$30,000,000 is on the line in this year’s World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). Hosted by PokerStars, they’ll be plenty of poker pros and talented amateurs competing.
Kicking off this past Sunday, and being held over the course of 23 days, this month-long event in September will see winners in 62 online tournaments. Various poker formats are available, and each tournament will customarily yield great blind structures and slow levels. Aside from specialty events, players will have little to complain about in terms of tournament functionality.
The prize pools are massive this year: There are multiple events with million-dollar guarantees, and the Main Event in 2011 has a $5 million guarantee. Expecting to be shattered by quite a margin, year after year, the best poker players around the globe assemble to attest to their skill and fortitude in the biggest online tournament in the world.
There has been three winners thus far at the 2011 WCOOP, with LOL_U_21 taking home $211,000 in a two-way deal in Event #1 $215 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Max. He bested a field that gathered 7,500 players, and carried on for just under two days. A few big names were included in this group, mentioning Team PokerStars pros Liv Boeree and Kevin “WizardOfAhhs” Thurman. Boeree happened to be the only Team PokerStars player who made it to Monday’s Day 2, and she doubled-up several times to increase her eventual payout in 18th place.
Event #2, $10,300 High Roller No-Limit Hold’em, brought a smaller collection of players, although the player pool was much more potent. Only the best of the best entered this event, contesting pots heavily for the chance to win the $430,000 first place prize. It was eventually awarded to Ashley “DYBYDX” Mason, who needed to go through runner-up “xraypies,” WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem, online player Tom “kingsofcards” Marchese and Annette “Annette15” Obrestad to secure the title.
Although not surprising when it comes to the WCOOP, Event #3’s 10,000+ player-pool drove up the statistical figures thus far for the tournament. The colossal field allowed for a seven-figure prize pool, over $2 million, despite the buy-in only being $200+$15. With four events totaling over 10,000 entrants in 2010, the numbers look to only get bigger as the tournament moves forward.
Online player K_0_S_T_Y_A won $288,660 by beating O-Totoro heads-up. Entering into two-way play with a 3-to-1 chip advantage, play quickly pulled even, only to have K_0_S_T_Y_A win a critical hand with [Ah 9h] versus the [8c 8h] of O-Totoro to gain over 80% of the remaining chips in play. It was only a dozen or so hands later that O-Totoro couldn’t round up any more ammunition.
Last year’s WCOOP brought a total prize pool of $63,157,150, with 141,126 total buy-ins and 62 events played. The 2011 WCOOP will likely overtake those figures, and you’ll want to be in on every second of the action to claim your portion of the prize money.
The $5,200 Main Event will take place September 25th-26th, with no less than $5,000,000 being awarded. Last year, POTTERPOKER took down $2,278,097 in the victory.
Look for the 2011 WCOOP Main Event to surpass that staggering sum.
PokerStars welcomes international players (excluding U.S.) to play in any of their 2011 WCOOP events. If you’re from the United States, BetOnline Poker has reasonable tournaments and great cash games.