PokerStars is keen on celebrating anniversaries and milestones. It’s a chance to look at how far the poker community has come, and it hints at what the future may hold. The recent 20th anniversary World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) just wrapped on September 15. This provided a good opportunity to see how the online poker operator’s flagship tournament series has held up after two decades.
In summary, it did well. The 20th anniversary WCOOP took the series to new heights. While it has undergone ups and downs through the years – thanks, Black Friday – it remains a strong and unique tournament series.
And in a testament to its strength, the 2021 WCOOP delivered more entries, the biggest prize pools, and the most money awarded to winners in WCOOP history.
A congratulatory handshake to you, PokerStars.
CrazyLissy Wins Big
This year’s WCOOP offered 102 events, each with three buy-in levels. That created a full schedule of 306 tournaments. That also meant that there were three iterations of the Main Event. The biggest buy-in was the ultimate Main Event, but all three hold their own level of prestige.
$55 buy-in NLHE Main Event (low version): 40,291 entries, $2,014,550 prize pool ($1.5M GTD)-pagan_junior of Sweden won for $180,176.65$530 buy-in NLHE Main Event (medium): 7,783 entries, $3,891,500 prize pool ($2.5M GTD)-festen x of Sweden won for $549,007.73$5,200 buy-in NLHE Main Event (high): 1,965 entries, $10M prize pool ($175K overlay)-CrazyLissy of Russia won for $1,499,942
https://twitter.com/PokerStars/status/1438518768565514242?s=20
There were also three Pot Limit Omaha finales, again with three buy-in levels of the same Main Event.
$109 buy-in PLO 6-Max Main Event (low version): 3,023 entries, $302,300 prize pool ($275K GTD)-mime123 of Ukraine won for $43,692$1,050 buy-in PLO 6-Max Main Event (medium): 758 entries, $758K prize pool ($750K GTD)-Nlzkm9 of Hungary won for $128,665$10,300 buy-in PLO 6-MaxMain Event (high): 147 entries, $1.47M prize pool ($1M GTD)-probirs of Hungary won for $308,556
That NLHE Main Event with the $10M prize pool was the largest pool of the series. One might think that the low buy-in NLHE Main Event with more than 40K entries was the largest field, but it was eclipsed by two versions of Event 1, which was the Phase event. The $5.50 buy-in low version showed 141,219 entries, by far the largest of the series. The $22 buy-in medium version was the second-largest field with 45,743 entries.
Big Series, Big Numbers
The record-setting and most impressive numbers from the 2021 WCOOP were the overall stats:
Number of events: 306Number of total entries: 1,428,869 (294,277 of them were reentries)Total prize money awarded: $122,340,165Total winner prize money awarded: $18,342,344Number of countries represented by winners: 42
https://twitter.com/PokerStarsBlog/status/1438478272799596544?s=20
Of the 42 nations represented by winners this year, Brazil dominated the wins with 57 of them. Russia followed in a distant second with 37 WCOOP titles. The UK showed with 27, with the Netherlands taking 20, Austria 16, Canada 15, Sweden 14, and Poland 11. And for the first time in the series’ history, players from Andorra, Azerbaijan, New Zealand, San Marino, and Uzbekistan won WCOOP titles.
With so many tournaments in the series, it should be no surprise that there were some players winning multiple titles. There were two players who took three titles each, and more than a dozen others won two titles each this year. In the latter group, “Fisherman FV” actually won both titles on the same night, a first in WCOOP history.
And speaking of Shakerchi, he also won the WCOOP Player of the Series leaderboard challenge, for which he won a $25K prize.
https://twitter.com/PokerStarsBlog/status/1438845946331283462?s=20
