PokerStars Launches Bubble Rush Tournaments
Today, the world's biggest online poker room PokerStars rolled out a new tournament aptly named Bubble Rush, where play starts off fast until players reach the money and slows down for the remainder of play.
The games which feature buy-ins from $0.55 to $33 during the week and up to $109 on the weekends are running around the clock with more than 20 events each day. Players can satellite in even cheaper with hyper-turbo satellite tournaments running before each event.
Players kick off tournaments with 10,000 chips and blinds increasing every three minutes in a hyper-turbo format. Once the tournament's bubble breaks with the remaining players cashing, blind levels increase to "regular" times before increasing even further as the tournament becomes deeper.
Late registration lasts for 35 minutes with the time increase in blind levels after the bubble breaks and later on in the tournament varying for each event.
During the first Bubble Rush tournament, the $22 Bubble Rush, $10K Gtd, the time length for blind level increases grew from three to 12 minutes once the bubble broke a little more than an hour into the tournament. Most of the 71 remaining players out of the starting 480 player field that cashed for the minimum of $44.45 were initially left in push/fold mode with the average stack being 8.5 big blinds and the chip leader holding almost 27 big blinds when the bubble broke.
However, due to the increase in blind levels slowing down and more than half of the remaining field being eliminated shortly after the bubble broke, the average stack more than doubled more during the next blind level.
With 27 players remaining, blind levels increased to 15 minutes and increased once again to an even longer 20 minutes when the nine-player final table was reached a little more than 2.5 hours after play began with the average stack at around 27 big blinds and the chip leader boasting more than 50 big blinds.
The first-ever Bubble Rush tournament lasted a total of 3.5 hours after Germany's "Rastabombast" and Netherlands' "Can'tCrushMe" agreed to a heads-up deal for $1,566 and $1,529 respectfully. Other Bubble Rush tournaments could finish faster or slower pace depending on a variety of variables, however, they should always be completed quicker than a regular tournament with a similar number of entrants.
Bubble Rush Challenges
To help promote the launch of Bubble Rush, from now until August 28, PokerStars introduced Bubble Rush Challenges. Players that opt into the challenge will receive a ticket to the $7,500 Re-Entry Bubble Rush Freeroll the following day at 14:05 ET if they cash in any Bubble Rush tournament.
The challenge allows players to be awarded up to five tickets for the following day's freeroll by cashing in multiple Bubble Rush tournaments. Satellite tournaments are excluded from qualifying towards this promotion.
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