This week’s poker news delivers a variety of headlines, from revenue reports to tournament announcements to big wins. We’ll start with the financial numbers as the big three online poker sites have reported their revenues for 2018 and the results are somewhat surprising.
888poker Struggling as partypoker Dominates
The three big poker sites – partypoker, PokerStars and 888Poker – each released their financials from the last year and the numbers paint an interesting picture. While 888poker is lagging behind in this three-horse race, partypoker is on the rise.
888poker has to be somewhat concerned as they saw a 37% drop year-over-year in poker revenues. Of course, poker is growing a little slower than other gambling verticals, but this is something that’s going to sound alarm bells off in the company. That’ll be especially worrying when you compare it to partypoker, which saw its online revenues jump by 42%. As a result, it’s overtaken 888poker for the No. 2 spot among the largest poker rooms on the net.
As for PokerStars, they were slow and steady, seeing a slight 1.1% increase on revenues year-over-year.
Details For Venetian DeepStack Championship Poker Series Released
The Venetian hotel on the Las Vegas Strip will once again host its popular DeepStacks series. The dates have been announced as the festivities will start on May 13th and run through July 28th. In total, there will be a whopping 116 events through that 10-week period with more than $24 million in prize pools.
The highlight tournaments will be the two-day multi-flight $400 and $600 buy-in tournaments, which will have prize pool guarantees of $100,000 and higher. In total, there are a total of seven separate events that will have a prize pool of at least $1 million guaranteed.
The Venetian has been conscious of having buy-ins of every size, so that players of all types can compete. And it looks like they covered the bases this year.
Eriquezzo Wins WSOPC Event At Harrah’s Atlantic City
Ryan Eriquezzo is no stranger to World Series of Poker rings and he’s just picked up another one. Eriquezzo won the World Series of Poker Circuit stop at Harrah’s Atlantic City, which now makes it four rings in his collection.
There were 357 people in the field for the main $1700 Main Event. He navigated his way through the crowd to conquer the top spot and take home the first-place prize of $124,397.
In total, there were 36 paid places in the tournament, but Eriquezzo was the only player to collect six figures. Denis Gnidash was second and won $76,904, Kurt Lichtman was third and won $56,103, Richard Hanheide was four and won $41,613 and Ryan McKnight was fifth and won $31,348.
It was mostly smooth sailing for Eriquezzo, who went into the final table with the chip lead. He had previously won this event back in 2012 when there were 635 players in the field. For his career, Eriquezzo has now crossed the $1.5 million mark in live tournament winnings.