PokerStars launches biggest ever WCOOP

(PRESS RELEASE) -- The 15th annual World Championship of Online Poker will feature a record-breaking 82 events and more than $50 million in guaranteed prizes on PokerStars.com, an Amaya Inc. brand. PokerStars' flagship online tournament championship, which is widely regarded by poker players as the must-play event of the year, will take place Sept. 4-26. It will also be joined by a low-stakes companion series for the first time ever, Mini-WCOOP (see below for more).

The highlight of the World Championship is the $10 million guaranteed Main Event, which will take place over three days (Sept. 25-27) making it one of the five richest poker tournaments of the year, likely behind only the World Series of Poker Main Event, and the High Roller for One Drop. The reigning online poker world champion is 'Coenaldinho7', from Belgium, who won $1.3 million in WCOOP 2015.

Super High Roller
Last year, there was a massive amount of buzz among the game's elite players and poker fans for the biggest buy-in tournament ever held online, the $51,000 Super High Roller. PokerStars has upped the ante this year by doubling that record buy-in to an incredible $102,000. The Super High Roller on September 11 will be one of several high-profile events, including the NLHE 8-Max High Roller and Main Event, to be streamed on the PokerStars Twitch channel. Team PokerStars Pros will also play and stream a variety of events on their Twitch channels throughout WCOOP. There will also be cards-up final table replays of select events. More information will be revealed throughout WCOOP.

Team PokerStars Pro and two-time World Championship of Online Poker winner, Jason Mercier, said: "I'm so pumped for this year's World Championship. It's bigger and richer than ever, and the volume and range of events make it a must-play online series for me and anyone who wants to be a world champion. The $102,000 Super High Roller, $10,000 8-game event and Main Event will be the ones I'm looking forward to the most."

WCOOP Schedule
The 2016 World Championship schedule is set to be the most exciting in WCOOP history, with a number of firsts and headline tournaments built with feedback from players (as discussed by Bryan Slick, Senior Manager of Online Championships for PokerStars here). Here's a rundown of WCOOP 2016 highlights:

• WCOOP-01: Sept. 4, 08.00 ET – $109 NLHE [$1m GTD Phase tournament]
• WCOOP-23: Sept. 10, 10.00 ET – $10,300 NLHE [Heads-Up, High-Roller]
• WCOOP-28: Sept. 11, 12.30 ET – $102,000 NLHE [8-Max, Super High-Roller]
• WCOOP-53: Sept. 18, 12.30 ET – $10,300 NLHE [8-Max, High-Roller]
• WCOOP-70: Sept. 23, 13.00 ET – $21,000 PL Omaha [6-Max, High Roller]
• WCOOP-74: Sept. 24, 13.00 ET – $10,300 Eight-Game Championship
• WCOOP-78: Sept. 25, 14.00 ET – $5,000 NL Hold'em Championship Main Event
• A $1,050 Marathon Event (WCOOP Event 03), which is the first four-day event in PokerStars Championship history, and will be held Sept. 4-7
• Two Players' Choice events (WCOOP 48 and 50) – one NL Hold'em, one non-NL Hold'em on Sept. 17
• Two Mix-Max events: WCOOP-49: NL Hold'em (8-Max to 4-Max to Heads-Up) and WCOOP-76: PL Omaha (9-Max to 6-Max)
• Two 3-Max Progressive Knock-Out Zoom events – NLHE (WCOOP-20) and PLO (WCOOP-08)
• Win the Button event (WCOOP-59), a format which has proved popular at PokerStars-sponsored live events like the European Poker Tour, where the person who wins the hand gets to be 'on the button' for the next hand.

For a full tournament schedule go to the PokerStars website.

Mini-WCOOP
For the first time, PokerStars is also running a companion series, 'Mini-WCOOP', which will take place September 4-26 and feature identical events from WCOOP at a fraction of the cost, with buy-ins ranging from 1/100 to 1/10,000 of the official WCOOP events, with the exception of the Mini-WCOOP Main Event, which has a buy-in of $50.

Mini-WCOOP is intended to give players who typically do not play WCOOP due to the high buy-ins a chance to participate in their own large-scale tournament series in September and feel some of the WCOOP excitement.

Mini-WCOOP events do not count towards the WCOOP Leaderboard and aren’t found in the WCOOP tab of the lobby – they have a separate 'Mini-WCOOP' tab in the Tournaments section.

Satellite Qualifiers
Online satellites to the WCOOP Main Event have been under way since early August, and satellites to Events 01-05 are now available from today (Aug. 17) with the launch of the full schedule. The satellite offering will continue to expand as the beginning of the series approaches. Players can find the current offering of satellites by logging on to PokerStars and clicking Online Events > WCOOP.

Player of the Year
Additional prizes will be awarded to the top 10 most consistent performers across the series. The overall 'Player of the Year' wins a Champion's Trophy, Ultimate Bahamas Experience (worth $40,000), and TCOOP Main Event ticket. Second to fifth places on the Leader Board receive cash prizes ranging from $10,000 to $2,500 plus 2017 TCOOP Main Event tickets, while sixth to tenth-place players are rewarded with 2017 TCOOP Main Event tickets. In total more than $70,000 worth of added prizes will be awarded to the top 10 players.

History
The World Championship of Online Poker is the world's longest-running online poker tournament series and regarded as the most prestigious by the poker community. It began in 2002 with just nine events and $730,000 in total prizes, but has grown to such an extent that last year it had 70 events and saw more than $66 million awarded to players, making it the richest World Championship in the event's 14-year history. A WCOOP history page is available on the website.