On Friday, August 31st, a $2 Million HKD buy-in tournament will take place at the Starworld Casino's Poker King Club in Macau. PokerStrategy.com was able to acquire information on the event including some participants, the structure, the payout schedule, and more.
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On August 31st, the Big One For One Drop will no longer be considered the softest super high roller poker tournament in history.
That's because the Neptune Group and pokerace.tv will be running a $2 million HKD (~$257K/€205K) buy-in event at the Starworld Casino, home of the Poker King Club and Macau's biggest poker games.
Some players attending the event include Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Gus Hansen, John Juanda, Sam Trickett, Joe Hachem, Andrew Robl, Erik Seidel, and Johnny Chan.
In addition, two German PokerStrategists - Philipp 'philgruissem' Gruissem and Igor 'lechuckpoker' Kurganov have been attempting to get into the event.
The stru<!-- X-->cture
Typically, the structure of a tournament isn't the most interesting aspect of it, but this isn't a typical tournament. This ENTIRE event will take place in a single day. That's right - this is a turbo tournament.
The buy-in is $2 million HKD with an optional rebuy. Players can use the rebuy at any point during the 4-level rebuy period when they have the starting stack (100,000 chips) or less. This means players CAN choose to purchase their rebuy before the start of the tournament for another $2 million HKD on top of the buy-in.
Each blind level will last just 30 minutes, and the start time will be 3:00 PM in Macau.
The rake will be 3% of the prize pool - 1% will go to charity and 2% will go to the tournament organizers and staff.
The field and prize pool
The field for this event is capped at 80 players, and will include overwhelmingly Asian businessmen. This is a semi-private event - the only way poker pros could get in initially was via an invitation from one of the businessmen who already had a seat.
Roughly 70 players have already registered and bought in, and registration has opened to the general public for the remaining seats. All players have been required to post their entry fee at the time of registration.
It is almost a certainty that the 80-player cap will be reached well ahead of the tournament.
The prize pool will be distributed as follows:
| Prize Pool Distribution - Macau High Sta<!-- X-->kes Challenge | |||
| Place | 60-79 players | 80 players | |
| 1st | 27.5% | 25% | |
| 2nd | 18.5% | 17% | |
| 3rd | 14% | 13% | |
| 4th | 9.5% | 9.25% | |
| 5th | 7% | 6.5% | |
| 6th | 5.25% | 5.25% | |
| 7th | 4.25% | 4.25% | |
| 8th | 3.5% | 3.5% | |
| 9th | 3% | 2.75% | |
| 10th | 2.5% | 2.4% | |
| 11th | 2.5% | 2.4% | |
| 12th | 2.5% | 2.4% | |
| 13th | 2.1% | ||
| 14th | 2.1% | ||
| 15th | 2.1% | ||
| 16th | |||
| 17th | |||
| 18th | |||
The first-place prize will likely end up between $4.5 and $5 million (USD), making it the largest prize ever in a poker tournament outside of the Big One For One Drop and the WSOP Main Event.
Can we watch!?
The tournament will not be shown live, but it will be recorded to be released online in the future.
We don't want to wait that long either.
By Matt Kaufman