Inaugural WPT World Online Championships Awards $100.7M
The World Poker Tour just wrapped up its inaugural World Online Championships (WOC) on PartyPoker last week. And now that the craziness of 71 days of online poker tournaments has settled, the WPT released the final numbers.
The highlight? The WPT WOC awarded $100,746,175 to players in the WPT-branded events.
On top of that, the 12 events, some of them with three buy-in levels, created five new official members of the WPT Champions Club.
Our recaps of the events included the following:
–Events 1 and 2: Paul Tedeschi and Alex Manzano won
–Events 3 and 4: Gavin Cochrane and Nick Petrangelo won
–Events 5 and 6: Daniel Smyth and Andrey Kotelnikov won
–Events 7 through 12: Phil Mighall won Main Event
New WPT Champions
Over the course of approximately two months of online poker tournaments, players and poker fans may have found it difficult to keep track of the winners. In particular, it was difficult to tell the difference between a WPT tournament winner and an official WPT Champion.
Luckily, the WPT highlighted them. These are the newest members of the WPT Champions Club.
WPT and @partypoker Conclude $100 Million Guaranteed #WPTWOC
🏆https://t.co/L4z3QKGl0C pic.twitter.com/gtZN7ganav
— World Poker Tour (@WPT) September 30, 2020
Gavin Cochrane won Event 3, the $3,200 buy-in No Limit Hold’em 8-Max Championship. The tournament had a $3 million guarantee on the prize pool, but the 1,062 entries pushed the total pool to $3,186,000. After 136 players worked themselves into the money, Cochrane of the UK survived a multi-national final table to win the $540,664 first-place prize.
Nick Petrangelo took on Event 4, the $3,200 NLHE 6-Max Championship. There were 999 entries in that one, just missing the $3 million guarantee and forcing the WPT and PartyPoker to pony up $3K to keep the prize pool promise. The final 120 survivors made the money, but Petrangelo won $494,550 for his win from Canada.
Daniel Smyth took a shot at Event 5, a $3,200 buy-in NLHE Knockout Championship tournament. With a total of 1,035 entries, the prize pool climbed well above the $3 million guarantee to land at $3,105,000. Payouts began with 136 players left, and action continued until Smyth of Ireland bested high-stakes pro Manig Loeser in the heads-up match to claim the win. Smyth collected $208,803.83 in first-place prize money plus $204,588.92 in bounties for a total win of $415,391.
What made Smyth’s win even more special was that he earned his entry into the $3,200 event by starting with a $33 satellite.
Andrey Kotelnikov showed his mixed game prowess in Event 6, the NLHE/PLO Mix-Max Championship. The $3,200 buy-in garnered 989 entries, prompting an overlay of $33K due to the $3 million guarantee. After payouts began for the final 132 players, Kotelnikov of Russia played past competitors like Jerry Wong and Dimitar Danchev to finish first for $488,508.
Phil Mighall took down the big one, the main Main Event. It was Event 8, the $10,300 buy-in WPT World Championship NLHE Main Event, to be proper. It brought in 1,011 entries to create a $10,110,000 prize pool, just eleven buy-ins over the guarantee of $10 million. The final 136 players made at least $23,253 for their efforts, but Mighall of the UK played past players like Dzmitry Urbanovich and Damian Salas to claim the largest payout of the WPT WOC series — $1,550,298.
Each champion will find their names engraved on the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup. They also each won a Hublot watch, tumblers from Baccarat Crystal, and a seat to the WPT Tournament of Champions worth $15K.
What’s Next for WPT Online?
The folks at the World Poker Tour and PartyPoker probably need a moment to rest after this event. And they can take some pride in this series.
WPT CEO Adam Pliska commented, “The WPT Online initiative has hit another peak, and we look forward to more series in the near future.”
Many of the WPT-branded tournaments with guarantees on the prize pools fell short of those guarantees, meaning players saw frequent overlays. It is not clear, though, how much those shortages cost the WPT and PartyPoker.
Even so, PartyPoker Managing Director Tom Waters pointed out the number of success stories in the series, as well as the quality and solid structure of the tournaments. “We look forward to working with the WPT again and sticking to the values that we believe bring the best live poker events online.”
Who were the biggest winners during the #WPTWOC on @partypoker? @LYiasemides breaks down the $100 million guaranteed spectacular 🏆💰
🔶https://t.co/EAZ6078v6c pic.twitter.com/gKiXSSky6v
— World Poker Tour (@WPT) September 28, 2020
