Poker News

The fifth annual PokerStars Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) is almost here and as such, PokerStars has announced the full schedule for the year’s first major online tournament series. Like last year, the 2016 TCOOP will 50 events and $15 million in total guaranteed prize pools. The TCOOP is slated for January 21st through January 31st.

The opening event of the Championship is an interesting one, a first for any of PokerStars’ “COOP” series: a three-phase tournament. On PokerStars, a “phase” tournament is similar to what we see at major live tournaments with different starting flights. In the case of Event #1, a $27 buy-in tournament with a $1.5 million guaranteed prize pool, there will be a number of “Phase 1” starting flights running every day from January 7th through January 21st. Each will proceed for 12 levels, at which point the phase will conclude and anyone with chips remaining will advance to Phase 2. Phase 2 tournaments will be held three times per day and will last for another dozen levels.

Players who bust out of Phase 1 try again in another Phase 1, of course for another buy-in. They can do this as many times as they want until they make it through. Once a player finishes Phase 1 with chips remaining, that’s it for the re-do’s, though. This tournament doesn’t allow players to try to improve on a less than satisfactory chip stack.

Phases 1 and 2 are expected to last about an hour each. The tournament is setup this way in order to give players as much flexibility as possible. Even though it is a turbo event, a tournament of this one’s expected size can still take a long time to complete. Thus, by splitting it into three phases, players are able to participate in shorter bursts without having to commit to a marathon event. What players will have to commit to, however, is being available for more than one day. Players who make it out of one phase won’t be refunded their buy-in if they can’t take part in future phases.

Phase 3 of Event #1 is the official start of the 2016 TCOOP.

Other firsts for TCOOP are:

•    Progressive Ultra-Knockout tournaments where 75 percent of the buy-in goes to knockout prize money
•    4x turbo tourneys
•    Hyper-Turbo, Deep, One Rebuy One Add-on event

The Main Event will take place on January 31st at 3:30pm ET. It is a No-Limit Hold’em tournament with a $2 million guaranteed prize pool and $300,000 guaranteed for first place.

The complete 2016 TCOOP schedule can be found at PokerStars.com.

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