PartyPoker Monster Has Started to Roar

A few weeks ago, a baby monster hatched somewhere deep in the computer banks at PartyPoker.com. By the time next May gets here, it will be a gigantic, hulking beast, carrying on its back a satchel of money that thousands of people will have eventually helped stuff.

Its name is Party Monster, and it has already been unleashed against the poker world. Party Monster is the name of an eight-monthlong series of freerolls and qualifiers that climaxes with the Monster Grand Final that has a prize pool already seeded with $5 million. And the prize pool will grow larger every time someone tries to qualify for the Party Monster events.

The next 30 weeks are packed with chances for players both to qualify for the big one and to win shares of large prize pools in weekly and monthly tournaments.

Each week for the next 30 weeks, a $100,000 freeroll will be played, and each month until the end of April, a $1 million freeroll will be held. The tournaments will be figurative monsters, with thousands of players in each one, but PartyPoker estimates that at least 40,000 players will come away from this massive promotion with cash when it's all over.

PartyPoker has already held two $100,000 weekly freerolls. The top 1,000 players from each weekly freeroll get paid at least $40. The winner receives $12,500. The top 2,000 players of each weekly tournament qualify for the $1 million monthly freeroll.

The $1 million monthly freerolls have a similar structure. The top 1,000 players from each of the eight monthly tournaments qualify for the Monster Grand Final, and they also are guaranteed at least $400. The winner of the monthly $1 million freeroll takes home $125,000 and everyone who makes the final table will get at least $2,500.

Get In

There are four different ways to get into the weekly tournaments: win one of the sit-and-go tourneys that are running around the clock, finish in the top three of the scheduled multi-table tourneys, be one of the site's top PartyPoker points earners, or happen to be at a Party Monster jackpot table when a jackpot is hit.

The single-table tourneys start as low as $6. The winners of these $6 sit-'n'-gos receive only entry into the weekly tourney. The winners of the more expensive sit-'n'-gos also receive cash prizes, as do second- and third-place finishers, but about $50 from each tourney (including the $6 qualifiers) ends up in the Monster Grand Final's prize pool.

An even larger portion of the multi-table qualifiers goes toward the big final tournament prize pool. The top three finishers of each multi-table qualifier - buy-ins range from $6 to $33 - get an entry into the weekly tourney and, depending on the cost of the buy-in, a percentage of the pot goes to the Monster Grand Final prize pool. For example, in the $6 buy-ins, 70 percent of the prize pool goes back to the participants, while in the $33 buy-ins, 95 percent goes back to the participants. The rest of the cash feeds the monster.

More information about the structure and qualifiers can be found at PartyPoker.com.

The Final

The Monster Grand Final will be held May 26, 2007. Play will go on until only six players are left. Those six players will then be flown to Rio de Janeiro to play until a winner is determined in front of TV cameras on June 16.

Warren Lush, PartyPoker's spokesman, had this to say about their monster:

"We have seeded the first $5 million of prize money, but that is only the beginning. The prizes start huge and then just get bigger and bigger; the more people who play, the bigger the Grand Final prize pool will be - the biggest in history."

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