SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
PokerStars has announced that it is taking bets on the winner of the World Championship of Online Poker $51,000 Super High Roller event, which takes place 20-21 September.
Team PokerStars Pros Daniel ‘KidPoker’ Negreanu and Jason Mercier, along with Chris ‘Moorman1’ Moorman, who has more than $6.5m in cashes at PokerStars, are the current early favourites at odds of 13.00 (12/1, +1200), with a host of other star names among the frontrunners.
Stephen Fisk, Managing Director of Sports Betting at PokerStars, said: “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.
“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.”
This is the first time that the PokerStars sports betting team has offered wagers on poker, giving players and fans alike an extra incentive to watch the event on PokerStars this coming weekend. Betting will be available to players in jurisdictions where PokerStars already offers sports betting on PokerStars’ .COM, .EU, and .UK licenses.
The betting market will stay open until the official start time of the tournament, which is 12.30 ET on September 20. Once play begins no more bets will be taken until the end of day 1, although the market will be updated and opened again at some stage before the start of day 2.
