PokerStars announce their fourth iteration of a tentative schedule for the upcoming World Championship of Poker, and they will introduce a mini version of the event for the first time in the tournament’s history. If you have a spare $210,000, naff all to do throughout September, and love poker, then PokerStars has your back. 
The World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), the tournament series that is supposed to be the most prestigious online tournament series in the world, returns in September, and the world’s largest online poker room has released Draft Schedule #4 for constructive feedback. I sneaked the word ‘supposed’ in there because the three-tiered Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) is arguably the centrepiece of online poker because it appeals to a broader audience. That might be about to change. If think? The hesitancy comes after PokerStars announced plans to run a Mini-WCOOP schedule, with each event mirroring its more expensive cousin, with buy-ins either at 1/100th or 1/1000th of the cost (exception made for the $50 Main Event). However, a spokesperson for the site expressed quite clearly: “Mini-WCOOP is not in any way intended to be another stakes level of WCOOP.” And “Mini-WCOOP events will not be in the WCOOP events tab in the client, as they are not a part of WCOOP proper.” I am a confused little mushroom. I am making this up as I go along but I am assuming the decision to include a Mini-WCOOP that’s not a WCOOP alongside the WCOOP is another sign of the move towards a more recreational player friendly ecosystem. If PokerStars have newer players flooding in via the Spin & Go games, and they see they need to fall in love with a very wealthy man or woman to play in the online poker room’s flagship World Championships then that could get a tad confusing. Answer? Create a miniature version of the event thus maintaining the feel that you are competing in a World Championship event and make the buy-in small enough so that everyone can compete. So why not go all out and make WCOOP a three-tiered structure? I don’t know the answer to that one. Most of the feedback I have pored through has centred on the Mini version with the professional players wanting the buy-ins to be 1/10th of the bigger events. A lot of players point to the fact that MicroMillions has just ended, and that the much-reduced buy-in dilutes the glitz and glamour of the WCOOP as a whole. There are also a few complaints that the only thing they want to provide feedback on is non-negotiable. I think it’s a great way of introducing newer livestock to the site’s premier online poker festival. My only gripe is the lack of understanding as to why the site is so desperate to distance the Mini from the Big Daddy when they are quite clearly one and the same. For the serious players, WCOOP starts 4 Sep with a $109 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) event and ends 82 events later with a $1,050 buy-in NLHE Wrap Up event with one re-entry. You will need $207,596 to compete in all 82 events, and that’s not including money for re-entries, of which there are plenty of events offering such an opportunity. PokerStars caters for every variant and format of poker you can think of with $1,000 buy-in World Championship events available in every format. The Sunday Million and Super Tuesday events get considerable makeovers during this time, and there will be some huge buy-in events for the men and women with money to burn. Here are the main highlights of the high buy-in tournaments. There have been no guarantees released, except for a promise to hand $1.5m to the winner of the Main Event. The Wallet Crunchers Event #23: $10,300 NLHE Heads-Up High Roller Event #28: $10,300 NLHE 8-Max High Roller (Single Re-Entry) Event #53: $102,000 NLHE 8-Max, Super High Roller (Single Re-Entry) Event #54: $2,100 NLHE Sunday Million Event #60: $2,100 NLHE Super Tuesday Event #63: $2,000 Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) Championships Six Max (Single Re-Entry) Event #66: $2,100 NLHE Progressive Super-Knockout Event #70: $21,000 PLO 6-Max High Roller (Single Re-Entry) Event #71: $2,000 HORSE Championship (Single Re-Entry) Event #74: $10,000 Eight-Game Championship (Single Re-Entry) Event #78: $5,000 NLHE Main Event (Single Re-Entry) The full schedule is below: https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/online/wcoop/2016/wcoop-2016-your-feedback-requested-162580.shtml
PokerStars to Introduce Mini-WCOOP That’s Not a Mini-WCOOP
