Tournament Structure Details

Excited for the America's Cup of Poker to begin? We've got all the tournament updates, details and information you need to know to stay on track, right here

PokerStars' official America's Cup of Poker tournament is slowly gaining shape with the finalization of several more crucial details. Expected to resemble the World Cup of Poker in structure, it will be comprised of two main phases, whereby the first will take place in the online poker-playing landscape, and the second will see the online winner’s transition to a live poker-playing environment.

For the first phase of the tournament online, players from North, central and South America (sixteen countries all up) will come together to compete in a series of freerolls that will last for a three week period. The buy-ins will vary from as low as twenty cents to $5.50, and will begin in the 27th of July through to August the 16th. The countries will be arranged according to groups of four, for which there will be four heats for each and 100 point awarded to the hundred best players from each tournament.

After all the heats have finished, such that each country has competed against each of its group's opponents, the two countries from each group with the most winning points will advance on to the live phase of the Cup (five players plus one PokerStars expert per country). The finale will be taken to Argentina's Bariloche, a ski resort situated close to the beautiful Andes Mountain ranges, where a quarter of a million dollars in prizes will be up for grabs for the winners. The tournament is further structured in such a way that $10,000 will be designated for each team regardless of the outcome, and $100,000 for the winners.

Further details of the live final in Bariloche are yet to be finalized, so it is recommended that anyone interested in taking part in this exciting tournament stays on the lookout for updates. According to the info already released, it can be expected that the event will be similar to the World Cup of Poker, also run by PokerStars. The World Cup took place only six months ago in the Caribbean, and also online qualifiers mix with PokerStars professionals to represent their countries. In the end, it was the German team run by Jan Heitmann who took the title.