By Kevin Felix | February 27, 2007

With the online poker industry getting shaken up seemingly every day now, poker rooms are working hard to draw in the crowds. One way poker rooms have tried to differentiate themselves has been with the mega-prizepool tournaments.

The rage right now is the online tournament series, such as FTOPS at Full Tilt Poker or the WCOOP at PokerStars. But lest we forget, their granddaddy is the weekly guaranteed prize pool tourney. For the last few years, thousands of poker players have blocked off hours on weekends to take their shot at five and even six figure payouts.

Now both Party Poker and Absolute Poker have increased their guaranteed tournament offerings in an effort to capture a bigger piece of the market.

Absolute Poker has done two things. First, the poker room added a $50,000 guaranteed Sunday tournament at 8:00pm (all times eastern), featuring a $162 buy-in. Second, it boosted the guaranteed prize pool of its 4:30pm Saturday tournament by 50 percent, from $100,000 to $150,000. As always Absolute’s biggest weekly tourney requires a $216 buy-in.

Party Poker has inserted an even larger tournament into its schedule. This one is a $300,000 guaranteed prize pool, taking place every Sunday at 12:45pm. The buy-in is $215.

Both online poker rooms run satellites every day so that players can enter the big tournaments at a discount.

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