BetMGM have dropped a big clue as to what the company's first big Ontario-based poker series will be called.
Anuj Arora at Pokerfuse noted that the BetMGM Ontario poker client had a new tab added with the name "Ontario Poker Championship." The tab suggests a big series is in the works, probably in conjunction with bWin and partypoker with which BetMGM shares a player pool.
So far, BetMGM has not launched tournaments in this tab but the presence of the tab suggests that there may be a late-Summer or early fall series on its way.
The autumn is usually a good time for online poker with the nights drawing in over the Northern hemisphere and the weather cools.
BetMGM has been in Ontario now for almost five months, having launched on April 5, just hours after the Ontario online poker market opened. BetMGM was joined later in the month by bWin and partypoker. Together, these three companies form a three-skinned network in the province.
Beating the competition
The BetMGM Network has been in close competition with PokerStars in the Ontario market. And that market has been growing quickly threatening to outstrip those U.S. states with legal poker. At the moment, BetMGM is averaging 180 concurrent cash tables. BetMGM's U.S. markets each hover around concurrent 100 tables most of the time.
However, it has not run any big tournament series. Meanwhile, the competition has been busy.
With PokerStars running the ONCOOP soon, it seems likely that BetMGM will piggyback on their competition. Overlapping with ONCOOP would allow BetMGM to catch some cross-platform multi-tables.
ONCOOP will be PokerStars third big series in the Ontario market, impressive work on such a short time scale. 888poker has a series underway.
Early tournaments running on BetMGM Ontario had large overlays, so the BetMGM staff may be cautious of setting the bar too high for the Ontario Poker Championship.
Featured image source: Flickr by Scazon, used under CC license.
