pokerstars grand tour

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Become King of the Road with PokerStars Grand Tour

PokerStars Grand Tour is an exclusive game that gives you the chance to unleash your inner sprinter and fight your way to the finish line against thousands of other players.

Cross the finish line to win your bounty – and get the chance to win additional bounties worth over $100,000 for eliminating other players along the way .

How does PokerStars Grand Tour work?

PokerStars Grand Tour is a Progressive KO tournament divided into several stages – or sprints – with a finish line linked to your bounty value. You begin by choosing your starting point on the road to the finish line.

There are six buy-in levels:

Please note: 10% of the buy-in goes to the rake.

When you register, the buy-in (minus rake) represents both your progress on the road and your total bounty value.

If you win a sprint and reach a value of $100 or more, you'll win your bounty value, plus all the additional bounties you accumulated during the sprints you completed.

Each sprint is a Sit & Go Hyper Turbo tournament , where four players with similar values at registration compete and try to eliminate each other to determine a winner.

Like Progressive KOs, each elimination means:

Your own bounty value increases by a given percentage of your opponent's value, getting you closer to the finish line
You pocket a part of your opponent's bounty value straight away. This value will be multiplied, giving you a chance to get an even bigger prize. The multiplier is based on the probability tables shown below

If you win a sprint, you keep your bounty value and can continue your journey to the finish line by playing another sprint without having to buy-in again – this time starting closer to the finish line.

You can play the following sprint whenever you want: immediately or later.

Prizes and probabilities

At the start of each sprint, the average bounty value between the four players defines:

The percentage of each player's value that will go towards the progressive parts
The percentage used to define the amount that is awarded to the players immediately
The probability of each prize multiplier when the elimination occurs

For instance, if the average bounty value at the start of the sprint is $10, and you eliminate a player whose value is $10, your own value will increase by $5 (50%), you will immediately win $2.50 (25%), and this value will be multiplied by a number between 1 and 300, based on the probability tables below.

Bounty multiplier

If the bounty average of the sprint is below or equal to $10.80:

If the bounty average of the sprint is above $10.80:

Please note: we reserve the right to change the frequency, odds, and stakes offered at any given time. We reserve the right to use the video replay, or part of the video replay, of tournaments with the highest multiplier, and show hole cards in our marketing material.

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PokerStars Grand Tour: spins hybrid with progressive knockouts

Pokerstars experiments with spins, pokerstars grand tour: main features.

PokerStars waited almost one year after revealing Spin&Go Flash to get creative again with new spins formats. They recently launched Grand Tour tournaments on the French market, which are fast spins with 4-max tables and progressive prizes for knocking out opponents.

Progressive Knockouts (PKO) tournaments can be called the second most successful tournament format in the last years after spins, so it's only logical that PokerStars decided to mix them. Moreover, for almost two years, they have been very engaged in "poker genetics" with cash games.

As for Spin&Go, PokerStars has launched only two experiments:

In 2017, the site launched Spin&Go Max, which was a high-speed game due to a limit on the number of hands, three prizes added at random and a player choosing one of them, and a random number of participants;
In 2019, Spin&Go Flash was launched; it was a short stack event with only 300 starting chips and a blind structure depending on the multiplier (in almost half of the tournaments blinds grew every 2 minutes).

And this week, it became known that PokerStars began testing another format of spins in France: La Course (as an elite women's professional road race). This name is not accidental, and in the general pool, they will be called Grand Tour.

Thanks to the new Aurora client , PokerStars has greatly expanded its ability to use new graphic elements in the lobby and at the tables. All of this is used under the Grand Tour tab:

Main features of Grand Tour:

4-max events;
Starting stack: 1,000 — 1,250 chips;
Blind structure: every 4-6 hands;
Prizes: determined by a random multiplier from x2 to x12,000;
Bounty: half of the player's buy-in minus rake goes to the bounty prize fund.

Grand Tour: how does the bounty works?

The bounty is perhaps the main feature of this format. It is divided into two parts. One is paid immediately after a player eliminates an opponent (multipliers from x1 to x6,000 are also applied), and the second one is added to a prize fund reserved for the race winner.

The second part can be won only when at least $100 is reached. You can compete for this prize no only by winning tournaments at the same stake, but by climbing higher using free tickets. Such tickets will be automatically credited after winning a tournament.

PokerStars promises to collect in one tournament rivals with roughly the same reward for the leader. Thus, you can, from the lowest stake to the last, winning up to $100,000 in total for all knockouts.

