Calling all online poker players in the Garden State: The New Jersey Championship of Online Poker (NJCOP II) has returned! The 34-event series will kick off on Thursday, April 16 and runs through Sunday, April 26, guaranteeing $1,000,000 throughout.

NJCOP II will feature a wide array of online poker variations with buy-ins to accommodate all levels of play. Everything from NL Holdem and PL Omaha, to 7 Card Stud, Bounty Tournaments and Deepstacks are on the schedule, with buy-ins ranging from $50 to $1,000.

The New Jersey Championship of Online Poker is opening with a Players Choice event on April 16 at 6:00pm ET. Registration costs $100 and a minimum $20k is guaranteed. Then at 7:00pm is Event #2, $150 PLO 6 Max with $10k up for grabs.

The NJCOP II continues from there with 2 events on the schedule every weekday and 4 events each Saturday. On Sundays, the roster increases to 7 tournaments, including a $5 Mega Satellite to the NJCOP II Main Event on April 19 and 26 at 3:30pm. Each satellite offers rebuys and guarantees 25 seats to the Main Event.

The Second edition of the New Jersey Championship of Online Poker will play out Event #30 – the Main Event – on Sunday, April 26 at 5:00pm. The direct buy-in is $200, and the winners are promised a slice of the NJCOP II’s largest single-event prize pool, $150,000.

Also of interest will be two high roller events, #11 and #32, likewise to be played out on their respective Sundays. The first features a $1,000 buy-in and a standard NLHE structure with $50,000 GTD. The second also incurs a $1,000 buy-in, but is listed as “NLHE Slow” and guarantees $75,000.

Click here to see the Full Schedule of 2015 New Jersey Championship of Online Poker.

NJCOP II Notice for Mac & Mobile Players

A special notice has been posted on Borgata Poker and PartyPoker NJ in regards to users logging in to the online poker site from a Mac or mobile device. Note that certain poker variants cannot be played on Mac and/or mobile. Please see the chart below for NJCOP II events that can and cannot be played on specific operating systems and devices.

About the New Jersey Championship of Online Poker

The New Jersey Championship of Online Poker is hosted by the Party Borgata Network, meaning that members of Borgata Poker and PartyPoker NJ will have dual access to all NJCOP II events. All legal-age poker players located in the state of New Jersey are welcome to participate. A verified account with either online poker room is required.

In its inaugural debut last year, the New Jersey Championship of Online Poker featured just 15 events, and guaranteed $600,000. The significant growth of the NJCOP II schedule, with more than twice as many events and the overall guarantee nearly doubled, goes to show just how well the 15 month old iGmaing market is developing in the Garden State.

The online poker and casino gambling revenue report for February 2015 has been released by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. While it’s clear that internet poker is on an alarming decline compared to last year’s results, it’s also worth noting that, despite the cash game traffic results, the Party Borgata poker network is still the leader in New Jersey.

When WSOP.com and 888Poker teamed up in January by pooling a portion of their player bases across certain cash games and tournaments, it appeared that the newly formed WSOP / 888 network was primed to take over the top spot in New Jersey’s online poker market.

According to current statistics from traffic tracking website PokerScout, WSOP/888 is averaging 200 players at the cash tables over a 7 day period, while the Party Borgata poker network is averaging only 150. That information would lead many to believe that WSOP / 888 would easily overtake the market as the #1 gross revenue generator in the Garden State. But the latest revenue reports indicate otherwise.

The NJ DGE’s revenue report shows that PartyPoker and Borgata Poker (collectively the Party Borgata Network) reaped $1,103,501 from interactive peer-to-peer gaming (i.e. online poker rake and tournaments fees). Caesars Interactive Entertainment, which operates as the license holder for WSOP.com and 888Poker, generated $942,154.

Together, New Jersey’s online poker market produced $2,045,655, with Party Borgata owning 53.94% of the market share. WSOP / 888 made up for the remaining 46.06%. In terms of cash game traffic, though, the numbers look quite different, with WSOP / 888 leading at 57.14% of the market share, and the Party Borgata poker network trailing with 42.86%.

How Party Borgata Poker Network retains #1 Rank

There are only two reasons why Party Borgata would remain on top, despite having lower cash game traffic than its sole network rival in New Jersey. The most likely cause would be a stronger interest from the online poker community in Party Borgata’s tournament schedule.

The network has a larger selection of well-structured tournaments that offer higher guaranteed prize pools than WSOP / 888, and the majority of them are networked across both PartyPoker and Borgata Poker. WSOP and 888 only chose to network a small number of their largest weekly guarantees, which are still collectively lower than those presented by Party Borgata. The highest Sunday GTD at WSOP / 888 generally fluctuates between $25k and $35k, while Party Borgata offers a minimum Sunday $50k GTD, often increased to $100k GTD.

The only other factor that could cause such a seemingly opposing result in New Jersey’s online poker leadership is the value of the players taking part at the cash tables. If PartyPoker and Borgata Poker are drawing more high volume, high stakes players than WSOP / 888, it would reason that the network would collect more from cash game rake than their competitor, despite having the lower traffic numbers.

Revenue Reports Good & Bad News for New Jersey

When comparing February’s online poker revenue to January 2015, the numbers don’t look good at first. Jan 2015 brought in $2,299,426 ($1,283,746 or 55.83% from Party Borgata, $1,015,680 or 44.17% from WSOP / 888). In Feb 2015, the total was down 11% to $2,045,655.

However, if we negate the fact that February had 3 less days than January, calculating the daily average instead, the results look more like this: $74,175 per day in January, $73,059 per day in February. That equates to a mere 1.5% differential, and should be a lot easier for New Jersey regulators to swallow.

Where the largest discrepancy lies is the comparison between February 2015 and February 2014. Last year at this time, the Garden State’s online poker revenue totaled $3,109,203. Overall, the internet poker market has seen a disturbing decline of 28.3% in year-over-year results.

On a positive note, online casino revenue in New Jersey is still running strong, accounting for approximately 4x more than online poker. When both online poker and casino revenues are combined, the DGE reported a total internet gaming win of $10.4 million in February 2015, up 0.9% from $10.3 million in February 2014.