At the largest poker site in the world, PokerStars, the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) has been raging on since September 3rd. The WCOOP is a series of 45 poker tournaments across multiple disciplines with a range of buy-ins. PokerStars is one of the few online poker sites that offers its own Mac OS X compatible software client available for download. With such a great opportunity for Mac poker players to make hundreds of thousands of dollars during this tournament series, let’s take a look at what’s already gone down.
The first day of the WCOOP featured two events, the first being the $215 No Limit Texas Hold’em Six-Max event hosted by noted online pro Andre Akkari. This event had an eye-popping $1.25 million guarantee and ended up with 8,538 entries. This swelled the prize pool almost and extra half-million dollars all the way up to $1.7 million. Three players walked away with six figure paydays, with Futuro taking third place for $119,000, MMalipo raking in $184,000, and ChopSueyyy from Finland winning the event for $234,000. The other event on Day 1 was the $215 Razz contest hosted by Katja Thater. The $200,000 guarantee was eclipsed by more than 50%, given 1,526 entries. In the end, djk123 from the United States won and took home $53,410.
Day 2 of the WCOOP had three events, the first being the $215 Pot Limit Omaha Six-Max tournament hosted by World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker. This time, the guarantee was comfortably passed with 2,738 entries. A fierce final table saw a competitive heads-up match, with American BushwickDave coming in second for $62,000 and MUSTAFABET from the UK winning $86,000. The second event of Day 2 was the $215 No Limit Single Draw 2-7 with Rebuys hosted by well-known poker celebrity Barry Greenstein. This event saw an overlay, with only a field of 336 players participating. At the end of the tournament, it was 2FLY2TILT winning and raking in $42,000. The final event of the day was the $109 Eight-Game with five-minute blind levels hosted by WSOP Main Event champ Tom McEvoy. This event tripled its guarantee and saw American FireGoblin win $23,000 for first place.
The WCOOP moved on to Day 3 and started out with a $109 No Limit Hold’em event hosted by Steve Paul-Ambrose with a $1 million dollar guarantee. A stunning 15,675 entered to swell the prize pool to $1.56 million, with the tournament ending in almost exactly 10 hours’ time. The winner hailed from Greece, as vakAAttack won the six-figure first place prize of $183,000. Alex Gomes hosted WCOOP Event #7, $215 Pot Limit Five-Card Draw. It failed to reach the $200,000 guarantee and saw an overlay paid by PokerStars of $31,200. CesarSPA of Spain won it for $33,500. WCOOP Event #8 wrapped up the third day of the tournament series, with the $215 Fixed Limit Hold’em tournament hosted by noted pro Joe Hachem. Again, PokerStars had to fork out $40,000 worth over overlay in this event in order to reach the guarantee.
The fourth day of the WCOOP was a major one, with $5 million in guaranteed prize pools spread across three tournaments. To start things off, Event #9, a $215 No Limit Hold’em tournament, offered a $1 million guarantee. The purse more than doubled to just over $2.2 million with 11,131 participants. The final four in this one each made six-figures, with ternoplayer of Slovakia earning $303,000. Event #10 kicked off two hours later with the $10,300 No Limit Hold’em High Roller tournament hosted by Vanessa Rousso. Amazingly, this tournament also exceeded the $2 million guarantee to almost $3 million. At the top was Sumpas from Sweden, who raked in one of the largest payouts ever for an online poker tournament at $611,000. The final event that started on September 6th was #11, the $530 No Limit Hold’em Two-Day contest hosted by Vicky Coren. This had a $3 million guarantee, which was exceeded with the 6,219 player field. American hustla16 won the multi-day event for a payout of $446,000.
The tournament series concludes on September 20th on PokerStars.
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