2011 PokerStars WCOOP Rolling Along

The World Championship of Online Poker continues to roll along over on PokerStars. They’ve already crossed the halfway point for the 62-tournament series, with turnouts continuing to be big, routinely crushing the scaled back guarantees for the tourneys.

Shortly after this year’s WCOOP started, I wrote a post noting how the first few events seemed to be attracting healthy numbers despite the fact that Americans couldn’t participate.

A few days after that I noticed how one event -- the $215 Deuce-to-Seven No-Limit Draw (Event No. 17) -- actually had a larger field this time around when compared to 2010. A total of 390 played this time, up from last year’s 367. The guarantee had been halved, actually, from last year’s $50K to $25K this time around, meaning the $78,000 prize pool was more than triple the guarantee.

Thought it might be interesting to see how the numbers are comparing across the board, so here’s a quick look at how the first 31 events in this year’s WCOOP are comparing to the same events/buy-ins in 2010:



Almost all of the first half of the WCOOP schedule featured events with identical games/buy-ins to 2010. Just two did not, with one other (Event No. 14) having a only slightly different buy-in ($260 last year, $265 this). (Any mistakes here are mine, obviously.)

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when the WCOOP first started how last year a little over a third of all entrants (34.7%) were from the United States. In only a few cases among the first 31 events this time around did the overall total number of entrants drop by as much as that, and in most cases the declines have been considerably less.

I also was talking a little in that earlier post about the American players relocating to play, including Shane “shaniac” Schleger who moved to Vancouver. In fact, Schleger won a WCOOP bracelet last night, taking down Event No. 34, the $320 2-7 Triple Draw. That’ll probably help with those moving expenses.

Still believe we’re talking about a very small number of players -- relatively speaking -- who’ve made that same move. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how PokerStars has filled the void among its player base following Black Friday and the site’s leaving the U.S.

Speaking of following the WCOOP, Joe Stapleton and Nick Wealthall are back again, bringing the funny with daily “Radio WCOOP” shows. Kind of tough hearing about giveaways and other stuff not available to those of us here in the states, but the hosts are consistently hilarious and the interviews genuinely interesting. They are also posting shows daily in Russian, German, and Spanish, further proving that poker reaches well beyond the English-speaking world.