The last time PokerStars held a women’s poker festival in London, the weather may have been cold but the reception was anything but.
November’s Women’s Winter Festival at the Hippodrome in central London saw Maria Lampropulos (pictured above, center, with Alex O'Brien and Jen Shahade) cap off the series with the Main Event. As PokerOrg reported at the time, the positive atmosphere around the festival — not to mention the number of tournament seats filled — created a palpable feeling that something was just beginning, rather than coming to an end.
It may not have been the boldest of predictions, given the obvious success of the festival, but was one that has come to pass with today’s news that the PokerStars Women’s Summer Festival will be held in London, August 12-17 at The Clermont Hotel in the very heart of the city.
Highlights of the six-day festival will include a £100,000 guaranteed Main Event (August 14-17), as well as a High Roller (August 13) and the return of the 50/50 mixed event (August 16), in which exactly half the field are men and the other half women. The full schedule is expected next week.
We caught up with the London Hippodrome’s head of poker, and PokerStars ambassador, KJ Craigie to learn what we can expect when the festival rolls back into town this summer.
‘We got it right first time’
After such a successful debut last winter, we ask Craigie what will be different this time around.
“The venue, for a start,” she answers. “We are not holding it in the Hippodrome — we have moved. It's a 3 minute walk, a hotel ballroom with some side rooms.”
As someone with such strong ties to the Hippodrome — Craigie has been based there for over 12 years — we wonder how she feels about holding her passion project elsewhere, but the decision has been made for the best of reasons: growth. Yet while the new venue will allow for bigger numbers, changes will not be made for the sake of it.
“We looked at all the numbers, we looked at where we had room to grow, what we'd achieved, and we've pretty much decided that we're just gonna copy it.“ says Craigie with a smile. “If it's not broken, don't fix it, and that's not being lazy, that's just recognising that actually we got it right first time.”
Which is not to say the Summer Festival will be identical to the Winter incarnation. Craigie and her team have identified areas for improvement, such as a live satellite for the High Roller, as well as dealing with other challenges that may arise from hosting events outside the home comforts of the Hippodrome.
Take the 50/50 event, for example, which requires an even mix of men and women and so accepts entrants in mixed pairs. In November if a woman wanted to play, but had no partner, Craigie was able to rustle one up from her group of poker room regulars.
“The 50/50 will be back, because that was just so much fun. We just have to communicate that a little bit better,” Craigie shares. “I can't just run upstairs this time and grab my guys from the cash game table. We need people to come prepared and have a partner.”
More rake-free satellites
The other change they’re hoping to implement involves extending the festival’s reach, not only through online qualifiers — which start at PokerStars on June 1 — but by targeting areas where running online satellites is less straightforward.
“We’re trying very, very hard to look at ways that we can bring in more players from Central Europe, for example, because we didn't have the opportunity to run satellites there,” Craigie explains. “What we're trying to do in those places is to look at what our ambassadors in those countries can do, what they can host, partnering with other groups and casinos that we have a partnership with, see if they can host a satellite or two, or six, or seven.
"I'm looking at literally every opportunity. We are going to look to see what we can do to extend the reach and give everybody an opportunity to come and play in London, in August in the summer.”
One element which will be staying unchanged, and which Craigie believes is central to the Festival’s success, is rake-free satellites.
“It's about reading the audience,” says Craigie, “and it certainly was a deciding factor in why some people played. We're not going to charge you anything to get in to play the satellite. That’s the difference between a satellite that generates a few seats and a satellite that generates 19 or 20 seats."
“I want to provide a platform and a place for women to play. £40 is affordable to many to come and play a satellite and experience poker in a live location. We had women [in the Winter Festival] that had never set foot in a big tournament before. We had a freeroll with people who had literally never played poker before. It’s about reading the audience and using the leverage that we have.”
That audience appears to be growing. The field in the womens event at the recent European Poker Tour Monte Carlo stop was up 34% on 2024, without any satellites or qualifiers, and Craigie is well placed to witness the blooming of another market in live poker.
“I think there are more women in poker now. I think we're growing. I think we're making a difference, but that goes hand in hand with making the environment the right space.
“That appetite is there, it's not just about getting women who have never played before, it's also about getting women who want to play poker out onto the tables.”
The PokerStars Womens Summer Festival will run from August 12-17 at The Clermont Hotel, London.
More details, including the full tournament schedule, are expected to be released next week.
Images courtesy of Danny Maxwell/Manuel Kovsca/Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd/The Clermont Hotel
