PokerStars to Host Richest Buy-in Event in Internet History

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PokerStars WCOOP, highest buy-in event, $51k tournament
This year the WCOOP will host a $51,000 buy-in event, although you’ll find us splashing about at the MicroMillions instead. (Image: Pokerstars.com)

PokerStars will host the highest buy-in tournament in the history of the online game at the forthcoming World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP).

The $51,000 buy-in 8-max Super High Roller event will kick off on September 20, and will more than double the previous online tournament buy-in record, which was set by Full Tilt.

PokerStars’ sister site has held $25,000 heads up tournaments on several occasions, but all of them before PokerStars took over the operations of Full Tilt, post Black Friday.

“I think it makes sense that the world’s largest poker site is also the host of the largest buy-in online tournament,” said Negreanu, who had sufficiently recovered from the experience of busting two places off the November Nine in the WSOP main event to contribute to the press release. “I’m excited to test my skills against the best of the best, online,” he added.

On the Road

Negreanu, incidentally, spent the weekend on the road in California with the PokerStars Pro Tour, spreading the pro-regulation message, as PokerStars attempts to win the hearts and minds of regular Californians.

The grassroots campaign to drum up support for online poker in the state will be visiting a number of California’s casinos and card rooms in the coming weeks, offering players the chance to meet pros and play against pros like Negreanu, Liv Boeree, Jason Somerville and Chris Moneymaker.

Negreanu, meanwhile, will be joined by Jason Mercier in playing the $51,000 WCOOP event, the latter describing it as an “awesome challenge” for the “biggest stakes.” Mercier has past form in WCOOP and SCOOP events, with six tournament victories across both festivals. 

PokerStars has set the guarantee at a cautious $1,000,000 for this one, reflecting the generally modest turn out for high roller events.

Very few players have the bankrolls required to sensibly lay down $51k on a single tournament against the world’s best, although no doubt a few will pool their resources and take a shot.

MicroMillions is More our Style!

Of course, for the rest of us mortals, there’s the MicroMillions, which is raging at PokerStars as we speak.

The 11th edition of PokerStars’ low stakes, big field, big prize online poker festival runs up until July 26, offering $5,000,000 in guaranteed prize money across 100 micro-stakes events.

Buy-ins in side events range from $0.11 to $11, climbing to a whopping $22 for the Main Event; an tournament that, just like the richest buy-in online event of all time, has a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million.

The catch is, there will be more people.

Many, many more…

Last year, Russian player “BgsaPnaples” earned first-place prize money of $110,743, for outlasting a whopping field of 59,648 players.



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