For the first time without its American customers, PokerStars’ World Championships of Online Poker (WCOOP) will hit the felt today with the first of its 62 tournament schedule.
From the inaugural tournament in 2002 until last year, the WCOOP had become the online equivalent of the World Series of Poker. Since its inception, the WCOOP has handed out over $219 million to its competitors over the span of its 228 total events. This year, however, the celebration of the online game will be a bit sedated as players from the United States will not be able to participate due to the actions of “Black Friday.”
Even with that said, there is still plenty of action for the remainder of the international online poker community. There is $30 million guaranteed for the 62 events, with several No Limit Hold’em tournaments offering a guarantee of $1 million or more to its competitors. As expected, this is drawing several top poker professionals, both live and online, out for the feeding frenzy.
The Twitterverse has been abuzz all morning as players prepare to take their shot at the first event, a $215 Six Handed NLHE tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million. “Just bought into WCOOP event 1. GL all, let’s have a long night,” PokerStars sponsored pro Victoria Coren Tweeted to her fans, a thought that was echoed by many. “Grinding the PokerStars WCOOP High Roller today and watching the Magic Pro Tour Top 8 live webcast,” Adam “Roothlus” Levy commented regarding the second big event of today’s WCOOP action, the $10,300 High Roller tournament.
Though the excitement was running high for some players, those that couldn’t get to the virtual felt – for one reason or another – expressed their dismay at being left out of the party. “Well, based off all the WCOOP tweets, I guess I won’t be using Twitter this month,” American poker pro Carter King ruefully stated. For another pro, it wasn’t the after effects of “Black Friday” that caught him, but a frozen account. “Good luck in WCOOP everyone, my accounts still frozen sigh,” European Poker Tour San Remo champion Rupert Elder lamented.
Over the next three weeks, the money will be flying out of the PokerStars coffers as players take down tournaments. Today starts with three tournaments (a $215 Nine Handed NLHE tournament will finish off the action today) and each of the next 21 days features at least two tournaments for PokerStars’ patrons. The big action is sequestered to the weekends, with the higher guarantee tournaments running at that time. The Main Event, taking place on September 25, is a $5000 buy in tournament with a $5 million guaranteed prize pool and a $1 million guaranteed first place payday.
It may be tough for some Americans to look at, but last year’s WCOOP was the biggest online poker festival in the history of the industry. Over $62 million was dispersed to the winners, with 141,126 buy ins building that prize pool. Such notable online names as “Xaston” (American Jaime Kaplan) and Russia’s “Kroko-dill” (Andrey Zaichenko) and professional players Richard “Chufty” Ashby, Shaun Deeb, Jason Mercier and Alexander Kravchenko walked off with the prized WCOOP bracelet.
The 2010 WCOOP Main Event was the biggest online tournament ever by prize pool and also became the seventeenth largest poker tournament in the history of the game. The eventual champion of the tournament, Tyson “POTTERPOKER” Marks, walked off with a $2.2 million payday, while Australia’s “Andy McLEOD” scraped by “Kroko-dill” to take down the WCOOP Player of the Year award.
Perhaps poker professional Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, who finished third in last year’s WCOOP POY race, summed it up best when he Tweeted, “WCOOP is underway! Will post daily updates as if it’s a big live tourney series because, other than the WSOP, it’s bigger than them all!” Poker News Daily will follow the action and report on big stories as they occur.
