PokerStars Sportsbook Offers Odds on Most Expensive Online Tourney Ever

PokerStars opens book on WCOOP event

PokerStars’ Super High Rollers WCOOP event will be the first online poker tournament with its own betting market. (Image: AP)

The PokerStars Sportsbook will be taking bets on the winner of its forthcoming WCOOP Super High Rollers event, the first time that an operator has offered a book on the outcome of an online poker tournament.

The $51,000 buy-in Super High Rollers event, which kicks off this Sunday, 20th September, is set to be the priciest buy-in of any online tournament ever.

PokerStars is currently offering odds on 38 players, with Daniel Negreanu and Jason Mercier leading the pack, each as 12/1 (+1200) favorites.

Customers are able to place bets to win, or each way at the PokerStars sportsbook is available to players on the .com, .eu, and .uk sites within certain jurisdictions.

“We’re excited to offer customers the opportunity to bet on online poker tournaments for the first time and the WCOOP $51,000 Super High Roller event is the perfect place to start,” said Stephen Fisk, managing director of sports betting at PokerStars.

“It’s already the most talked about online tournament of the year, and with the added spice that having a bet on it brings, fans and players from around the world can rail their favourite player and win money even if they don’t have a spare $51k lying around.”

Long Odds and Tiny Edges

Amaya rolled out its sports book on April 1st this year, four months after it introduced casino gaming to its product offering.

The move was divisive, with many players feeling that Amaya was diluting the PokerStars product and turning its back on poker in favor of profit.

But what about gambling on poker? Well, long odds and tiny edges between players make it a bit of a lottery.

Plus, it’s impossible to know until the last minute how many runners the tournament will have, a fact which greatly affects each player’s odds of winning. There’s also a fat house edge.

But the Super High Rollers event is unlikely to get very many runners, because it represents bad value to any player but the very best in the world, and, as Fisk enthuses, the betting aspect certainly makes rail-birding more fun.

So, it may an unenticing prospect for the truly savvy gambler, but we’re not one of those, so we lumped $20 to win on Jason Mercier to win. That’s just how we roll…

Super High Rollers Odds

12/1   Daniel Negreanu (Kidpoker)

           Jason Mercier (Jasonmercier)

14/1 Tobias Reinkmeier

         Bertrand Grospelier

         Phillip Gruissem

         Ike Haxton

         Phil Galfond

        Justin Bonomo

        Viktor Blom

16/1  Sorel Mizzi

          Jason Somerville

          Ole Schemion

           Daniel Colman

           Chris Moorman

           Mike McDonland

           Mike Watson (Sirwatts)

Written by
Philip Conneller
As part of the team that launched Bluff Magazine back in 2004, and then as Editor of Bluff Europe, Philip Conneller has (probably) written thousands of articles about poker and has travelled the globe interviewing the greatest players in the world, not to mention some of the sexiest celebrities known to man in some of the world’s sexiest destinations. The highlight of his career, however, was asking Phil Ivey (as a joke) how to play jacks, and emerging none-the-wiser. Philip once won $20,000 with 7-2 offsuit. He has been told off for unwittingly playing Elton John’s piano on two separate occasions, on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He became a writer because he is a lousy pianist. He lives in London where he spends his time agonizing about Arsenal football club, yet in Wenger he trusts.

Comments

Poker Orifice wrote...

who is setting up those odds for that $50k tourney? (I’d take some of the 16/1 players over the 12/1 & 14/1 ones)
Or maybe those are the ‘rigged’ ‘Jokerstars’ RNG odds? 😉 jk (obv.)

MasterOfDisaster wrote...

lol was thinking same and if they would seem to lose millions, cause the sportsbettors are right with their betting and that player seems to win, they are Always able to “rig’ the deals

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