PokerStars New Jersey - Proposed Tournament Schedule and VIP plans

Last week PokerStars hosted two meet and greets with the New Jersey online poker players and shared their plans for PokerStars New Jersey's tournament schedule and the VIP system. According to a player's trip report, PokerStars' management was eager to know what games and structures the players are looking for when PokerStars re-enters the market.

PokerStars' planned schedule includes a $50 Sunday Warm Up with $10,000 guaranteed and a $200 Sunday main event with $50,000 guaranteed. Currently the biggest tournament in New Jersey is the Borgata/partypoker $50,000 guaranteed Sunday event with a $200 buy-in, which frequently has overlays. WSOP  New Jersey's big event of the week is a $215 buy-in $25,000 guaranteed tournament, but this tournament also often has an overlay.

The author of the trip report also said that there were "no real sexy guarantees during the week". He also wrote about the VIP Program, which is most likely going to be the same as it was before Black Friday, the only exception is that "NJ charges a 15% tax that rest of the world players never paid, so the benefits might be slightly less than in the past, but still pretty good." The management also asked players what kind of games and structures they'd most be interested in after the relaunch, so it looks like PokerStars is very motivated to lead New Jersey and set new standards in the market with their game offering.

It's important that this is all speculation, until PokerStars gets it's license in New Jersey everything could change in a moment due to political or legal reasons, but players are generally optimistic regarding PokerStars entry, which management says could be anywhere between six weeks to six months. PokerStars management also told the players that even though they have to use one out of the few specific geolocation technology providers, they are going to try to deal with the geolocation issues that New Jersey operators are experiencing as well as they can, and they also plan to hire a lot of people in New Jersey.