When Full Tilt Poker announced that it would be hosting the Onyx Cup, the poker community’s interest was certainly piqued. However, the information they released when they first made the announcement was pretty vague, at best. There wasn’t much known about what the Onyx Cup would really be about except that it would have insanely high buy-ins. Now, however, Full Tilt has released the tournament details for the Onyx Cup as well as the schedule.

Tournament Schedule

The only thing we knew about the Onyx Cup was that it would be held in different continents and that there would be five events in all before the grand finale. Full Tilt has just recently announced the exact tournament schedule, although the exact locations of the Onyx Cup tournaments have yet to be released. The first event will be held on May 11 and 12, with a buy-in of $100,000. It will be held in Las Vegas. The second event will also have a buy-in of $100,000 and will also be held in Vegas, but it will take place from July 7 to July 8. The next two Onyx Cup events will be held in Asia on the month of September. Again, there aren’t any clear details about which parts of Asia. The buy-in for the third and fourth tournaments has not yet been determined as well. It’s widely speculated that one of the locations in Asia would be Macau. The Grand Finale will bring the players back to Las Vegas, with a $250,000 buy-in. It is set to take place this December 2011 — a wonderful conclusion to the year.

The Structure

One of the details that Full Tilt released in their announcement was the tournament structure. Unlike the WSOP, the Onyx Cup final table will have only eight players. The gameplay will be extremely intense as all players will be pressed for time. They are going to use a ‘shot clock’ format, in which players are given only 30 seconds to make their move. If they are unable to make a decision within that time period, their hand will either be checked or folded automatically. However, there are concessions. Players are given three ‘time chips’ daily, two of which add an extra 30 seconds to their time, while the last one adds two minutes. It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how the poker pros will handle this new format, though it’s likely that Internet poker pros will have a definite edge.