PokerStars Ontario’s Inaugural ONCOOP Awards Nearly $2m

Summary

• ONCOOP ended up awarding $1.94 million in total prizes, surpassing its guarantee by 13.5%
• The series ended successfully despite multiple technical problems
• Ontario native and PokerStars Ambassador Arlie Shaban had a great run, winning five titles

PokerStars Ontario achieved another major tournament series success in its inaugural Ontario Championship of Online Poker (ONCOOP).

The huge turnout meant the series managed to smash its guarantees by 13.5%, despite multiple technical issues experienced throughout the festival.

Technical Issues and Multiple Overlays

The original ONCOOP schedule featured 66 events, each with High and Low editions. For buy-ins of between $5 and $2,000, players would compete for guarantees ranging from $770 to $200,000.

However, not all of the events took place as planned, as some of them were either cancelled or rescheduled due to technical problems. Out of the 132 tournaments on the schedule, only 122 ran, which meant the guarantees on offer also dropped from $2 million to $1.7 million. ONCOOP still managed to attract enough players to surpass that figure.

The Pokerstars festival recorded multiple overlays, with 23 tournaments falling short of their guarantees. The $500 buy-in, $200K GTD Main Event – High had the largest overlay of $32,440. Even the Low edition of the Main Event which cost just $50 to enter and drew the biggest field (724 entries) was unable to hit its $40K guarantee.

However, the other tournaments drew decent turnouts to make up for the $77,000 total overlay recorded throughout the series. Among the best performers were the multi-flight Phased Events with entry fees of $10 and $50. They attracted 2,100 in combined entries, enough to smash their guarantees.

Event #17-L: $10 buy-in PKO also performed well, attracting a 550-entry field to generate $5,000 in total prize pool, so did Event #14-H: $2,000 Super Tuesday High Roller which created the festival’s second-biggest prize pool of $80,200 after recording 42 entries.

Overall, ONCOOP pulled in a total of 27,754 entries across 17 days to create $1.94 million in total prize pool, exceeding its guarantee by 13.5%.

PokerStars Ambassador Arlie Shaban Among Biggest Winners

Among the biggest winners at the series was PokerStars Team Pro Arlie “Prince Pablo” Shaban who took down five ONCOOP tournaments, three of which he won in just two days. All in all, the Ontario poker player and streamer recorded a total of 15 final table finishes throughout the festival, earning him $17,000 in total winnings.

PokerStars Ontario will now prepare to run its next tournament series as the Canadian poker market competition intensifies with the launch of WSOP Ontario powered by the GGPoker software.