888poker Awards More Than $130M via BLAST Games
One of the most well-known online poker brands, 888poker provides new tournaments and massive prize pools. You can see this in action with the BLAST games, which awarded more than $130 million in prize money in 2022. In this article, we’ll look at what these games are, how much money players won, and how 888poker created them.
What are BLAST Games?
BLAST games are Lottery-style Sit and Go (LSNG) poker games. They’re short-handed tournaments with a fast, winner-takes-all structure. You can find low or high buy-ins, which will satisfy budget players and high rollers alike.
The prize pools can range from 2x to 10,000x the buy-in, making them a popular choice among many players. Originally, Winamax, a French poker room, created LSNG games over a decade ago, and they’ve since become one of the fan-favorite formats in online rooms.
Overall, 888poker hosted more than 10.5 million games in 2022, with more than 31.6 million participants.
The website’s top four prize pools for 2022 were the $100,000 prize pool for the $10 tournament, a pair of $50,000 prize pools for the $5-$50 tournaments, and the $20,000 pool for the $2-$20 event. Overall, the $100 buy-in tournament generated the most winnings in 2022, with $41.6 million awarded.
However, the most popular option, with more than 14.2 million participants, was the 10-cent tournament, which accounted for about 45% of 888poker’s titles. The least popular option is the $2 buy-in tournament, with only about 121,000 players participating in the nearly 40,000 games held during the year.
Origin of the Brand’s LSNG Tournaments
888poker first created its style of LSNG game in 2016. Its version of these games were three-handed, where each player gets 1,500 in their starting stack, and a unique timer was used.
The timer counted between two to six minutes, forcing a shot clock game style where players were forced to go all-in once the timer ran out. Over the years, the format has been adjusted after considering player feedback.
In 2019, 888poker changed the game from three- to four-handed and revamped the payouts to be bottom-heavy. This change resulted in the higher payouts being significantly more unlikely to hit.
In 2022, the brand removed the timer and all-in feature based on player complaints.
A 20th Anniversary Bang
888poker celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022, making it a year to remember. The brand featured many tournaments and impressive prizes.
The $130 million in award money for BLAST games was only one part of their celebration, as they were also named EGR Poker Operator of the Year. They also brought back the Retro Week Series, which awarded almost $1 million in 26 events.
Overall, we can conclude that 2022 was a year to remember for 888poker.
