PokerStars MI Goes Casual With Summer Stacks Festival: 100 Events, $1M Guaranteed

The PokerStars Michigan Spring Championship of Online Poker (MISCOOP) is in the rear-view mirror, but its presence remains prominent. All the same, PokerStars MI continues to drive ahead with another tournament series on the way this month.

PokerStars MI announced Monday a new Summer Stacks Festival. The 100-tournament series will run June 12-28, with guarantees across the series totaling $1 million.

Lower buy-ins, faster structures for ‘casual’ poker fun

According to PokerStars, the schedule aims to provide “a more casual series format” for players than perhaps found in MISCOOP or other series. To accomplish that goal, the series features many turbo events structured to complete quickly. Buy-ins for the events are set at $100 or less throughout.

The series culminates with a two-day, $100 buy-in Summer Stacks Festival Main Event starting Sunday, June 27. The Main Event will feature a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool. See the full schedule below.

PokerStars will host Summer Stacks Festivals on the same dates at both of its other US sites in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The series on those sites also will consist of 100 tournaments with buy-ins at $100 or less.

On PokerStars PA, the series will similarly feature $1 million worth of guarantees (actually just slightly more) and a $100,000 guaranteed Main Event. Over at PokerStars NJ, the total guarantees add up to $528,000, with the Main Event guarantee set at $50,000.

Springing into summer: Stars continues tourney-fueled momentum

PokerStars MI clearly seeks to continue momentum from the recently completed MISCOOP series.

The 120-tournament series attracted more than 40,000 total entries and awarded more than $2.35 million. That total exceeded PokerStars MI’s previous high of $2.2 million won during the Michigan Championship of Online Poker (MICOOP) earlier this year.

Like other PokerStars MI series, the Summer Stacks Festival will again feature freerolls, in which players can win tourney entries for free. These will include both Depositor Freerolls and Second Chance Freerolls.

To gain entry into daily Depositor Freerolls, PokerStars MI players must deposit at least $30 using the bonus code “SUMMER21.” The Depositor Freerolls will award $10,000 worth of Main Event tickets.

Meanwhile, the Second Chance Freerolls are for players who get knocked out of events without making the money. Busting an event shy of the cash automatically wins the player an entry into the following day’s Second Chance Freeroll. Those events will award another $10,000 worth of Summer Stacks tournament tickets.

Although the series follows the MISCOOP and MICOOP models, the Summer Stacks Festival appears to temper ambitions somewhat. It employs a similar 17-day schedule, but the Summer Stacks Festival promises half the total guarantees of the first MICOOP and subsequent MISCOOP, both of which featured $2 million in guaranteed prize pools.

Hands across America: PokerStars continues focus on US growth

The simultaneous running of the Summer Stacks Series on all three American sites will provide another chance to compare PokerStars’ progress in its three separate US markets.

The MISCOOP ran concurrently with PokerStars NJ’s version of the SCOOP series. PokerStars PA ran their PASCOOP a few weeks earlier. Whereas Michigan players won $2.35 million in MISCOOP, those in Pennsylvania won $2.6 million (playing an almost identical schedule). New Jersey players won just over $1.2 million.

All three PokerStars sites in the US are currently ring-fenced, meaning in each case players only compete against others within their state.

2021 PokerStars Michigan Summer Stacks Festival Schedule