FanDuel Poker has confirmed that its next major tournament series will arrive in September, but the operator is still holding back the essentials. It has not yet named the festival, published the dates, said how many events it will include or disclosed the guarantee it will carry. It has, however, said the schedule will include a leaderboard and that more information is due later this month.
According to pokerfuse, a company representative confirmed that a “September Series Schedule” is being prepared, and the announcement came through the official US Poker Discord server. The September event would be only the second tournament series FanDuel Poker has run since it took over the PokerStars U.S. operation.
As covered in April, the relaunch’s first major festival was the Ignite Series. It ran for 90 tournaments over three weeks and carried $5 million in guaranteed prize money, ending with a $500,000 guaranteed Main Event.
That first series did not clear all of its advertised targets. Poker Industry PRO calculations put the total overlay at $1,063,762, meaning the operator had to add more than $1 million to prize pools so they met the stated guarantees. For players, that shortfall effectively increased the money on offer without raising the buy-in.
The September confirmation also sits within a longer PokerStars tournament tradition built around the COOP name. Internationally, the brand has long been split between the Spring Championship of Online Poker and the World Championship of Online Poker, while the U.S. operation has used variations including USCOOP, NJCOOP, PACOOP and MICOOP. There was also a brief NACOOP attempt when PokerStars sought to link a series to Ontario.
The new U.S. product did not follow that naming pattern when it launched. Its first major festival used the Ignite title instead, and the report said the $5 million guarantee suggested the brand was trying to establish its own identity. FanDuel Poker has still not said whether 8-Game will be part of the September series or introduced separately later. It has also not indicated whether the new festival will match Ignite’s $5 million guarantee, come in below it or take a different shape altogether. Further details are expected later this month.
