PokerStars welcomes a new type of tournament to its roster. They’re calling them Time Tourneys and they’re just what they sound like: online poker tournaments with a time limit. Instead of playing to the last player and awarding prizes according, Time Tourneys play until the set clock runs out. Then, all the players still left in the game split the prize pool according to their proportionate share of the chips.
Bertrand “ElkY” Grospelier, a Team Poker Stars pro, shows great excitement for the new format as he often desires to sit down at a tournament online but can’t commit to it because he doesn’t have enough hours to spare. Apparently, ElkY’s sentiments echo those of many PokerStars players.
Buy-ins for these Time Tourneys starts at only $1 and time limits can be 15 minutes or 180 minutes or somewhere in between. In any case, the time limit is shown in the lobby as part of the tournament stats so players can tell before sitting in whether or not they’ll actually be able to see the entire event through.
To celebrate the launch of this new style of online poker tournament, Poker Stars is giving away free entries into one such event to all players making a deposit of at least $30 into their account using the promo code TIME. The deadline for this is October 28.
This weekend, on Saturday, October 22, 2011, Poker Stars also adds the Saturday Countdown, with a $10K guaranteed prize pool for only a $22 buy-in.