Grand Tour could be an exciting game, and, of course, it's still early to draw conclusions about it. Most likely, amateur players will love it. PokerStars will add Grand Tour to their global pool soon.

From our side, we recommend Spin&Gold , a format launched by GGPoker Network a few months ago. Such games also have massive bonuses and monthly promotions that benefit all players.

Reach our manager now to get more information:

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On Your Bikes: Race Across the Finish Line with PokerStars Grand Tour Sit & Gos

PokerStars just keeps surprising everyone with new game ideas and formats. The room has been leading the way of innovation for some time now, and its latest cycling-themed Grand Tour Sit & Go tournaments represent the latest effort in this area.

These new sit & gos combine elements from PKO tournaments and spin & go events with some completely new features, creating a brand new and exciting way to enjoy poker. In coordination with its new product, PokerStars commissioned a survey that showed that about a third of people living in the UK, some 20 million, cycle every month.

And before we move on, as a way to celebrate this latest invention, PokerStars is giving everyone a chance to win a brand new, custom-made bike worth £15,000 . If that’s something you’d fancy, you can find more info on how to get involved at the end of the article.

Poker and Cycling: How Do You Connect the Two?

At first glance, poker and cycling do not have that much in common, but PokerStars was thinking outside of the box with its Grand Tour idea. The survey the poker room conducted provided them with a lot of interesting data that showed that the two, as different as they might seem at first, do have a lot in common .

18% of the people in the UK said they cycle just for the thrill of it
23% of the UK men claim cycling helps them feel adventurous

So, it would seem that a great percentage of those who cycle do it simply for the rush and the excitement it provides them. And that’s exactly why many people play poker, in the UK and around the globe.

Banking on this data, PokerStars launched Grand Tour games, bringing these thrills together and offering players a chance to get involved in a virtual bicycle race by progressing through the stages of quick-paced, four-handed sit & go tournaments .

Getting Involved with PokerStars Grand Tour

Players interested in checking out these new games will find them in the lobby of the PokerStars client under the Grand Tour tab . These are 4-handed sit & gos (aptly called sprints) feature progressive knockouts and random win multipliers.

There are five different buy-in levels or starting points for each race. The lowest entry point is just $1 and the highest one is $60. The way to win the race is by reaching the $100 mark on the player’s progressive bounty.

Each sprint starts with four players and it plays down until there is just one player remaining (which usually takes between five and ten minutes ). For every player you eliminate, half of their bounty is added to your own bounty (or 60% if the bounty average is at least $10.80) while 25% (or 20%) of it is paid in cash to your account.

And here’s the kicker: the cash amount won in each flight is multiplied by a random multiplier determined at the start of the race, just like in Spin & Gos . The value of the multiplier is anywhere from 1x to 6000x at higher stakes.

For the 6000x multiplier to be possible , the bounty average of the sprint needs to be equal to or over $10.80. Otherwise, the maximum multiplier applied to cash winnings is 300x.

So, with every player you eliminate, your personal bounty will grow. Once it reaches $100, you’ll be able to cash out and you’ll have won the race. If you’re eliminated before getting across that $100 line, you’ll still get to keep any bounties you picked up by that point. Of course, if you do reach the end, the value of your own bounty is also added to your balance.

Interesting Facts about PokerStars Grand Tour

Although Grand Tour tournaments haven’t been running that long, it seems they’ve been quite popular with the players. So far, the biggest single knockout went to the player playing under the alias ‘*zjuupa*’, who banked $149,220 after starting their journey at the $12 level .

Up to this point:

Grand Tour has awarded over $33.5 million in KOs
The second biggest knockout to date is $74,880
German players are leading in terms of Grand Tour accolades with 11,000 race wins

So, How Can You Win That £15,000 Bike?

Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about it and yes, it is true. You could win a very special, custom-made bike worth 15 grand for free . All you have to do is head over to the PokerStars site and register for the draw before October 8 . It’s as simple as that.

Unfortunately, this promotion is restricted to only players from Spain, France, and the United Kingdom .

The lucky winner will receive a bike made by Spoon Customs and it will be one of the most exclusive bikes designed by the company. The design process will only begin once the competition is over so that the bike can be fully adjusted to the winner’s weight, build, and cycling style and preferences.

Those who come up just short will still receive consolation prizes in the form of electronics and PokerStars merchandise. It’s definitely not as good as the super-bike but it’s still something and quite nice given the fact the competition is open to all players from these three countries with no restrictions or qualification criteria.

