FS+G Poker League Schedule Released
Federated Sports and Gaming has finally released more concrete details on their new poker league. While it’s as yet unclear if FS+G has officially settled on a name for the league, many sources are surmising that they will simply name it after themselves. Yesterday’s press release regarding upcoming league events announced that the first tournament will take place in August of this year, so they’ll have to settle on a name soon if they’re going to advertising events under it.
Speaking of an August tournament, the press release also revealed the exact dates for all five of the first season’s events. For those that may have forgotten, all of these events will be hosted at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. The location is no surprise since the Palms is also a partner in the league. Event 1 will take place from August 12-16, 2011. Coming on the heels of the World Series of Poker, it will no doubt be well-attended.
Event 2 is scheduled for September 30 – October 7, 2011. Event 3 will run from December 1-10, 2011, and Event 4 will run from January 20-27, 2018. This first upcoming season will culminate with a two-day championship that is slated to take place January 29-30, 2018. How will the championship go down? In the same release, FS+G announced that they will invite the top 27 league members from the previous season of play to return to Las Vegas to compete for the championship title. No entry fee will be charged for this tournament, but it will still offer an impressive $1 million prize pool.
Bear in mind that the league will only be comprised of 200 players. As previously mentioned, the majority of those players will enter the league by invitation only, and invitations will be issued based on an equation that ranks players by both short and long-term performance. To add a little excitement and variety to this format, each tournament week will begin with a $1500 Pro-Am event. The final table of nine players from these events will be the only non-league players that are eligible to compete in that week’s Main Event.
The new league’s commissioner, Annie Duke, has been out and about promoting her pet project to the poker press. In a statement following the schedule announcement, she insisted that the small Main Event fields would make for better play, but stretching 200 players out over four days sounds pretty dull to us. Still, we like the fact that each of the four Main Events will feature a different Texas Hold’em format. In other words, coming out on top requires a broader skill set, akin to the poker gauntlets that the old pros originally used to determine the early World Series of Poker champions.