of live poker tournaments – on the usual major scale – called out for online poker replacements. Players would not be spending June and July in Las Vegas and then August traveling and winding down from that summer of intense poker. Online poker sites stepped up with some massive online poker series that would keep players busy.

Online poker also allows players to quarantine. Poker players can certainly handle a stay-at-home directive, a plus in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, if also provided a plethora of tournament options and big guarantees.

In early May, the World Poker Tour and its online partner PartyPoker announced the WPT World Online Championships set to begin on July 1. Nearly one month later, the World Series of Poker and its partners GGPoker and US-based WSOP.com revealed the WSOP 2020 Online with 85 bracelet events beginning on July 1.

Meanwhile, PokerStars ran its Summer Series this month, which ended this week with little fanfare. But perhaps the site was focusing its efforts on its next summer announcement, the Stadium Series with $50 million in guarantees across 102 events and $2 million in free tickets.

Fresh Idea for Stadium Series

PokerStars could have announced a standard series to compete with the WPT and WSOP, something akin to WCOOP and SCOOP. The site could have tried to compete with the $100 million in guarantees and offer complicated 500-tournament schedules.

Instead, PokerStars created the new Stadium Series.

Introducing Stadium Series, a brand new competition coming to PokerStars this summer, with $50 million guaranteed and $2m of added value. Here's how to take part: https://t.co/NXw83AFrpGpic.twitter.com/raVoxytNGH

— PokerStarsBlog (@PokerStarsBlog) June 22, 2020

Some of it is standard, in that it will offer 102 events and different buy-in levels to appeal to a range of players with different bankrolls. The Stadium Series will guarantee $50 million.

The unique features, however, begin with a series schedule that increases in buy-ins and guarantees as it moves forward. There will be daily heats and weekly finals, all leading up to a Grand Final. Commentators will lead broadcasts of tournament action, some of which will offer viewers the chance to see hole cards on a delay.

Oh, and PokerStars will be awarding $2 million worth of tickets and tournament seats.

The series is set to run from Sunday, July 5, through Sunday, August 2 with $50 million in guarantees and 102 tournaments. But the excitement is in the details.

Weekly Heats and Sunday Finals

The new Stadium Series offers events that serve as individual tournaments but can also be viewed as weekly heats into Sunday finals. And the buy-ins and guarantees increase weekly through to the Grand Final on the last weekend, which will be a $5,200 buy-in Grand Final with $5 million guaranteed.

PokerStars provided this example of the progression of action:

Weekly heat event winners will go on to the Sunday finals, though players can also buy-in directly to those finals. And PokerStars will be adding Sunday tickets to the top finishing positions in low-tiered and medium-tiered events each week. And each player who reach the final table of a weekly final will receive a ticket to the $5,200 version of the Grand Final.

Then there is the Grand Final on August 2:

–$55 NLHE with $1M GTD

–$530 NLHE with $2M GTD

–$5,200 NLHE with $5M GTD

Players will be able to begin winning tickets to the weekly heats via the regular non-series daily tournaments in the days leading up to the start of the Stadium Series. There will be $500K worth of those tickets awarded.

Additionally, there is a Fast Track for players wanting to compete in the Grand Final via daily freeroll tournaments, which will award 170 seats to the Main Event.

Twitch fans will also be able to win tickets by watching players streaming on the official PokerStars Twitch page. The daily Twitch drops will add up to approximately $10K worth of tickets each day in the run-up to the series.

Catch the Action Online

Joe Stapleton and James Hartigan will host Twitch broadcasts from July 13 through the end of the Stadium Series to cover the later stages of the tournaments each day.

Exciting series coming this summer. I will be doing some commentary with @Stapes and @J_Hartigan if they let me in the booth. https://t.co/L5gDiKSZtR

— Chris Moneymaker (@CMONEYMAKER) June 22, 2020

The new highlight of those Twitch streams will be the ability for viewers to see hole cards. Obviously, the livestream will run on a short delay to do so, but fans will be able to watch online poker as they do live events on delays.

PokerStars Managing Director Severin Rasset noted the desire to give players something different and unique, something in which more players can participate. “It’s a unique summer, and we know many of our players like ourselves miss poker. So, we wanted to bring the entertainment and flair of a live event with our cards-up coverage and really put our players at the heart of all the action.”

Qualifiers began running this week via the Fast Track promotion, High Stakes Poker Challenge, specialized Spin & Gos, and via Twitch streamer giveaways.

Stadium Series Pokerstars Game

What About Ring-Fenced Jurisdictions?

The Stadium Series for Italy will award a total of €3 million in guarantees. The option for players in the combined area of France, Spain, and Portugal will share in the €5 million guarantees.

