by Mario Alfonsi | Published on Jul 23, 2021 | Updated on Jul 23, 2021
The past weekend saw PokerStars slashing the regular buy-ins of its major Sunday games by half across all markets in the United States as part of “Half Price Sunday” promotion.
American players came in droves to PokerStars’ New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania sites to take advantage of the bargain prices. The action took place on Sunday, July 18.
Half Price Sunday received an overwhelming response from players, with the tournaments exceeding all of their targets. Some even ended up awarding more than 50% their guaranteed prize pool.
PokerStars US Markets
Let’s take a look at the results in each of PokerStars’ three US markets.
New Jersey
The featured Sunday games covered by the Half Price sale were Sunday Warm-Up, Sunday Special, and Sunday Supersonic. In NJ, all three tournaments pulled in a total of 628 entries, generating a total prize pool of $36,384. This represents a 37% increase from their initial guarantees, the highest jump across all three markets.
But since tournament buy-ins in NJ were relatively higher compared to MI and PA, the prize per buy-in value sits at just under $224, the lowest among the three.
Pennsylvania
While PA recorded the lowest increase in total prizes awarded to winners, surpassing guarantees by just 7.84%, local players were able to get huge value, as they enjoyed over $1,000 in prizes for each dollar paid in buy-ins (higher than NJ and MI). All three featured games had total buy-ins of $90, and attracted a total of 2,571 entries. This created $94,360 in total prize pool.
Michigan
Based on all indicators, the MI market sits right in the middle, with its featured Half Price Sunday games attracting 1,583 entries to generate $48,000 in total prize money, 18.8% higher than their initial guarantees. MI players were also able to benefit from $634 in prize pool value for every dollar spent on buy-in.
All in all, the featured Half Price Sunday games for each market attracted a total of 4,800 entries, and ended up awarding $162,000 in total prizes. This means the tournaments managed to surpass their targets by nearly 16%, with players enjoying almost $550 in prizes per buy-in value.
PokerStars’ strategy of throwing a half-price weekend party has been a massive success, even when bigger tournaments are currently taking place at other online poker sites, such as the WSOP Online Bracelet series on WSOP.com. This only shows PokerStars’ capability of keeping the momentum and interest among players despite tough competition.
