There are several live poker series worth a lot of your attention. This includes the World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour, and others. However, not everyone can make a trip to the physical address hosting these poker series.
This brings us to the other best thing, online poker events. In line with that, PokerStars has always been at the top of its games to make poker accessible to more players via online platforms. The poker room has hosted the biggest online poker series since 2002.
Just in the wake of the largest live WSOP Main Event, PokerStars has announced the date for the biggest online poker series. The event starts on September 10, 2023.
Dubbed the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), this event has seen over 7.8 million entrants. The operator has awarded over $1.2 billion in prize money.
The complete schedule is not yet out. But you can expect the event to run for almost a month, ending on October 4.
The Making of WCOOP
The best thing about WCOOP is that it is not a once-in-a-year event like the WSOP Main Event. Instead, PokerStars hosts several events, allowing players to join the next one when they miss the last one.
During the inaugural year of the series, PokerStars hosted nine tournaments. The event did not even attract 2,500 entrants, and the prize money was barely $800,000.
The event saw massive improvement the following year in 2003. The number of games was only 11, but the prize money raised to $2.7 million while the number of players was over 7,500.
What started as a humble event soon became the pinnacle of online events. The numbers kept growing, from there.
In 2008, 50,000 players registered for the series. This number doubled in 2009, bringing the prize money to over $50 million for the first time since the event made its debut.
It took another ten years for the event to record another massive achievement of 1 million entrants, bringing the prize pool for 2018 to almost $100 million. In 2021, WCOOP recorded the highest prize money of $122 million after getting 1.4 million entrants.
This prize dropped to $108 million last year. Yet, it was still the second-best performance for the event.
National Standings for WCOOP Championship
Who stands at the top? Russia held onto first place up until 2021 with 193 championships.
Last year, the first position went to Brazil, after winning 70 titles, bringing their total championship wins to 241. Previously, Brazil and the UK tied for second place.
While Brazil has the most title wins, the UK has the best PokerStars Champion, Benny Glaser. Benny has won three COOP events this year, bringing the total titles to 18 since 2016.
The player has won eight WCOOP events, including four in 2022. This makes Benny the player to beat in the upcoming September tournament. Although the WCOOP September schedule is not yet out, you can expect the usual low, medium, and high buy-in versions.
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