PokerStars’ WCOOP Exceeding Guarantees, Crowning Champions

The 2009 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), which started on September 3rd, has had several of the opening tournaments break their guaranteed prize pools to this point in the schedule. As the tournament grinds its way through its first weekend, eight WCOOP bracelets have been awarded in several different disciplines of poker.

Of the eight events that have been played to this point, only three tournaments – Event #4, the $215 buy in No Limit Single Draw 2-7 with rebuys, Event #7, the $215 buy in Pot Limit Five Card Draw, and Event #8, the $215 Limit Hold’em – have failed to reach their guaranteed prize pools. For those events, PokerStars has provided the overlay of around $30,000 for each tournament. With the performance of the other five events played in the WCOOP so far, however, PokerStars has had no problems with covering these overlays.

As the first eight events have played out, $5.1 million has been paid out to the combatants during this run of the WCOOP. Players have been turning out in droves to take part in the 2009 schedule, with 33,236 buy-ins paid and 24,487 unique players taking part in the tournaments. The worldwide scope of the WCOOP has also been shown, with 124 countries taking part and 82 of those countries earning something back for their efforts by making it into the money.

Leading the pack as far as earnings for this year’s schedule is the champion of Event #1 – the $215 Six Handed No Limit Hold’em tournament – “ChopSueyyy.” With that victory, “ChopSueyyy,” who calls Finland home, earned a payday of $234,421.82 for defeating a sizeable field of 8538 players. Following “ChopSueyyy” on the earnings board are France’s “MMalipo,” Event #6 ($109 No Limit Hold’em) champion “vakAAttack” from Greece, the United States’ “DHUSTLER15” and Canada’s “Futuro.” All of these players have been able to take home six figure paydays for their efforts during the WCOOP.

Other players who have taken down a bracelet during the early events of the WCOOP include “MUSTAFABET,” who won the $215 Six Handed Pot Limit Omaha tournament (Event #3), “2FLY2TILT” (Event #4), “FireGoblin” (Event #5, $109 Eight Game Mixed Event), “CesarSPA” (Event #7) and Kevin “iacog4” Iacafano (Event #8). Top professionals who have been in the mix during the first eight events include Team PokerStars professional Barry Greenstein, J. C. Tran, Scott “BigRiskky” Clements, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, WSOP bracelet winner Brandon Cantu and Aaron “GambleAB” Bartley, who final tabled Event #4.

Today’s tournament action promises to be quite busy as three events take place on what would normally be the big Sunday tournament day for many of these players. Event #9, the $215 No Limit Hold’em tournament with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool, will be overshadowed somewhat by Event #10, the $10,300 buy in High Rollers No Limit tournament with a $2 million guaranteed prize pool. Event #11, a $530 No Limit Hold’em event will finish the day out with the first of two days of play.

Over the next two weeks, another thirty events will be taking place with buy ins from $109 to the $25K High Roller Heads-Up tournament. The capstone of the schedule will be the two day $5200 Championship Event, which was won last year by Carter “ckingusc” King. Poker News Daily will continue to monitor the action and report on the World Championships of Online Poker as they play out.