The online poker industry continues to grow at a steady pace but the global market share is generally dominated by PokerStars and 888poker. The Amaya Inc owned PokerStars is the biggest online poker website in the world and generally tends to monopolize any market it enters. The second biggest online poker website is 888poker and the company is always looking for new ways to innovate its product offering and capture more market share in all countries it has operations.
888poker recently announced that it would launch a special high roller event called ‘The Octopus’ every Saturday, starting from the 5th of September 2015. The event will start at 3pm GMT and will have a $25,000 guarantee with a $215 buy-in. This new tournament will be 888poker’s biggest guaranteed tournament based on its weekly Saturday scheduled. 888poker had earlier made a few changes to its policies in an effort to attract more customers. One of the changes that 888poker made included increasing tournament guarantees by over $100,000 each month.
Some of the tournaments that have benefitted from the new tournament guaranteed prize pool include Tuesday Crocodile which has a $160 buy-in and a new guarantee of $20,000 which is a 33.3% increase; the Sunday Breeze which has a $20,000 guarantee and a $55 buy-in which is a 33.3% increase; The Quarterback which has a $30,000 guarantee and a $215 buy-in which is a 20% increase and the Lightning 6-Max which has a $6,000 guarantee and a $109 buy-in which is a 20% increase.
In a statement, a representative from 888poker said
The Octopus will be our first eight-handed tournament and will have a very deep structure with 10,000 starting chips and 25-minute blind levels.
The Octopus will also have a four hour window open for late registrations to enable players from different locations to be able to join at different times on Saturday and be a part of this exciting event.
PokerScout estimated that 888poker brings in a 7 day average of around 2,000 real money ring game players comfortably surpassing Bodog which has a 7 day average of around 1,800 players and iPoker Network which has a 7 day average of 1,300 players. Bodog is the third biggest online poker website which the iPoker Network comes in fourth place. 888poker has a very long way to go to pose any threat to PokerStars which has a 7 day average of around 15,000 players.
888poker hopes that new tournaments like ‘The Octopus’ will help boost its average of real money ring game players.
