If you live in these United States of America at the present moment, you probably don’t care, but if you live in, say, Canada, Mexico, numerous European nations, or any of a multitude of other locales, you may be interested to know that the 14th annual PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is underway. Kicking things off this weekend was an interesting offering from Stars, the WCOOP’s first-ever three-day event.
We are accustomed to seeing large events with multiple starting days on the live tournament circuit, but this is not at all common online, as quicker action means shorter blind levels means shorter tournaments. PokerStars, though, decided go for the gusto and made the first event a hydra-like re-entry tournament.
The tournament started months ago, in August 2015, to be exact. From August 30th through September 4th, PokerStars hosted two starting flights each day, each lasting for 14 fifteen-minute levels. On Saturday, the number of these “Phase 1” flights increased to five; one more ran on Sunday for a total of 18 opening round flights. Everybody who still had chips after the 14 levels moved on to “Phase 2,” which also began this past Sunday. In typical re-entry style, those who found themselves worn down to the virtual felt could pay another $100 + $9 entry to give it another shot in any subsequent Phase 1 flight.
A total of 17,130 entrants participated in the 18 Phase 1 flights, with 2,502 surviving to Phase 2. PokerStars had guaranteed a prize pool of $1.5 million, but it was easily topped – the actual prize pool amounted to $1.713 million.
Phase 2 was essentially the rest of the tournament, the period after the starting flights. It was split into two days, Sunday and Monday, making the tournament officially a three-day event even though the entire thing lasted nine days (for such a mathematically minded people, poker players sure have trouble counting days properly). The money bubble burst on Day 2 and 151 players made it to Day 3.
The winner of $200,352 when all was said and done was St. Louis native now living in Costa Rica, Pete “RcknTheSbrbs” Nigh. It was the biggest win of his online poker career, though according to the results tracked by PocketFives, he had been quite successful before this week. He now has over $1.6 million in lifetime online tournament winnings, split between PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker (where he has played under the screen name “winwin07”).
Oftentimes the runner-up in these tournaments goes unnoticed, but this time, the second place finisher was one of the most revered figures in recent poker memory, John Duthie. Duthie is an excellent poker player, but he is best known for founding the European Poker Tour and serving as its CEO from 2004 through 2012. He is regarded as one of the most influential people in poker during the last couple decades and should one day be in the Poker Hall of Fame. Many believe it is a crime that he is not already in the Hall and he has been gaining more and more support for his nomination and hopefully induction during the last few years.
