Ever dream of being handed a six-figure buy-in to take your shot against the best poker players in the world?
This dream became reality for a select few and RunItUp247.com is going to let you relive it by streaming a 72 hour three-day marathon of PokerStars’ ‘The Big Game’ August 17 through August 19.
The show featured one qualifier from PokerStars, known affectionately as ‘The Loose Cannon,’ up against five high-stakes poker pros in a $200/$400 No-Limit Hold’em cash game.
It wasn’t a normal no-limit cash game, however. There were two wrinkles to the format.
In an effort to force interesting postflop decisions, the game was structured as pot-limit preflop and no-limit postflop. You want to wait for aces and shove all the money in preflop? It’s not going to happen. You’re going to have to take flops and make decisions against the best for insane amounts of cash.
The other twist made for drama is the “Loose Cannon” only had 150 hands to make magic happen.
The qualifier, who was given a $100,000 buy-in to sit with the best, was only allowed to leave with the profit. If they finished the 150-hand session with $99,000, they left with the same amount of money as if they had been felted by Daniel Negreanu.
You’ve gone card dead for most of the session? Close to breaking even? Can’t find a good spot to get the money in against Lex Veldhuis? You’re going to have to gamble soon because breaking even is the same as going broke.
As Ricky Bobby famously said, “If you’re not first, you’re last.”
Aside from the money at stake, the qualifiers were competing against each other. In each season, the “Loose Cannon” that won the most money in the session earned a PokerStars NAPT Passport, which was worth $50,000 in buy-ins and expenses.
The NAPT passport only added more layers to late game decision making for the qualifiers. If you’re up $35,000, you could lock it down, fold the rest of your hands, and leave with a tidy profit that will buy a very nice car.
Or you could continue to gamble, try and win more, put some distance between yourself and the other qualifiers, and possibly add a $50,000 package to your win.
The show, which ended in 2011 after the developments of Black Friday, was one of the most popular poker shows on television. It featured all of poker’s biggest names including Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, Jason Mercier, Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson, as well as a slew of other top tier pros and eventual streamers like Lex Veldhuis and Bill Perkins.
The Big Game marathon is the first of what will be a long line of captivating poker programming on RIU 24/7. Our recent partnership with PokerStars allows us to access the entirety of their video content, which would take one person more than a year of nonstop viewing to watch in its entirety.
