World Championship Of Online Poker – The Poker Stars WCOOP

Information, News And Schedule Of The Year’s Biggest Online Poker Event – The World Championship Of Online Poker – Poker Stars WCOOP For Short!

Poker Stars yearly ‘World Championship Of Online Poker’ (WCOOP) quite frankly blows away the competition on all fronts. In the post-US poker world of 2011 I am pleased to see that the guarantees for this event are still a huge $30 million! This article gives you information on what to expect at the WCOOP, how it works and how you can qualify for seats in the events from a small or medium starting bankroll.

One thing is for sure, there are a lot of online poker players who come from small stakes into life-changing money every year in online poker's World Championship - if you want to be in the running then this article is for you!

Pokerstars WCOOP - High Level Overview And Highlights

Pokerstars World Championship Of Online Poker is a 3 week long poker event starting September 4th 2011, featuring 62 separate tournaments covering a huge variety of poker types and game variations. These tournaments have buy-ins ranging from $109 right through to the $10,300 high roller, and have huge guaranteed prize pools - often reaching seven figures.

Key to the success and popularity of the WCOOP are the huge number of satellite qualifiers in the month running up to the events. These start small and work their way to 'supersatellites'. My estimate is that as many as 30% of the fields will have qualified through satellites - meaning that smaller stakes tournament fans have a real shot at some potentially life-changing prize pools.

In addition to the prizes, Pokerstars award bracelets to the winners World Series style - winning a bigger event can even lead to real poker fame!

Pokerstars WCOOP – How To Qualify

Pokerstars really do go to town on their satellites - rather than list every variation and buy-in I'll try and give you an overview of the major categories of qualifier and how smaller bankroll players can best tackle them.

First finding the qualifiers. From the Pokerstars lobby choose 'Events' from the top row, then WCOOP on the far left of the 2nd row. You then get a choice of 'All', 'Main Events', 'FPP Satellites', 'Cash Satellites' "Sit N Go Satellites' And "Steps'.

Sit N Go Satellites: I'll start with the SNGs and Steps (which are also SNGs). The idea with Steps is that you come in the top 2 of a low buy-in SNG and proceed to the next level - all the way to the top of the tree where Step 6 SNGs award entries into the main event. What I like about these games is that Step 4 tickets can be used to enter any of the $215 tournaments - so you only need to win 3 steps to get a WCOOP entry! Other SNGs range in size from 6 to 1000 players and award seats directly - these start with player point buy-ins, with many at $60+ guaranteeing seats for different numbers of winners depending on the target event and table size.

Multi-Table Tournament Satellites: Here is where things get really busy, the choices are huge - ranging from $1 3x Turbo rebuy events through to supersatellites guaranteeing 1000 seats! With lots of small $1 to $3 buy-ins and many others in the $11 to $55 range, there is something for every bankroll. My tip is to look out for the games which guarantee a larger number of seats - these attract huge numbers of players who are less experienced in satellites, improving your chances of getting to the event. Supersatellites to the bigger events run close to the event times, these will have a number of sub-qualifier satellites of their own.

One extra thought - you can always unregister for the event you win a seat in and take the 'Tournament Dollars' instead. These can be used for any SNG or Multi-table tournament - great for those who might not want to risk it all on one large event!

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Pokerstars World Championship Schedule - Highlights And Link To Full Schedule

I'm not going to reproduce the whole schedule here - the whole thing is freely available at Pokerstars.com. Instead I'll show you how great the kick-off to this years WCOOP promises to be, and leave you to follow up on the rest.

- September 4th: 16:00 CET, $215 6-max, $1 Million Gtd. I have to include the kick off game, just as the anticipation has reached fever-pitch, Stars make sure that there is a tournament with a smaller buy-in and game everyone knows... with a $1 million guaranteed prize. Next the 8:00 CET, $10,300 High Roller, $1.25 Million Gtd. Well I won't be playing in this one myself, unless something very unexpected happens in the meantime... however what an event to start us off - almost guaranteed to get some big publicity as the stars of the online poker world battle it out. This is then followed later in the evening (20:00 CET) by a 9-handed $215 NL Holdem tourney with $1.25 Million Gtd - what a great kick off!

- September 5th: 17:00 CET, $320 PLO $300k Gtd. Omaha fans do not need to wait long for their chance, this day also sees a 6-max 'Shootout' $320 Game with $175k Gtd and then in the evening a $215 turbo rebuy for NL Holdem fans, this time with a huge $500k gtd.

Alright, the schedule just gets better and better, I'll remind SNG Planet readers to keep the last day of the WCOOP free in their diaries too, here we have the $5,200 main event with a $5 million guarantee + the last $215 event for this year with an additional $1.25 million guaranteed...

You can kind of tell I'm looking foward to this event right?

If you have yet to experience a WCOOP for yourself then this is a HUGE recommendation for some great games with potentially massive payouts - so get on over to Pokerstars.com and qualify for some of the events today. Pokerstars Marketing Code PSP3108 will get you a cool 100% matched bonus - Click Now To Check Out The WCOOP At Pokerstars For Yourself!

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