Guide To The Poker Stars ‘World Championship Of Online Poker’

The World Championship Of Online Poker (WCOOP) is the biggest single online tournament event – with guaranteed prize pools of an amazing $15 Million. In fact the last championship, in 2007, gave away more than $24 Million in prizes over 23 separate events.

Poker Stars WCOOP – Overview And History

Inaugurated in 2002 the WCOOP has been growing each year since, showing the increasing popularity of both the Poker Stars site and online tournaments in general. Held in the fall of each year, the concept behind the WCOOP is to be the online equivalent of the World Series Of Poker. While the prize pools do not yet match the WSOP, the 2007 WCOOP Main Event winner took home an online record prize of $1.3 Million.

With 23 separate events with buy-in levels ranging from $215 to $2,600 a wide variety of poker games and betting structures are available. Texas Holdem featured in 11 of the 23 events held in 2007 – including re-buys, pot-limit, fixed-limit, heads-up and shootout formats as well as the standard no-limit games. Other poker variations included Omaha, Stud, Razz, HORSE and 2-7 triple draw, with high-low variants included where applicable. Poker Stars run satellite qualifiers for all WCOOP events starting from just a few dollars, giving all of their players the opportunity to participate.

The 2007 WCOOP Main Event $2,600 No-Limit Holdem tournament featured some controversy as the winner was disqualified. Though Poker Stars did not release details of their investigation it is believed the winner was ‘Multi-Accounting’ (has entered more than once using different Id’s).

How To Qualify For The Poker Stars WCOOP

Poker Stars include as many of their huge player base as possible in qualifying for the WCOOP with an unsurpassed range of satellite qualifiers. The exact structures will depend on the buy-in amount of the event. For example the $2,600 main event runs sub-qualifiers which feed into several ‘super-satellites’, while the smaller buy-in events feature more direct qualifiers. The main division is between multi-table tournament satellites and ‘shootout’ tournaments.

Multi-table satellites feature re-buy, turbo re-buy and freeze-out tournaments. These start from as little as $3 to enter. The turbo tournaments have a 30 minute re-buy period and 5 minute blind levels, players may then add-on at the break for an additional buy-in. Seats, either in super-satellites or the WCOOP events are then awarded depending on the total prize pool collected.

Shootout tournament satellites take the form of two single-table knock-outs. The winner of the first table moves forward to a second 1-table tournament where a number of seats are awarded. Double (2-table) and Triple (3-table) versions are available. Buy-ins range from around $10 for smaller events, up to $215 for qualification into the larger buy-in WCOOP tournaments.