Save the Dates: 2022 WCOOP on PokerStars Announced (September 4 – 28)

The World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP for short) will be held on PokerStars for the 21st time this year. The poker giant has now announced the dates for its most important online tournament series of the year. From September 4 to 28, around 300 tournaments will be held over a period of 25 days.

The exact schedule is yet to be announced, but it is expected that the tournament series will have a similar program as in previous years. Last year, PokerStars guaranteed a total of $100 million in prize money for the 20th anniversary of the WCOOP. That guarantee was easily surpassed with a total of $122 million in prize money played out. This year, it seems likely that the entire tournament series will be a little bit smaller. PokerStars has temporarily pulled out of several major markets, including Russia and the Netherlands, for legal reasons. Nonetheless, the WCOOP will continue to be one of the biggest tournament series of the year in 2022, offering many tournaments with million-dollar guarantees.

While the WCOOP will be a series with high buy-ins and expensive tournaments, PokerStars is currently running a tournament series that is far more affordable. Running until July 31, the MicroMillions guarantees a total of $4 million in prize money.

WCOOP by the Numbers

The WCOOP has been held annually on PokerStars since 2002. The Main Event of the series has been the biggest and most important PokerStars tournament every year since 2004.

Initially, the buy-in for the Main Event was $1,050. In 2004, it was raised to $2,600 and in 2008, the price was doubled to $5,200. Since then, the WCOOP Main Event has always had the same buy-in.

The player numbers for the WCOOP Main Event have always been at the same level since 2008, at around 2,000 entries. In the last two years, the target of 2,000 entries was not quite reached and the tournament had a small overlay as PokerStars continued to guarantee $10,000,000 in prize money.

This is how the player numbers and prize pool of the WCOOP Main Event have developed since 2002:

All WCOOP Main Events

Year	Entries	Prize Money	Winner	Country
2002	238	$238,000	MultiMarine	Sweden
2003	891	$891,000	Joseph “DeOhGee” Cordi	United States
2004	843	$2,104,500	Edgar “Ragde” Skjervold	Norway
2005	1,494	$3,735,000	Jordan “Panella86” Berkowitz	United States
2006	2,510	$6,275,000	J.-C. “area23JC” Tran	United States
2007	2,998	$7,495,000	Kyle “ka$ino1” Schroeder	United States
2008	2,185	$10,925,000	Carter “ckingusc” King	United States
2009	2,144	$10,720,000	Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko	United States
2010	2,443	$12,215,000	Tyson “POTTERPOKER” Marks	United States
2011	1,627	$8,135,000	Thomas “Kallllle” Pedersen	Denmark
2012	1,825	$9,125,000	Marat “maratik” Sharafutdinov	Russia
2013	2,133	$10,665,000	David “PlayinWasted” Kaufmann	Germany
2014	2,142	$10,710,000	Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz	Germany
2015	1,995	$10,000,000	Kristof “Coenaldinho7” Coenen	Belgium
2016	2,091	$10,052,880	Jonas “llJaYJaYll” Lauck	Germany
2017	2,183	$10,915,000	Steven “SvZff” van Zadelhoff	Netherlands
2018	2,044	$10,220,000	Ezequiel “eze88888” Waigel	Argentina
2019	2,236	$11,180,000	Charles “BigBlindBets” Russell	United Kingdom
2020	1,977	$10,000,000	Andre “PTFisherman23” Marques	Portugal
2021	1,965	$10,000,000	Sergey “CrazyLissy” Denisov	Russia

Where do the WCOOP Winners Come From?

Although PokerStars has not operated in the US since Black Friday in 2011, most WCOOP Main Event winners come from the United States. From 2003 to 2010, seven out of eight tournaments were won by an American player.

In subsequent years, the winners came from a wide variety of countries, with only Germany (three winners) and Russia (two winners) recording multiple winners so far.

Country	WCOOP Main Event Winners
United States	7
Germany	3
Russia	2
Sweden	1
Norway	1
Denmark	1
Belgium	1
Netherlands	1
Argentina	1
United Kingdom	1
Portugal	1

The Most Famous WCOOP Winners

Only a few players who won the WCOOP Main Event were unknowns in the scene or were not able to celebrate further success in the live and online scene later on.

The most famous winners are Fedor Holz from Germany, who won over $30 million in live tournaments during his career, J.C. Tran, who won several major titles during his career and finished 5th in the WSOP Main Event in 2013, and Yevgeniy Timoshenko who had several WSOP deep runs and won one WPT title.

The craziest story of a winner certainly goes to Russian player Marat “maratik” Sharafutdinov. By profession, Sharafutdinov was a cab driver at the time and he played only tournaments with a buy-in of $4 or less until his phenomenal WCOOP run. He qualified for the WCOOP Main Event via satellite and when it came to negotiating a deal at the final table, he succinctly demanded, “I wont million” (sic!). He won, got his million and the next day he was back at the PokerStars tables – continuing to play the $4 tournaments.

These are the live winnings (via Hendon Mob database) and big live titles of all WCOOP Main Event winners:

Player	Country	Live Winnings	Big Titles
Joseph Cordi	United States	$722,176
Edgar Skjervold	Norway	$300,784
Jordan Berkowitz	United States	$17,200
J.-C. Tran	United States	$13,306,386	2 Bracelets, 2 WPT Titles, WSOP Main (5th place in 2013)
Kyle Schroeder	United States	$6,223
Carter King	United States	$432,453
Yevgeniy Timoshenko	United States	$7,826,896	1 WPT Title
Tyson Marks	United States	$358,682
Thomas Pedersen	Denmark	$672,770
Marat Sharafutdinov	Russia	$0
David Kaufmann	Germany	$36,501
Fedor Holz	Germany	$33,655,809	2 Bracelets
Kristof Coenen	Belgium	$19,168
Jonas Lauck	Germany	N/A	1 Bracelet
Steven van Zadelhoff	Netherlands	$2,519,800
Ezequiel Waigel	Argentina	$1,434,752
Charles Russell	United Kingdom	$7,477
Andre Marques	Portugal	$282,908
Sergey Denisov	Russia	$0

There are still about two and a half months until the start of the 2022 WCOOP. The exact schedule will be announced soon and there will be numerous affordable satellites for the tournaments. Until then, numerous other tournaments are running on PokerStars, such as the MicroMillions now and the Sunday Million (now a permanent Knock-Out-Tourney) every Sunday.

*Any mention of a bonus or discussion of such terms is not in relation to the province of Ontario.