PokerStars Brings Innovation into 2018 WCOOP Schedule, Awards over $116 Million in Prizes

Online poker room PokerStars has finally announced this year’s schedule for the World Championship of Online Poker and it can officially be said that there will be a little something for players of all levels of skill and for every bankroll during the major online festival.

This year’s WCOOP edition is slated to take place on September 2-17. It will feature as many as 182 different tournaments across 61 events. It is also understood from a post on PokerStars’ official blog that there will be tiered buy-in levels for players sporting bankrolls of different size. The three tiers will be Low, Medium, and High and buy-in fees within those would vary from $2.2 to $25,000 for the highest buy-in events set to take place within the championship.

Commenting on the three-tier buy-in system, which is an innovation into this year’s WCOOP, PokerStars Director of Poker Innovation and Operations Severin Rasset said that their goal was to provide every player with the opportunity to participate and to take a shot at the Main Event title.

The 2018 edition of the WCOOP will feature more than $116 million in guaranteed prize pools, with over $70 million featured in WCOOP events alone. The schedule of the upcoming online poker festival is quite diverse, as well, with different poker variants including mixed ones such as H.O.R.S.E.

Two Main Events

As mentioned above, there will be 61 events, and each of them will involve tournaments in three tiers – Low, Medium, and High. Each of them except for the Main Event, to be more precise. It will feature two tournaments – a Medium and a High one. The former will have a buy-in fee of $55 and will offer $1 million in guaranteed prize money. The latter will feature a buy-in fee of $5,200 and a guaranteed prize pool of $10 million. Both events are slated to kick off on September 16.

Last year, Malta-based player Steven “SvZff” van Zadelhoff topped the field of the WCOOP Main Event to become a world champion. The player collected more than $1.6 million for his efforts. He emerged victorious after beating a massive field of fellow contenders from all around the world and surviving a tough nine-handed final table.

In fact, Van Zadelhoff pretty much made his victory look quite easy. The player entered the final table as the chip leader with a massive chip advantage over the rest of the finalists. He held 37,957,931 at the time that final stage of the event began, with joshuah333 from Canada being the one to hold the second largest stack with 12,695,898.

The 2017 WCOOP Main Event drew 2,183 entries, including 1,804 unique ones and 379 re-entries. The $10 million guarantee was surpassed and the prize pool nearly reached $11 million. The winner was originally scheduled to collect $1.5 million in prize money, but as mentioned above, he eventually took home more than $1.6 million.

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Mikita Badziakouski Wins Back-to-Back Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Main Event Title

Mikita Badziakouski topped the elite field of the Triton Poker Jeju Super High Roller Series Main Event for a back-to-back win and his largest live tournament cash of more than $5.2 million.

His latest poker triumph arrives just three months after the poker pro from Belarus outlasted the just as elite field of the Triton Poker Montenegro Super High Roller Series Main Event for nearly $2.5 million.

The latest edition of the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series took place at Landing Casino on the South Korean island of Jeju. The exciting festival was held from July 23 through August 1 and its end was celebrated with the HK$2-million buy-in Main Event, which took place July 30-August 1.

As mentioned above, as many as 55 seasoned high rollers entered the closing tournament to take a shoot at the hefty first-place prize. Aside from the winner who won the fourth largest monetary prize ever awarded in a poker tournament outside the WSOP, the top six finishers collected a share of the prize pool, min-cashes starting from HK$6.49 million (approximately $826,858).

The third and last day of the tournament saw the six remaining finalists return to the poker table to play down to a champion. Badziakouski was leading the elite pack with 3.065 million bagged from the previous night. Spain’s Sergio Aido was trailing closely behind him with 3 million.

It can be said that Badziakouski dominated action at the final table. He was responsible for nearly every single elimination throughout Day 3.

Day 3 Highlights

Badziakouski faced very few hurdles throughout the final table of the prestigious high roller tournament. But Chan Wai Leong from Malaysia presented his biggest challenge on his way to victory. Chan won a key pot against the eventual winner during Day 3, which resulted in him doubling up, while Badziakouski dropped to a short stack.

However, the player managed to take revenge and regain his composure. Badziakouski dispatched Jason Koon, Sam Greenwood, and Triton Poker founder Richard Yong in that order in 5th, 4th, and 3rd places to enter heads-up with a 5-1 advantage over Chan. As for those eliminated, they collected HK$8.47 million, HK$11.55 million, and HK$16.72 million, respectively.

Aido, who entered the day second in chips, was actually the first to exit. He busted in sixth place after crashing into Sam Greenwood. The Spaniard took home HK$6.49 million for his efforts.

Heads-up was a relatively short affair. Badziakouski did not give his final opponent much chance to improve and eventually eliminated him in second place. Chan collected HK$25.52 million for his deep run into the tournament.

Following his latest triumph, Badziakouski now boasts live tournament earnings of more than $16 million. As mentioned above, the player won the Main Event at the previous Triton Poker edition in Montenegro for nearly $2.5 million. Only several weeks later, Badziakouski finished 4th in the Aria Super High Roller Bowl for another seven-figure payout of $1.6 million.

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