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Welcome to Grand Tour

Grand Tour is here! Hop on to your bike and exercise your Sit and Go skills. If you want to knock out players (cyclists) out of the tournament (race); collect their bounties (jerseys) and win many times your buy-in (prize money) then Grand Tour is the format for you!

Where to Join the Race?

Grand Tour is a multiple stage sit and go experience. There are six stages to the race – $1.00, $2.00, $5.00, $12.00, $25.00, and $60.00. You can join the race at any stage by paying the relevant buy-in cost or work your way up from the beginning by winning each heat. A heat contains four players.

There are two incentives for working your way up stage by stage. Firstly, you get to earn bounties from the players you eliminate along the way; and secondly, the more bounties you earn, the bigger the stack you start the next stage with. This second benefit has the huge advantage of placing you in a position where you cover opponents who have bought in at that stage of the race. This gives you the first shot at busting people and earning their bounties.

The advantage to buying in a bit higher up the chain of stages is that you will reach the final stage more often where the big money is waiting. You only really make a lot from Grand Tour when you win the final stage. If your own bounty is above $100, and usually if you’ve made it this far, it will be, then you earn your own bounty by winning the race plus extra money for any scalps (I mean jerseys!) you’ve picked along the way.

Heat Structure

There are four players in a heat and starting stacks are around 20 big blinds, depending on how many bounties you have accumulated. The pace is hyper-turbo – a fast and furious format. There are no antes, but blinds increase rapidly. It is imperative to work on your push or fold game to give yourself the best chance of winning your heat. We shall talk more about the strategy of Grand Tour in future articles in this series.

Only the winner of a heat advances. The other three players are eliminated. This means that you will usually lose your heats. The goal is to progress much more often than the field; not to usually progress as this would be impossible even for a player with a large edge. If you win your four-player heat 30% of the time, then you’re outplaying the field.

Bountiful Multipliers (Earning Jerseys)

When you knock someone out, you take their jersey and earn a random prize.

Most often, you earn 25% of a player’s bounty when you bust someone whose bounty is below $10.80 and 20% of a bounty above $10.80. This instant reward gets credited to your account straight away. It is yours regardless of how well you do in the race. This amount is called the prize percentage of your opponents’ bounties. The true amount you receive each time you earn a prize is determined by an algorithm which includes some enormous bounties a small amount of the time. Spin and Go players will be familiar with this kind of system.

As well as earning a part of the player’s bounty immediately after busting them, you also get to add a large part of their total amount to your own bounty. Remember that increasing your own bounty is important as your main goal is to get it above $100 so that you can win upon winning the race. When you eliminate an opponent, you will add 50% of their bounty to your own bounty for values below $10.80 and 60% on bounties above $10.80. This is called the progressive percentage .

Profitability

Grand Tour’s format is extremely lively and exciting. There is always a chance of making a huge amount of money and the constant supply of smaller values in the form of jerseys reduces the variance of each run you make. If you buy in for $12, and come second in your heat, you will often have busted a player or two and earned a chunk of your buy-in back.

The excitement of Grand Tour attracts a wide array of player types; many of them recreational. This makes obtaining an edge quite easy for a serious player who has prepared for the format. It is my initial impression that Grand Tour is very lucrative and worth a shot. The format might be especially promising for Spin and Go specialist as the variance is a lot lower than they are used to and the field just as soft.

We shall be exploring how to improve our play in Grand Tour throughout this series of articles. We shall focus heavily on turbo sit and go strategy, but also exploring how the bounty system affects the optimal strategy in different spots.

Grand Tour is a multiple stage Sit and Go tournament, consisting of six rounds of four-player heats where the winner advances to the next stage.
Players add to their own bounty and claim instant cash prizes by eliminating opponents. The latter are randomised and some huge cash rewards are sometimes handed out.
Having people covered is strategically huge and this incentivises joining the race earlier than the final stage as players with higher bounties start each heat with more chips.
Grand Tour is full of all kinds of player types and it is possible to gain quite a large edge due to the intricacies of bounty play, despite the quick pace of the format.

What are you waiting for? On your bike!

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Poker Discussion
Poker Rooms

Grand Tour pokerstars

Thread starter romamirr
Start date Dec 25, 2020
Dec 25, 2020

Hello everybody! Do you play pokerstars at Grand Toor? Did you get to the top and what strategy do you use in this game? I went through 4 stages maximum, the game is interesting, but very varied.

Dec 26, 2020

I have played it and do enjoy it but like Johnny had some success once but generally haven't got very far. There does seem to be a lot of bad beats and amazingly bad river cards. Of course I have been much more successful when playing this with play money... go figure!

