When it comes to online poker tournament series, the focus is always on PokerStars with its Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) and the currently-running World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). Full Tilt Poker’s FTOPS was also very popular, but Full Tilt no longer exists except as a skin of PokerStars. But poker players who want to try something different might want to look to the Microgaming Poker Network (MPN), which will be hosting the Universal Championship of Poker 2019 beginning on Sunday, September 15th. The UCOP features 94 events and more than €1,000,000 in guarantees.
I am not about to take the time to list all 94 tournaments, but they run the gamut. Buy-ins range from €2.20 to €320 and while most of the events are No-Limit Hold’em, there are all sorts of varieties, like deepstack, re-buy, bounty, six-handed, and big ante. There are some Pot-Limit Omaha games, as well, but if you are looking for more exotic games, you are out of luck.
The UCOP Main Event is a freezeout tournament (yay!) with a €110 and a €100,000 guarantee. It is slated to run on September 29th at 5:00pm server time.
As is the case with most online tournament series, there is a leaderboard, but this one is a little strange.
The top spots on the leaderboard go to the players with the fewest number of points. The winner of a tournament receives one point, second place receives two, and so on. Of course, this means that players who do not play have to earn points, so players who skip an event will receive a point total equal to the number of players in the tournament plus one.
While players will have to grind events to win the leaderboard competition, there is some leeway, as a player’s worst 15 scores will be removed.
The winner of the leaderboard at the end of the series will win the “Greatest Poker Player in the Universe” trophy, a €1,550 online tournament tickets package, a €1,500 MPNPT package, €1,000 Cash, and a Player’s Choice prize. The Player’s Choice prize is one of the other three prizes aside from the trophy, in addition to those three prizes.
Leaderboard prizes go down to 20th place.
Every winner of a UCOP event will also get a seat in the Tournament of Champions that will take place on October 6th. The top eight finishers will receive varying amounts of online tournament tickets.
MPN is also giving away seats into the UCOP Main Event to players who achieve one of the following:
• Play 1,000 €10+ Fish Party SNGs
• Play 1,000 €20+ SNGs (Fish Party excluded)
• Play 25,000 hands of €50NL+ (€0.25/€0.50 NLHE or above)
• Play 25,000 hands of €50PLO+ (€0.25/€0.50 PLO or above)
The Microgaming Poker Network has been around seemingly forever. While it has changed over the years and is not as big as it used to be, it is still home to sixteen online poker rooms, including Betsafe, betsson, 32Red, and NordicBet.
