FOUR PLAYERS IN RACE TO BECOME FIRST POKERSTARS ‘GRAND SLAM’ WINNER DURING TCOOP 2016

Fifth Turbo Championship starts tomorrow with 50 events and $15m guaranteed

ONCHAN, Isle of Man – January 20, 2016 – Four players have the chance to make history at PokerStars, an Amaya Inc. (Nasdaq: AYA; TSX: AYA) brand, during the next two weeks, as the 2016 Turbo Championship of Online Poker affords each member of the quartet the opportunity to become the first PokerStars Grand Slam winner (TCOOP, SCOOP, WCOOP and Sunday Million titles).

With Sunday Million, SCOOP and WCOOP wins already under their belts, David ‘Gunslinger3’ Bach, Artem ‘veeea’ Vezhenkov, Paul ‘paulgees81’ Volpe, and Andrey ‘Kroko-dill’ Zaichenko need just a TCOOP victory to win ‘Triple COOP’ and ‘Grand Slam’ honours in one fell swoop. TCOOP, which features 50 events, starts tomorrow and runs for 11 days until January 31.

In addition to the Grand Slam, other honours are up for grabs this Championship. To date only two players – James ‘Andy McLEOD’ Obst and Shawn ‘buck21’ Buchanan – hold ‘Triple COOP’ honours (TCOOP, SCOOP and WCOOP titles), but a further 55 players could join that exclusive club by capturing a TCOOP title this month.

FIRST EVENT
TCOOP kicks off tomorrow with Event 1, which has the potential to be the biggest field ever for a Turbo Championship event, with a three-phase structure, the first two phases of which have been running for nearly two weeks. The final Phase 1 and Phase 2 tournaments take place at 10.00 ET and 11.30 ET tomorrow, with Phase 3 beginning at 13.00 ET when TCOOP begins in earnest. Players must have qualified through Phases 1 and 2 to play in Phase 3 where the guaranteed prize pool of $1.5 million awaits. Players can play as many Phase 1s as they want until they qualify for Phase 2.

Important note: at the time of this press release, TCOOP-01 is forecasted to have an overlay (guarantee exceeding buy-in prize pool) of approximately $500,000. Of course, PokerStars will pay out the full guarantee amount regardless of the buy-in prize pool, so players who qualify for Phase 3 will likely enjoy a huge slice of extra tournament value.

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
As for the rest of TCOOP, the focal point is the $700 No Limit Hold’em Main Event, which takes place on January 31 at 15.30 ET, and has a $2 million guarantee, but there are some new and exciting events for players to take part in, including:

PLAYER OF THE YEAR  Additional prizes are awarded for players who do consistently well throughout the championship. Here is the list of prizes for the top 100 finishers on the Leader Board:

ONLINE SATELLITES
PokerStars is running online qualifiers to every event in TCOOP, with cash buy-ins starting from just $0.11 and StarsCoin satellites from 1 StarsCoin. Log in to the PokerStars client and click on ‘All Games’ > ‘Online Events’ > ‘TCOOP’ > ‘All’ to find the full range of satellites. 

For further information, please contact: press@pokerstars.com

TURBO CHAMPIONSHIP OF ONLINE POKER 2012-15: FAST FACTS

$86,924,831: Total tournament prize money awarded over the course of 200 events.

$15,000,000: Guaranteed prize pool for TCOOP 2016.

863,491: Total number of entrants – an average of 4,317 entries per tournament.

$396,516.38: Biggest individual prize, won by ‘Nikki_Hefner’ from Russia in the TCOOP 2015 Main Event.

44,787: Record number of entrants in an event (TCOOP 2012: Event 1 – $22 NL Hold’em 6-Max Turbo).

$2,100: Biggest TCOOP buy-in – the annual NL Hold’em Turbo High Roller, which is back this year on Jan 31.

555: Time in minutes of the longest TCOOP tournament, which was Event 11 of TCOOP 2013 – a $109 NL Hold’em Heads-Up competition. It featured 3,083 players and 12 rounds of heads-up play over its 9hr 15min duration, with ‘gorglav’ from Russia emerging as the victor.

118: Time in minutes of the shortest TCOOP tournament, which was Event 23 of TCOOP 2015 – a $215 NL Hold’em 6-Max Hyper-Turbo tournament – won by ‘Sherfy’ from Mexico.

21: Number of TCOOP wins for players from Canada – four more than the country with the next highest amount, the UK.

2: Titles won by Alexander ‘AlexKP’ Petersen from Denmark – the only player to have won multiple events.

About PokerStars
PokerStars operates the world’s most popular online poker sites, serving the global poker community. Since it launched in 2001, PokerStars has become the first choice of players all over the world, with more daily tournaments than anywhere else and with the best online security. More than 145 billion hands have been dealt on PokerStars, which is more than any other site.

PokerStars.com and PokerStars.eu operate globally under licenses from the Isle of Man and Malta governments, respectively. PokerStars also holds local licenses or approvals to offer services to players in many jurisdictions, including Italy, France, Estonia, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, United Kingdom, Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, Ireland, Romania and New Jersey in the United States of America.

PokerStars is the flagship brand of Rational Group, which operates gaming-related businesses and brands, including PokerStars, Full Tilt and the European Poker Tour. In 2012, 2013 and 2014, Rational Group companies in the UK and Isle of Man were recognised as one of the top 25 best places to work by the Great Place to Work Institute’s Best Workplaces – Large category ranking. Rational Group entities in Costa Rica and Dublin also achieved the same accolade in their respective local rankings in 2014. PokerStars is owned by Amaya Inc. (Nasdaq: AYA; TSX: AYA).