PokerStars Launches Superstar Limit Hold’em Challenge

At the end of 2010, PokerStars started its SuperStar Showdown challenge in which contenders would pit their skills against no-limit heads-up specialist Viktor “Isildur1” Blom.
Now the world’s largest online poker room has announced another absorbing competition aptly called The Limit Hold’em Challenge, in which specially invited players will compete for high stakes.
Getting underway at 2pm ET on Saturday, May 5th, the first installment will see Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu take on mystery assailant “rUaBot” with both players starting with $75,000 bankrolls and playing 1,250 hands across two tables of $200/$400 heads-up limit hold’em.
Not much is known about Negreanu’s opponent “rUaBot,” except that he is a  limit hold’em specialist, and discussing the poker format he had the following to say:
“In my opinion, fixed limit is more strategic than no limit. In no-limit, you always have some guessing games like ‘would he bluff here or wouldn’t he?.’ Of course, such situations often happen in fixed-limit, too, but there is much more space for general strategic adaptions than in no-limit. I think, setting up your standard game is pure math, but exploiting your opponents patterns is an art…and will always be!”
The announcement of PokerStars’ Limit Hold’em Challenge will come as welcome news to players of the format, which have seen their game’s popularity diminish over the years as interest in NLHE and Omaha games have continued to sky rocket.
Factors contributing to the decline of Limit Hold’em include smaller pots, lower profits and, of course, bad action for TV coverage. However, PokerStars are now hoping that their latest offering might help stimulate some extra interest and introduce a new audience to the game. On the site, PokerStars has billed the variant in the following way:
“Limit Hold’em games are a great alternative to the frenzied action on the No Limit tables.”
It will now be interesting to see how much The Limit Hold’em Challenge will help improve the variant’s player numbers.