Full Tilt Poker Announces Onyx Cup

March 14 2011, Elaine Chaivarlis

On Friday, an announcement was released regarding a high-stakes poker tour from Full Tilt Poker. The poker community was on pins and needles waiting for the announcement which came on Monday, March 14 at 13:00 EST.

Full Tilt Poker announced the Onyx Cup. A tournament series with buy-ins from $100,000 to $300,000, with an estimated $30 million prize pool across the entire series. There will be five preliminary events, culminating in a $250,000 buy-in Grand Finale that will see $1 million added to the prize pool.

The top three finishers in each event will earn points toward the Onyx Cup leaderboard. At the end of the Grand Finale, the person with the most points at the top of the leaderboard will earn the title of Onyx Cup Champion, and will be presented with the Onyx Cup, get a luxury sports car, and be acknowledged as "the player that conquered poker's elite."

Onyx Cup events will take place in the United States, Europe, and Asia and will be broadcast in 20 different languages across 40 countries. Qualifiers will begin on March 15 on Full Tilt Poker.

The announcement of the Onyx Cup came in the form of a video, hosted by Ali Nejad. He was joined by Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Gus Hansen, Erik Seidel, and Tom Dwan to discuss the new event.

"It's not just about the money in this event," Ivey said. "It's more about playing with the caliber of players that we're going to be up against. You know, playing against the best players, and a lot of these guys here at the table are my friends and we're friendly but we're also super competitive against each other. There's going to be a lot of pride that comes along with winning this event."

When asked whether the event was a surprise to them or only just a matter of time with the way buy-ins have been increasing, Seidel said, "I do think it's a natural progression because there's so much money around and people are playing for such high stakes that it was inevitable. I think Full Tilt Poker was the only online organization that could pull this off because they have all the best players in the world."

The first Onyx Cup event will be held in Las Vegas on May 11 and will feature a bevy of poker's elite, including Team Full Tilt members, Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, Chris Ferguson, Erick Lindgren, John Juanda, and more.

If you have the skills we have $55,000 in added prizes. PokerNews Skills Challenge at Full Tilt Poker is a series of money added tournaments every wednesday night which culminates in a $20,000 Freeroll.

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Comments

 

ekuL831
03-15-2011 21:04

This isn't just for the rich and elite they have a three round freeroll to win an entry to this, and cash tourneys to win an entry as well so there will be amateurs playin in this. So everyone sayin its sickening to put on this prestigious tourney with the best players in the world is wrong because there will be alot of people competing that are not necessarily rich and famous. I'm on round 2 of the freerolls so hopefully i'll make it to the final round and win the 100k entry.

 

Percival
03-15-2011 14:16

Just because these guys have been successful, doesn't make them the best. Most of the Full-Tilt pros have participated in dozens, if not a hundred or more $10k events. What would be considered a successful % of cashes to tournaments-entered ratio? What's the magic number and how many of the so called, "BEST" players in the world meet this ratio?

Of course they'll all have a few top finishes - if they didn't, they wouldn't be on the team. But who are the standout's? Certainly not all of them. The truth is, there may be thousands of low-stakes tournament players worldwide that could have greater success than most of the named pros, if they had the opportunity of playing in these events every month. For the sponsored pro, many of who play in twenty or more $10k events a year, this is just goin' to work But, ...

...where's the scoreboard?
- Player starts in $10k events
- the number of cashes achieved from those starts
- the number of final tables those players make
- the number of 1st place finishes they earn
- the total buy-in $ amount of all tournaments played during the year
- and total cash winnings for those (and only those) events during the same year.
(above including but not limited to)

Currently these type of statistics are posted on the internet, in less visited pocket communities, where the mass poker public doesn't frequent. Why doesn't Bluff and Cardplayer (and other print, poker media) have these statistics posted prominently in EVERY SINGLE ISSUE they publish? The top 100 ratio!!

I flip though every issue and hope to see something interesting, so that the mag finds the coffee table instead of the trash. BTW, props to Todd Brunson for keepin' it real!! But where is the scoreboard in poker? Not an individual tournament recap, ...where's the baseball-type scoreboard, where are the statistics?

I'm goin' with Charlie on this one, "...scoreboard doesn't lie"!!

 

Relentless
03-14-2011 20:57

I hope to be wrong and for it to be awesome.