There is no word yet as to the possibility that the New Jersey and/or Pennsylvania PokerStars sites will run a version of the series in July or August.

Related Articles

PokerStarspaid out more than $52 million during the Stadium Series Heats, Weekly Finals, Grand Finals and the handful of side events. That figure is set to rise with the creation of the Stadium Series After Party on August 16 that has more than $1 million guaranteed.

The $5,200 buy-in Stadium Series Grand Final took place under the watchful eyes of the PokerNews Live Reporting team.

Our team was on hand to watch the $5 million guaranteed $5,200 Freezeout Grand Final – High end in a three-way chop with Maxime “Daghemuneguu” Chilaud finish third for $570,220, Vlada “Vlada2108” Stojanovic bust second for $553,932 and Fernando “fviana” Viana collect the $721,235 top prize.

You can read all about the massive Stadium Grand Finals in their own separate article, here.

Look at the size of these gigantic prizes!

There were some other massive scores enjoyed by players from around the world since we last caught up with the goings-on in the series. Here are some of the highlights.

Scott Margereson Wins the $5,200 NLHE 6-Max

Scott “Aggro Santos” Margereson turned $5,200 into a cool $119,483 by triumphing in the Stadium Series Heat 26-H: $5,200 NLHE 6-Max event. The field, as you’d expect, was ridiculously stacked, especially when the tournament progressed to the final table.

Everyone here was guaranteed almost $32,000 for their efforts and the pay jumps were quite substantial. By the time Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz crashed out in third place, the prize money swelled to $70,429.

Heads-up pitted Margereson against Simon “C. Darwin2” Mattsson and it was Margereson who came out of the one-on-one battle unscathed. Victory weighed in at $119,483 with Mattson banking a still-impressive $91,733.

“tonkaaaa” Banks $216,000!

Talbot Wins Another Stadium Series Event

Parker “tonkaaaa” Talbot helped himself to $261,489 in the $2,100 Weekly Final last week and went on to take down the Stadium Series Heat 29-H: $5,200 NLHE Progressive Knockout for an additional $151,916, with bounties included.

Talbot locked horns at the final table with the likes of Rui “RuiNF” Ferreira, and Mike “SirWatts” Watson before taking on Thomas “WushuTM” Muehloecker heads-up for the title. Talbot brushed aside Muehloecker and resigned him to a consolation prize worth $77,853.

Astedt Takes Home $230K

Niklas “Lena900” Astedt is one of the most feared and respected tournament grinders of all-time. He added to his already glowing reputation, if that’s even possible, by winning the Stadium Series Heat 30-H: $10,300 NLHE event.

Exactly 100 players bought in and they all now lay in Astedt’s wake. The final table was packed tight with the best poker talent in the world. Nobody shone as brightly as Astedt, however, and he secured another $230,434 after sending Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet home in second-place, which saw Van Fleet pad his bankroll with $176,979. Just look at this final table and its payouts.

You don’t need to spend a lot to win big at PokerStars

Germany’s “TheRealKnossi” Smashes Twitch Poker Viewers Record

Nobody really expected someone to break Lex Veldhuis’ Twitch viewer record other than Veldhuis himself. The Dutch PokerStars Pro drew in as many as 50,000 viewers during his deep run in the SCOOP Main Event.

That record was blown out of the water when Frank “Knueppel” Stockhaus made a deep run in a $1,000 Stadium Series event. “Knueppel” was railed by Jens “TheRealKnossi” Knossalla, a German entertainer with more than one million Instagram followers.

Pokerstars Stadium Series Live Stream

“Knueppel” managed to hit a miraculous river twice on the final table bubble before going on to finish in second place for a huge $117,425. Their viewers topped more than 92,000 as they railed them to Knueppel’s largest career score! That is going to take some beating!

Massive congrats to @TheRealKnossi for breaking my TwitchPoker viewer-record. Actually… he smashed it, from 58.53… https://t.co/kbDCVOhFP5

— Lex Veldhuis (@LexVeldhuis)

Get Involved in the Stadium Series After Party!

PokerStars has created a quartet of After Party Phased events to bring the curtain down on the Stadium Series.

These have buy-ins of $1.10, $11, $109, and $105 with guaranteed prize pools worth $100,000, $250,000, $500,000, and $1,000,000 waiting to be won. There are plenty of Phases to enter, survive your Phase 1 by reaching the final 10% of the field to progress to the Phase 2 where the juicy prize pools are awarded.

Stadium Series Pokerstars 2020

_{The Stars Group is a majority shareholder in Oddschecker Global Media, the parent company of PokerNews.}