The Stars Group's Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure 2018 Closes With $22 Million Prize Pool

TORONTO, January 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), one of several major live poker tournament series sponsored by The Stars Group Inc.'s flagship PokerStars brand, came to an end on Sunday, January 14 with a total prize pool of more than $22 million. The PCA, which runs for a week each January in the Bahamas, attracted 1,015 unique players from 64 different countries this year and generated a total of 4,510 entries across 31 PokerStars-sponsored tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $210 to $100,000.

In addition to various PCA-related promotions, rewards and activities, PokerStars also awarded five Platinum Passes to the PokerStars Players No Limit Hold'em Championship (PSPC), which takes place in January 2019. Each Platinum Pass is worth $30,000 and includes a $25,000 PSPC buy-in, accommodation at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort and approximately $2,000 for travel and expenses.

Professional poker player Maria Lampropulos of Buenos Aires, Argentina beat a field of 582 players to win the PCA Main Event, taking home just over $1 million. Lampropulos is the first female player to win the PCA Main Event and was also awarded a Platinum Pass to the PSPC for her first-place finish.

New York Times best-selling author and journalist Maria Konnikova provided another PCA highlight by beating 290 players to win the PCA National Championship, taking home $84,600 and a Platinum Pass, and finishing 42^nd in the PCA Main Event. Konnikova, a Harvard and Columbia graduate with a Ph.D. in psychology, is being tutored by poker professional Erik Seidel in an effort to go from poker-newcomer to professional in just 12-months, an experience she intends to publish in an upcoming book. Poker fans around the world were also able to follow the PCA action through scheduled and live-stream programming at PokerStars TV, PokerStars Blog, Twitch, Facebook Live and YouTube. On Twitch alone, PCA programming attracted more than 2 million cumulative unique viewers across the eight days of broadcasting (average of 267,250 unique viewers per day) for a total of approximately 950,000 hours.

About The Stars Group  

The Stars Group is a leading provider of technology-based products and services in the global gaming and interactive entertainment industries. Through its Stars Interactive Group gaming division, The Stars Group ultimately owns gaming and related consumer businesses and brands, including PokerStars, PokerStars Casino, BetStars, Full Tilt, and the PokerStars Festival, PokerStars MEGASTACK, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, European Poker Tour, Latin American Poker Tour and the Asia Pacific Poker Tour live poker tour and event brands. These brands together have more than 115 million registered customers globally and collectively form the largest poker business in the world, comprising online poker games and tournaments, sponsored live poker competitions, marketing arrangements for branded poker rooms in popular casinos in major cities around the world, and poker programming and content created for television and online audiences. The Stars Group, through certain of these brands, also offers non-poker gaming products, including casino, sportsbook and daily fantasy sports. The Stars Group, through certain of its subsidiaries, is licensed or approved to offer, or offers under third party licenses or approvals, its products and services in various jurisdictions throughout the world, including in Europe, both within and outside of the European Union, the Americas and elsewhere. In particular, PokerStars is the world's most licensed online gaming brand, holding licenses or related operating approvals in 17 jurisdictions.

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