Johnny78B said: This summer I passed through from 1 dollar level to the top and got 200+ bucks at the end. After that I tried so many times and could not get it, even started with 5 and 12 dollars level but without any success. It seems to me that RGN is different over there then in other games. You can see a lot of bad beats, coolers, flushes, full houses at the river etc very often. For me it is something like spin and goes, you can really enjoy it but this is a wrong game if you want to make a bankroll. It is only my opinion could be different from others . Click to expand...

Jan 26, 2021

Today I decided to try my hand at the Grand Tour. I played a series of tournaments with a slight disadvantage. I only managed to get through the first round, in the second I was not given a path further. A couple of hours later, one more decided to sit down, going to smash everyone. And it almost worked! Here is the result - I got to the top, but in the head-up I was a little unlucky. River was not on my side this evening ..:fight:

The Irish Poker Tour Monster Smashes Its Ambitious Guarantee

The monster final table results, other irish poker tour monster results, upcoming irish poker tour events.

When Fintan Gavin 's Irish Poker Tour announced it was putting a €200,000 guarantee on the prize pool of The Monster event, a tournament costing only €150 to enter, a few people raised their eyebrows. Such a large guarantee for an affordable buy-in seemed ambitious at best. However, those who thought The Monster would overlay were left eating their words after 1,858 entrants created a guarantee-busting €224,122 prize pool .

The top 187 finishers received a slice of the pie, and the sheer number of different nationalities that saw a return on their investment shows the Irish Poker Tour is gaining in strength and popularity.

Although the field was, naturally, with the tournament running in Dublin, predominately Irish, players from Brazil, Croatia, France, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, and Spain all padded their wallets with some euros. Having Paddy Power Poker supporting the tour through special promotions and online poker satellites is doing wonders for the Irish Poker Tour.

All of nine finalists called Ireland home: eight from the Republic of Ireland and one from Northern Ireland.

*reflects a three-handed deal

Each of the nine finalists locked in at least €3,820 for their efforts, with the top four finishers taking home not a cent less than €11,000. Axel Noack was the first to fall. Phil Molloy joined Noack on the sidelines shortly after.

Michael Fri's seventh-place finish came with a career-best €5,200, which was a similar story to that of Cian Spillane who busted in sixth for €6,300. According to The Hendon Mob Database, this was Spillane's first recorded live cash; what a way to get off the mark.

Fifth place and €8,000 went to Darren Wilson, with Aidan Quinlan capturing the third five-figure live score of his career, €11,000 for finishing in fourth. It's been quite a year for Quinlan, who in March finished in 14th place in the Irish Poker Open Main Event for €20,560 to the Irishman, and followed that up with a fourth-place finish in the €2,500 Super High Roller at the Malta Poker Festival for an additional €12,760.

The tournament clock paused while the remaining three players discussed a potential deal. A deal was agreed after some number crunching, a deal based on ICM that left an addition €2,000 for the runner-up and another €4,000 for the eventual champion.

The deal worked in Carl Cullen 's favor because he bowed out in third. Thanks to the deal, Cullen collected €26,500, narrowly missing out on a career-high which stands at €27,770.

Massimo Pacini , a regular in Ireland-based live poker events, and Northern Ireland's Peter Burnett locked horns heads-up for the title and the extra €4,000 on offer. Pacini was guaranteed his first five-figure score, but he was looking for his first outright victory. That wait continues because Pacini fell in second place, a finish good for €27,365, leaving Burnett as The Monster champion and €25,125 richer than he was a few days ago.

It was not only The Monster that caught the eye over the weekend but several other well-attended tournaments.

The Amateur Poker Association & Tour (APAT) was in town, running its €150 APAT Irish Amateur Championship event. Stephen Campbell took that down for €8,300 after outlasting 447 opponents.

Steven Bartley will fondly look back on the festival having triumphed in two side events. Bartley became the €250 Mystery Bounty champion and received €6,100, and also won the €250 Omaha 4/5 card event for an additional €3,600.

The Irish Poker Tour stops continue coming thick and fast, and not only in Ireland, because the Portugal Adventure is on the horizon as the Irish Poker Tour spreads its wings; PokerNews will have more on that particular stop shortly.

As always, thanks to the special relationship between the Irish Poker Tour and Paddy Power Poker, you can win your way into Irish Poker Tour events online. Ensure you download Paddy Power Poker via PokerNews to lock in the best available welcome bonus.

*includes 10x Killarney packages

Check out the impressive figures from the recent Monster festival, part of the Irish Poker Tour.