PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker 2009 Preliminary Schedule Released
PokerStars has officially released the preliminary schedule for its regular World Championship of Online Poker. It will kick off on September 3 and it promises a guaranteed $40 million prize pool (that’s $10 million more than last year). The 2009 WCOOP will be comprised of 42 poker tournament events (9 more than last year), 14 of which offer guaranteed prize pools of at least $1 million. The Main Event of the series is a two-day event that will commence on September 20. It has a guaranteed prize pool of $10 million and a $5,200 buy-in.
Between September 3 and 20 PokerStars will be holding at least 2 WCOOP events each day. Among those events will be tournaments in Texas Holdem (of course), Omaha, 7-Card Stud, Razz, Single/Triple Draw, Lowball, 5-Card Draw, Badugi, Mixed Events. The buy-ins range from approximately $200 to $600 with the lowest being $109.
The 2009 WCOOP will have 3 high-roller events (with the dollar amounts representing the buy-ins, not the prize pool):
* $10,000 No Limit Holdem
* $25,000 No Limit Holdem
* $10,000 HORSE
It seems at least part of the purpose for keeping the current WCOOP schedule listed as preliminary (and appearing solely on the PokerStars Blog right now and not the site itself) is so that online poker players with an opinion on the subject can throw in their two cents before this year’s schedule is cemented.
Participants in the recent PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker will find the experimental 3-tiered system offering 3 versions of each event at 3 different buy-in levels is not in effect for the World Championship of Online Poker. PokerStars says it would have considered doing that again if the experiment had worked out better.
