Full Tilt Poker Launches Onyx Cup – First-of-its-Kind Poker Series for Elite Players

Full Tilt Poker recently announced the formation of an elite poker series – the Onyx Cup. This will comprise of six high stakes tournaments that will bring together the best poker players in the world. Full Tilt Poker, an online poker room that was started in 2004, has been created by some of the greatest poker players of this century. They include the likes of Jennifer Harman, Chris Fergusson and Andy Bloch. A few other poker professionals involved in Full Tilt Poker are Mike Matusow, Howard Lederer and Phil Ivey.

According to Full Tilt Poker, elite poker players rarely get the opportunity to go up against their likes when they play in packed tournament fields. So the Onyx Cup series is being launched with the aim of providing a platform where these poker players can play against each other.

The poker series will feature some of the biggest buy-ins to have been recorded in the history of the game. The buy-ins will range between $100,000 and $300,000. The prize pool estimated across the entire series is approximately $30,000,000.

The Onyx Cup series will feature six tournaments of Hold’em no limit poker. It is open to all comers and qualification rounds for this began on the 15th of March. The series will have five preliminary events and a grand finale. A million will be added to the prize pool in the finals of the series.

Players who are among the first three in these events will get points that are added to the series leader-board. After the grand finale, the player to have earned the most points will be declared the winner. He will be awarded the Onyx Cup and a luxury sports car. In addition, he will be recognized as the player who triumphed over poker’s elite.

According to Patrik Antonius, a professional poker player, a series like the Onyx Cup has been much needed for elite poker players. He stated that the game has been running the same cycle for too many years and it needed a change, which the Onyx Cup can provide.

Erik Seidel, another professional poker player stated that the Onyx Cup is the first of its kind, as no other tournament has brought together elite poker players in the same way.

One of the best poker players in the world, Phil Ivey, said that the players are bound to have immense respect for the winner, as he would have to play really hard to beat his competitors – of which one would be Phil Ivey himself. The poker player went on to say that the high stakes poker series is not just about the prize money. Instead, it is about getting to play against the best poker players in the world.

The first event is set to take place on May 11th and 12th in Las Vegas, Nevada. The players who have been confirmed as participating in the event are Howard Lederer, Erik Lindgren, Chris Ferguson, Eric Seidel and John Juanda. The tournaments will take place in Europe, United States of America and Asia. The series will be broadcast the world over to forty countries, in twenty languages.