Well that was fast. Less than a week after we posted an article about the fourth iteration of a tentative schedule for the 2016 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), PokerStars has unveiled the final, official schedule for the massive tournament series, set to run September 4th through September 26th. And massive is an appropriate word here; as we previously mentioned, there will be 82 events, up from 70 last year.
The WCOOP isn’t a cheap tournament; most buy-ins range from $109 to $700, with some climbing into four, five, and even six digits. Yes, there is one event that will cost $102,000 to enter, twice the buy-in of last year’s Super High Roller, which was billed as the most expensive online poker tournament of all time. Looks like we’ll have a new title holder.
The WCOOP Main Event, Event #78, will cost $5,000 and will be held on September 25th. It will have a $10 million guaranteed prize pool with $1.5 million guaranteed to the winner.
While there are dozens of different events that will be of interest to players, two that specifically stand out are the two Players’ Choice events, Events #48 and #50 on the schedule. During a nomination period, all players will be able to nominate up to two different types of poker tournaments by e-mailing PokerStars. PokerStars will then tally the nominations and create “Voting Booth” tournaments in the WCOOP lobby for the top vote getters. Those nominees will be narrowed to the two winners by players actually registering for the $215 events. After a week, the two events with the most registrants will be added to the WCOOP schedule. At that point, the “Voting Booth” tourneys will be removed and all buy-ins will be refunded so that players can register for the actual Players’ Choice events.
The schedule announcement, made on the PokerStars blog by Senior Manager of Online Championships for PokerStars Bryan Slick, was accompanied by the introduction of the Mini-WCOOP. Former Full Tilt players may remember the Mini-FTOPS that was usually contested sometime after the FTOPS poker series; Mini-WCOOP is very much like this. Slick explained how it will work:
The schedule for Mini-WCOOP will follow the schedule for WCOOP, with the buy-in for each Mini-WCOOP Event being at 1/100th that of the corresponding WCOOP Event in most cases, except when the WCOOP Event eclipses $1,000, at which point the Mini-WCOOP Event is capped at $11. We’re running this companion series to give everyone the chance to take part in the WCOOP experience, while rightfully keeping a respectable distance from the Events of WCOOP proper. Meanwhile, within WCOOP and at the extreme high end of the buy-in scale, we’re running a $102,000 Super High-Roller Event, which is the largest buy-in online tournament in history and right at home, I believe, in the most prestigious online poker series found anytime, anywhere.
Slick also said that there will no longer be “second chance” tournaments at the WCOOP.
“As WCOOP has expanded over the years, both in number of Events as well as length and availability of late registration, the need for 2nd Chance tournaments has diminished significantly. Removing the 2nd Chance tournaments has been something that we’ve been considering for a few years, and with the expansion to 82 Events, it’s a decision that we’ve finally taken,” he explained.
Also gone are WCOOP bracelets for the winners of each event. That decision was made for cost reasons, as well as from the result of feedback from players, who said that the bracelet really wasn’t a motivating factor for participating in the WCOOP.
We won’t copy and paste the 2016 WCOOP here like we did last week, as it is largely the same. For the official schedule, visit the PokerStars blog until it is on the official WCOOP site.
