PokerStars has announced that the 2015 World Championship of Online Poker has been its richest in its 14-year history, and Ukrainian player “solik1968” wins the $1m first prize in the Dream Team Collection promotion.
Who said poker was dying on its ass!
PokerStars, and their customers, continue to find the time to plough their money into the online version of the game, after making this year’s World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) the richest in the tour’s 14-year history.
The online poker room that other online poker rooms covet laid on 70-events, and promised to supply $45m in guaranteed prize money. By the end of the festival punters had pummeled $66,245,305 into their online accounts, and that beat the previous record, held by WCOOP 2010, by some $3m.
How is this possible without the inclusion of US based players?
The hardcore amongst them flee to countries that are not as archaic in the way they run things, and then you have the power of the re-entry rule. There were 109,904 tournament entries in total, and only 26,594 of them were unique. Players from 122 different countries took part.
The most prestigious online tournament in the universe has now etched out 557 events, and $513,596,638 in prize money, during its 14-year history. The festival still hasn’t ended. 1,995 players entered the $10m Guaranteed Main Event, and 246 of them made it to the second day of action.
A new record was set for the highest individual buy-in after players forked out $51,000 per person to compete in the Super Duper High Roller event. Ben ‘Ben86’ Tollerene walking away with the $616,518.34 first prize. There was also a new record set for number of COOP victories (WCOOP, SCOOP & TCOOP) with both Shaun ‘shaundeeb’ Deeb and Calvin ‘cal42688’ Anderson holding eight titles apiece after victory in events 44 and 62 respectively.
Ukraine’s “solik1968” Wins a Million
Elsewhere in PokerStars land and the Dream Team Collection promotion came to a conclusion on Sunday.
You may remember that players were competing for the chance to win a $1m prize, and a wide range of goodies from PokerStars Team SportsStars Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., and Ronaldo Nazario.
The promotion hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons when it became apparent that Neymar Jr. could not be used to market the promotion in the UK because of his cherubic age. Daniel Negreanu was drafted in as a last minute replacement.
277,000 players competed in the promotion and only 47 of them were able to pocket a $20,000 Golden Ticket All-In Showdown. None of them were going to play any poker, with every hand all-in, and eventually Ukraine’s “solik1968” beat the UK’s “gregior” when he hit runner-runner flush on a board of [7s] [5s] [4h] [Qs] [Js], holding [Ad] [3s] against the [9h] [5h] of his opponent.
His prize, was bigger than anything dished out at WCOOP thus far. That will change with the top two positions in the Main Event destined to pick up $1,210,000 & $1,760,500 respectively.
