Partypoker Pokerfest kicked off on Sunday

Partypoker's online tournament series, Pokerfest, kicked off on Sunday with $2.24 million in guarantees and a total of 76 events, including the $300,000 guaranteed Main Event. The series runs until November 2, and the events are split into low, medium and high buy-in levels, ranging from $1 to $1,000.

The last Pokerfest ran in March, and several events had overlays, so the fact that partypoker has doubled the guarantees for the events is very surprising, considering that their poker revenues have dropped 25% in the last quarter.

It's not only the tournaments that suffer from lack of participants, cash game traffic has dropped 50% in the last six months. 

There will be plenty of satellites and Mega-Satellites to every event, including the $1,000 Super High Roller. The buy-in for the Mega-Satellite for the SHR will be $50, and will have 25 seats guaranteed.

There will be missions for low, medium and high leaderboards which will award tournament dollars, tournament tickets (to other events of the series), and packages to partypoker's WPT500 event at Dusk Till Dawn Casino in the UK.

It will be interesting to see whether the doubled guarantees and the promotions are enough to attract the sufficient number of players required to meet the guarantees.