Absolute Poker launches assassin series

Popular online poker room absolutepoker.com has released many enhancements to their poker software, promotions and game offerings in recent months. It appears the company is working overtime to gain back players trust after the largest cheating scandal in online gambling history took place on their website last year. While we still remain hesitant to promote them on our website we do feel obligated to at least report and give them credit for their recent innovative addition to their tournament offerings.

Yesterday, Absolute Poker announced the launch of a tournament format that has the potential to change the face of tournament poker as we know it, it’s called an Assassin Bounty tournament. In an assassination tournament, buy-ins are divided 50/50 between the prize pool and the bounties. What this means is that every player has a bounty on their head, which is sure to make the earlier rounds of tournament play much more exciting.

The highlight of the Assassin Bounty tournament series is a $200+9 assassination tournament with one guaranteed seat to the WSOP Main Event awarded to the top finisher. These WSOP Assassin Tournaments will be scheduled for Saturdays at 20:30 EST. Other smaller buy-in tournaments will also be running throughout the week.

While bounty tournaments such as these have failed to catch on in the past, the increase in poker’s popularity combined with Absolute Poker’s accessibility by virtually all users through their browser-based interface in addition to the downloadable software may be just what is needed to spark pokers next big thing.

It’s our humble opinion that if AP is going to overcome the fallout of last years POTRIPPER incident, they’re going to need to go beyond just innovation. The recent upgrades such as resizable tables, multi-lingual software and the bounty tournament addition are all great first steps but we would prefer to see these followed up with an aggressive, if not philanthropic, marketing campaign. Sadly, AP appears more focused on wooing “new players” with innovation alone rather reaching out to former players.

Perhaps the poker industry is ready to move on, but it’s your move, Absolute. Make us an offer we can’t refuse.