Stars Group says World Championship of Online Poker biggest ever

The Stars Group say that this year’s World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), a major annual online poker tournament series hosted by its PokerStars brand, will offer a guaranteed prize pool of more than $70 million, the biggest online poker tournament series guarantee ever.

The annual online event will take place from September 2 through 17 and will offer more than 180 events, each with tiered buy-in levels ranging from $2.20 to $25,000.

During the first half of September, there will be more than $116 million guaranteed in prize pools across WCOOP and all other tournaments that will be held in September in the global shared liquidity, southern Europe, Italian and New Jersey markets.

The 2017 WCOOP total series prize pool exceeded its advertised guarantee of $60 million and paid out a WCOOP record of $90.6 million, marking a 16.5% year-over-year increase over the $77.8 million paid out in 2016.

It was only surpassed in 2017 by the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), which paid out approximately $94 million and continues to hold the record as the largest ever online poker series based on aggregate pay-out amount.

In 2018, SCOOP exceeded its advertised guarantee of $65 million, ultimately paying out approximately $91 million in prizes and becoming the second largest ever online poker series behind the 2017 series.