- PokerStars’ World Championship Of Online Poker will kick off on Aug. 22.
- The prize pool for the event will be guaranteed at $100 million.
- This is the largest guarantee in the history of the WCOOP.
LAS VEGAS - PokerStars has set dates for key events in the 2021 World Championship Of Online Poker.
While many who are not familiar with poker as a sport may have passing knowledge of the World Series Of Poker, thanks to occasional broadcasts on cable television, less are aware of the World Championship Of Online Poker.
The gambling tournament series has been around for almost two decades, and is run by PokerStars, arguably the largest poker playing website on the internet.
During the pandemic, World Series Of Poker events were played on a PokerStars competitor, GGPoker, which has been ascendant due to that fact.
Given this context, PokerStars has a lot of incentive to make sure that the 2021 World Championship Of Online Poker exceeds expectations.
At first glance, the offerings certainly seem to exceed what anyone could have expected from the 2021 WCOOP.
The tournament has a $100 million guaranteed prize pool, which is the largest ever by a significant margin. For context, the 2020 edition of the tournament had an $80 million guarantee.
A significant jump, percentage-wise, in terms of the prize pool continues to prove itself with the 2019 edition having a $75 million guarantee and 2018 a $70 million guarantee.
Since 2015, the biggest jump, percentage wise, in terms of the prize pool has been from $50 million to $60 million - a 20% increase.
The tournament is set to start on Aug. 22, and run through Sept. 15, for a total of 23 days of tournament play.
The number of events has not been announced yet, but 2020’s edition of the tournament was 22 days long and had 225 events. The Aug. 22 start date is the earliest in several years, which does put the WCOOP in direct competition with the World Series Of Poker online bracelet events.
Poker players will have a plethora of options when it comes to playing online poker in the remainder of 2021.