The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) will run from September 2 to 17 and has $70 million up for grabs. It has become a hugely popular series of tournaments with virtually every level of buy-in imaginable. It will offer two main events this year, including a $55 buy-in tournament with a $1-million prize pool, and a second, $5,200 buy-in event with a $10-million guarantee. Rival online poker site partypoker doesn’t want PokerStars to have all the fun, and has announced its own monster series of tournaments, offering a guaranteed $60 million.
The partypoker Powerfest Online Poker Series is scheduled for September 2 to 23. There will be a total of 670 events and will have a combined prize pool of at least $60 million. As with the SCOOP, there will also be something for everyone, with buy-ins ranging from $1.10 up to $25,500.
This is the ninth year for the Powerfest series and could be the largest in the history of the poker portal. Starting this Thursday, partypoker will offer players a chance to win part of a $50,000 pool of tournament entries. Players who log a significant amount of time playing on the site between then and September 1 will have the opportunity to win free tournament tickets.
There will be a total of 20 championship events during the series, of which 15 offer a prize pool of at least $1 million. The largest is a $25,500 Super High Roller tournament on September 20 that offers a $3-million guarantee. A few of the tournaments include:
Sept 3, $5,200 Super High Roller ($1 million)
Sept 9, $1,050 High Roller ($1 million)
Sept 18, $10,300 6-Max PLO ($500,000)
Sept 18, $10,300 Super High Roller ($2 million)
Sept 20, $25,500 Super High Roller ($3 million)
Sept 23, $55 Medium Level ($250,000)
Sept 23, $1,050 High Roller ($1 million)
It’s going to be interesting to see what the turnout is to each of the two series. Without a doubt, there will be more than a few players multi-tabling their action, possibly even across both sites. As both sites, along with Americas Cardroom, have suffered several distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks in recent weeks, the sites are hopefully a little better prepared to react to any possible service interruptions.
