It only took a decade but it’s official: the PokerStars saga has final come to an end. That’s our lead story in this week’s poker news of the week.
PokerStars Pays Kentucky $300 Million Over Lawsuit
The massive lawsuit between PokerStars and the state of Kentucky has finally come to a conclusion. The parent company of PokerStars, otherwise known as Flutter, announced that they have agreed to pay $300 million in order to settle the lawsuit with Kentucky. They originally owed them $100 million but had to pay another $200 million in order to get this ordeal closed up.
This was a decade long battle between these two sides. In fact, the Kentucky Supreme Court ordered PokerStars to pay the state roughly $1.3 billion dollars. Luckily, they didn’t have to pay that much and worked it down to a price much more reasonable.
Before coming to this agreement, Flutter was attempting to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, they were able to work with other representatives and got this matter dealt with on their own. PokerStars could potentially work their way into new markets now that this lawsuit is out of the way.
Multiple Caesars Entertainment Poker Rooms Planned to Close
Poker players aren’t going to have as many venues to go to in Las Vegas when the 2021 World Series of Poker comes around. That’s because there are going to be multiple poker rooms shut down for an entire month because they are coinciding with the WSOP.
The poker room at the Flamingo Las Vegas and Bally’s will close down from September 26th to November 26th. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise because there were already rumors about potential closures for Caesars-owned poker rooms. With this move, employees who are going to be helping out the WSOP and won’t be causing staff shortages at these properties.
There are only three remaining Caesar’s poker rooms operating since the COVID-19 pandemic started to creep into our lives. They chose to shut down the Rio poker room for good and later shut down the Planet Hollywood poker room before reopening it with limited hours. Outside of Bally’s and the Flamingo, Caesars Palace is the only other poker room left fully standing.
Golden Nugget Grand Poker Series Shifts to Fall Of 2021
The Grand Poker Series is making its return and for the first time in its history, it will be running during the fall. The Golden Nugget will be hosting the massively popular series and should have a total of 50 exciting events across 21 days of action. The first event will take place on September 28th and the last will be on October 18th. The biggest event of the festival is the $500,000 guaranteed $600 buy-in no-limit hold’em championship event on October 7th.
This huge championship event will have three starting flights with all players starting with 25,000 tournament chips. It should end up reeling in a ridiculous number of entries. In 2019 this event drew in a total of 1,313 total entries.
The series will have more than $1.2 million in prize money across these events and the buy-ins range from $100 to $600.