Fall is one of the best times of year for online poker. The weather begins to cool so people have more of a desire to stay inside (unless you are me, can’t stand hot weather, and prefer to venture outdoors when it cools off). The kids go back to school so we grown-ups have more time to play. And it is the season when PokerStars hosts the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), whose schedule was published on Monday.
There will be 73 events this year, spanning September 5th through September 23rd. Each event will have three tiers – High, Medium, and Low – except for the Main Event, which will have just two. Speaking of which, the $5,200 Main Event (High buy-in) will start at 1:00pm server time on September 22nd and will have a $10 million guarantee. All told, there is more than $75 million in guarantees across the entire 2019 WCOOP.
Buy-ins range from $2.20 to $25,000.
As always, there will be a WCOOP Leaderboard, where players earn points for their finishes in WCOOP events. Points vary based on tournament structure, but it is general 100 points for a first place finish, 80 for second, and down to 5 or 10 for the lowest places to cash. For reference, a player named “aDrENalin710” took the overall leaderboard title last year with 1,325 points.
Each buy-in tier has its own leaderboard, with the top three points earners in each winning cash. The overall points earner will win $20,000 cash and a trophy.
There are also loads of satellites via which players can qualify, as well as special 2019 WCOOP Spin & Go’s. As always, the odds of playing for the grand prize, a WCOOP Main Event ticket, are very low, but overall, the probabilities of good prizes aren’t all that bad. For example, in the $25 WCOOP Spin & Go, the chances of having either a $5,200 Main Event ticket, a $215 WCOOP ticket, or a $109 WCOOP ticket be the prize are 11.6 percent. That’s not great, but I would have imagined it to be worse.
Anyone who qualifies for a WCOOP event via a satellite will be automatically registered for the applicable tournament and will not be able to unregister. Subsequent wins for the same event will be paid in PokerStars tournament dollars.
Deals will be permitted at final tables of WCOOP events and PokerStars will even help facilitate them. Deals are not, however, allowed in WCOOP satellites.
Because it is the “World” Championship of Online Poker, there are also national bragging rights at stake. It was a close one last year, with Brazil eeking out a title against the United Kingdom, 23 WCOOP wins to 22. Russia was a distant third with 14 wins. And if you were wondering, even though PokerStars has a New Jersey-based site, the United States is not part of the WCOOP. New Jersey is ring-fenced from the international PokerStars sites, so players in the Garden State will only be able to participate if they fly to a jurisdiction where PokerStars operates.
The complete 2019 WCOOP schedule can be found here.
