PokerStars opened the 25th World Championship of Online Poker on Sept. 6, and the anniversary series runs through Sept. 30 with 121 numbered events spread across 350 individual tournaments. The headline guarantee is near $40 million.
Pokerfuse said this is the first WCOOP since the launch of the PokerStars Network, after Betfair Poker UK moved onto PokerStars software and began sharing a player pool with PokerStars dot-com. Tightpoker reported that PokerStars views that larger shared pool as one of the reasons it can support guarantees at this scale. The headline total also includes the $5 million Sunday Million 20th Anniversary event, which is already a summer-long tournament and coincides with the opening stretch of WCOOP rather than being a new addition.
The series spans at least 18 poker variants, from No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha to mixed games such as HORSE, Razz, Stud, Badugi and 8-Game. It also brings back familiar PokerStars brands, including Thursday Thrill, Super Tuesday, Sunday Warm-Up, Sunday Kickoff, Saturday KO and Wednesday Surprise.
The six Main Events are split across Sept. 27 and 28, with three No-Limit Hold’em events and three Pot-Limit Omaha events. On the NLHE side, the buy-ins are $109, $1,050 and $10,300, with combined guarantees of $5.75 million. The $10,300 World Championship of NLHE carries a $2.5 million guarantee, down from $5 million in previous years.
The Pot-Limit Omaha Main Events are set at the three listed buy-in levels, with guarantees of $100,000, $250,000 and $400,000. Tightpoker put the six Main Events’ combined guarantees at $6.5 million, while PokerNews said they would award more than $6.5 million.
PokerStars is also using promotions to feed the festival. Pokerfuse said the WCOOP Leaderboards will run alongside the schedule with $100,000 in prize money across the Low, Medium, High and overall Player of the Series competitions, and each winner will receive a trophy. It also said the WCOOP Lucky Dip will hand out $500,000 in tournament tickets, while the $55 Power Path Express on Sept. 6 will award more than $175,000 in Gold, Silver and Bronze Pass packages and Main Event tickets.
PokerNews added that traditional satellites start at $0.55 and WCOOP-themed Spin & Go games at $0.75. It also noted that WCOOP has represented the pinnacle of online tournament poker for 25 years, and this year’s field is slightly smaller than last year’s 378 tournaments, which generated nearly $74 million in prize money from 763,364 entries after starting with $65 million in guarantees.
