WCOOP – World Championship of Online Poker

The World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is a series of online poker tournaments that is held every year around September time.  Hosted by PokerStars it is the biggest online tournament series out there and has of 60 different events that often create record breaking prize pools. 

2002 was the year the World Championship of Online Poker was launched; back then it only had nine events and a combined prize pool of $730,000.  The buy in for the main event was $1,050 and it attracted 238 online poker players to its first game. 

Online poker player MultiMarine was the first player to ever win the WCOOP main event taking away $65,540 for his first place finish. 

When the internet poker boom happened the WCOOP took off like you wouldn’t believe and in 2004 the WCOOP series already had 12 scheduled events with more than ten thousand online poker players all battling it out to grab a piece of the more than $6 million prize pool.  The main event buy in had doubled up to $2,600 which in turn created the biggest prize pool up until then for an online tournament at $2.1 million.

That was the year of Ragde from Norway who took down the first place prize of $424,945 and a golden bracelet for becoming the new World Champion of Online Poker.

2005 attracted nearly 20 thousand online poker players who created a prize pool of $12 million, double the year before.  The WCOOP was becoming huge and 1,494 players showed up to the main event and together made a prize pool of over $3.7 million.   Panella86 was the winner that year after having previously made a deal during the tournament with the other two remaining players to split the money, they each received over half a million dollars. 

A few years back no one could’ve predicted how big the WCOOP would become but in 2007 everyone was astonished when it attracted 40 thousand players from over 100 countries who came to take part in the 23 scheduled WCOOP events.  That year the WCOOP main event had 2,998 entrants which created a prize pool of $7,495,000, it took over 21 hours until finally Ka$sino triumphed and took away a record breaking first place prize of $1,378,300 and his golden bracelet when he was crowned the World Champion of Online Poker.

By the year 2008 the WCOOP was resembling the World Series of Poker in nearly all ways except it was all online.  It brought in 22,873 players from all around the world and the combined prize pool was over $40 million.  There were 33 scheduled events and the main event had doubled again to $5,200, that didn’t hold players back though as 22,873 people took part (many thanks to the online qualifiers at PokerStars) and created a prize pool of nearly 11 million dollars.  Ckingusc was the eventual main event winner that year taking away a huge $1.2 million and that all important bracelet.

The 5th September 2010 saw the World Championship of Online Poker start with over 60 scheduled events over 23 days which drew a prize pool of $60 million.  To take part in the next WCOOP, take a look at some of the many freerolls and qualifiers (for all bankrolls) at PokerStars.