The WCOOP has now come to an end, with dramatic prize pools and the main event topping off a successful series. PokerStars guaranteed $60 million for the event, and those prizes have now been more than paid, with all tournaments breaking through their guarantees.
PokerStars is one of the largest online poker sites in the world, and it also runs its sports betting and casino games through the same site. They held the online poker competition from September 3rd – 26th, with 81 high-stakes events and the same tournaments also available in low stakes.
The WCOOP began with the Sunday Kickoff on the 3rd of September, which is a $215-dollar event with a total prize pool of over $800k. ‘Carpediem200’ took down the event for $115,278.
Since then, there have been daily highlights and huge wins. Notable events include the WCOOP-03-H, a Sunday Million tournament with a $1,050 dollar buy-in and a whopping prize pool of over $2 million. Russian player Kumarioy eventually claimed the top prize of over $300k.
Regular WCOOP Super Tuesday tournaments (with $1k and $2k buy-ins) resulted in astronomical events with prize pools way over the million-dollar mark, while the WCOOP 66-H $25k high roller (8-max) boasted one of the largest prize pools of the competition, with over $3.5 million doled out to the winning players who were willing to risk such a large buy-in.
Other high roller events included the 51-H 6-max, with a prize pool of over $1.7 million, and the $10k 81-H NLHE event, which awarded nearly $2.5 million — of which ‘prepstyle’ took in a neat and tidy $469k.
Lower-stakes players were not disappointed. Many players cannot afford the range of buy-ins for the high-stakes games, which often run into the hundreds or thousands, and are often excluded from major online poker events. The WCOOP aimed to be as accessible as possible, offering low-stakes tournaments available for players, with plenty of buy-ins in the $11, $27 and $55 range.
Players could also take advantage of several innovative ways to qualify for the high-stakes games; PokerStars offered the usual satellite tournaments, along with opportunities to win Main Event and other ticket prizes through Spin and Gos or freerolls, or even via Stars chest rewards.
Though not the final event on the WCOOP calendar, every poker player knows that the Main Event is the Big One, and this year was no different. Poker Stars guaranteed $10 million in prizes, and the eventual total prize pool landed at pretty close to $11 million, with over 1800 entries and 379 re-entries, making it the richest competition of the year.
Steven ‘SVZFF’ Van Zadelhoff won the Main Event for $1.6 million! He declined a deal when the final table was down to three players, despite being second in chips, and then went on to beat ‘joshua333’ heads-up to take home a life-changing amount of money. The Main Event was Zadelhoff’s biggest ever win, though he has previously made over $5 million playing online poker and $1.5 million in the live circuit.
The WCOOP came to a close with the Wrap-Up event, 81-H, which had a $530 buy-in. Legenden won the tourney and scooped over $100k.
