While the games were under the new Micro Rollers moniker, the low-stakes, high-value ChampionChips series on 888poker recently completed with a successful run of 31 games.
Fewer than a third of the games missed their guarantees, and even in those cases, the misses were small in the grand scheme of things for total prizes across the series almost $25k higher than promised.
Of the 31 events spread across 10 days, 22 games beat their pre-series guarantees with fees easily covering the few games that missed. In the end, $369,641 was awarded in prizes with $364,025 collected from players.
What that meant is that while the 9 missed guarantees accounted for $24,141 in overlay, with extra money collected in other games, 888poker only paid out $5,616 extra over what it collected in buy-ins. With $37,496 in total fees collected as well during the series, the net result looks very green for the operator and players alike.
2024 Micro Rollers Summary
| Total Prizes | $369,641 |
| Total Collected | $364,025 |
| Total Fees | $37,496 |
| Total Guaranteed | $345,500 |
| Increse on Gty | $24,141 |
| % Increase on Gty | 6.99% |
| Total Entries | 37,383 |
| Total Games | 31 |
| Events over Gty | 22 |
| Events under Gty | 9 |
ChampionChips Rolls On
While the ChampionChips series has had a few different looks over the years, what has remained consistent since its debut in 2016 are the low buy-ins. Aimed squarely at small-stakes players, the ChampionChips series has been one of the best places for low-stakes players to get a shot at series glory at big guarantees.
The series burst onto the online poker scene in 2016 with a sports-themed series geared around the Olympics that year and it maintained the sports theme for a good portion of its run. This year, however, the series moved away from the sporting theme for a more general branding to Micro Rollers ChampionChips with names more reflective of the poker being played.
History of Mystery
This year’s series, which ran from Apr 14 – 23, culminated in a massive $100k guaranteed Mystery Bounty Main Event. 888poker was an early online adopter of the Mystery Bounty (MB) format, testing the market with a special Sunday game in Sep 2022.
After the success of that trial, the operator went all in on the mystery bounty concept. The format began appearing on the main schedule immediately and was injected into series as well. By early 2023, the operator was running full series with nothing but MB events.
While this edition of the ChampionChips had some other formats on the schedule, the heavy focus on the MB format for 888poker is still in evidence with nearly half the games in this ChampionChips featuring bounty envelopes.
Main Event Beats Guarantee
Among the events to feature the MB format was the big one, the $100k guaranteed Mystery Bounty Main Event. The game was among the standout performers of the series with more than 4,600 runners for a boost on the guarantee of almost 5%.
While that was a middling result in terms of percent increase, the $104,288 collected amounted to the biggest prize pool by far across the series. Given the guarantee, the title of “biggest prize pool” was always going to the Main, but a significant increase on the promise makes the title that much sweeter.
2024 Micro Rollers Biggest Prize Pools
| Date | Tournament | Buy-In | Entries | Prizes | $Collected | $ Over Gty | % Over Gty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23-Apr | Event #30: $100,000 Mystery Bounty Main Event | $25 | 4,635 | $104,310 | $104,287.50 | $4,287.50 | 4.11% |
| 14-Apr | Event #4: $40,000 Opening Mystery Bounty High Roller | $55 | 793 | $40,000 | $39,650.00 | -$350.00 | -0.88% |
| 21-Apr | Event #25: $40,000 Mystery Bounty High Roller | $55 | 743 | $40,000 | $37,150.00 | -$2,850.00 | -7.67% |
| 14-Apr | Event #1: $12,000 Opening Mystery Bounty | $11 | 1,634 | $16,340 | $16,340.00 | $4,340.00 | 26.56% |
| 21-Apr | Event #22: $12,000 Mystery Bounty | $11 | 1,633 | $16,330 | $16,330.00 | $4,330.00 | 26.52% |
If there was a fly in the ointment for this series, it was the $40k guaranteed games. Neither of the two games managed to hit their guarantee, though the Opening Mystery Bounty High Roller was fewer than 10 entries away. On the other hand, the two $12k games blew their pre-series promises out of the water with more than 25% extra in prizes for each game.
That put those two games at the top of the percentage list but two other games in the top 5 also capped 20% extra while the 5th game was just a hair below that threshold.
2024 Micro Rollers Prize Pools by % over Guarantee
| Date | Tournament | Buy-In | Entries | Pool | Collected | $ Over Gty | % Over Gty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14-Apr | Event #1: $12,000 Opening Mystery Bounty | $11 | 1,634 | $16,340 | $16,340.00 | $4,340.00 | 26.56% |
| 21-Apr | Event #22: $12,000 Mystery Bounty | $11 | 1633 | $16,330 | $16,330.00 | $4,330.00 | 26.52% |
| 18-Apr | Event #15: $1,500 Super KO Micro | $2.20 | 961 | $1,922 | $1,922.00 | $422.00 | 21.96% |
| 14-Apr | Event #2: $8,000 Opening Mystery Bounty Mini | $5.50 | 2,007 | $10,035 | $10,035.00 | $2,035.00 | 20.28% |
| 16-Apr | Event #8: $2,000 PKO 6-Max Micro | $3.30 | 829 | $2,487 | $2,487.00 | $487.00 | 19.58% |
The many Day 1 flights for the Main Event meant it also came in as the leader for entries, by a mile. The 4,635 entries for the Main was almost 1,500 higher than the next biggest total, but a total of 3 games managed to get more than 2,000 runners and 17 cracked the 4-digit mark. Outside of the Main Event, the $10k guaranteed Mystery Bounty Mini Event for $3.50 did quite well with 3,181 entries.
Stream On is Now Off
In other 888poker news, the Stream On contest that was looking to pick the next member of the operator’s Stream Team is now complete and the competition was fierce. Streamers from around the globe competed for the coveted spot on the team starting on Mar 15.
They battled for a month on the streaming streets and, in the end, the operator was forced to concede the top quality of entrants by selecting two winners, instead of the original plan of one. As a result, 888poker is welcoming Dave “Wursthandz” Brady from the UK and Canadian Darius “KomodoDragonJesus” Wajda to the Stream Team.
Read all the details about the winners on the 888poker blog.
