2015 WCOOP Shatters Records

When PokerStars announced they were hoping to break all the WCOOP records during the 2015 event, they must have had a crystal ball!

The 70 World Championship of Online Poker events which ran over the course of 3 weeks last month smashed through the previous prize-fund barrier set back in 2010.

$66,245,305 was the staggering total for this year, which brings the pay-outs since its inception over the $500 million mark.

The 14th edition of the WCOOP proved to be the most successful and profitable to date, with 109,904 entries over the course of the festival. This figure includes 26,594 unique players from 122 different countries and brought the total entries of all-time over the 1,000,000 total.

Coenaldinho7 took down $1.3 million when he won the Main Event (despite his desperate attempts to do a deal even before the final table had begun) and both 2nd and 3rd places were also worth $1m+. The biggest buy-in of the championships – the Super High Roller at $51k – also produced a huge payday, this time for Ben ‘Ben86’ Tollerene who cleared over $616,000.

Shaun Deeb became the Player of the Championships, his 480 points way ahead of 2nd-placed vovtroy (395) and Fresh_oO_D (385). Deeb also snagged his 8th ‘COOP’ event which was a record until equalled by Calvin ‘cal42688’ Anderson shortly afterwards.

The UK had a seriously good WCOOP showing, with 11,943 unique entrants bagging $5,874,143 –good for second spot, although it was Canada who secured the highest winnings over the 70 events.

Another record-breaking performance came during Jcarverpoker’s live RunItUp stream on Twitch. The PokerStars Team Pro, whose real name is Jason Somerville, amassed over 37,000 viewers at the peak of the broadcast, although he did miss the final hand of the Main Event when switching to and fro between his own tournament and the heads-up which Coenaldinho7 won!

Although some of the more interesting stats are still to be made public, the WCOOP was not the only event which saw PokerStars smashing records.

Their opening salvo in the ‘Common Cents’ event attracted a phenomenal 253,698 players and smashed the previous record of 225,000 players that was set on June 16, 2013 during the PokerStars ‘100 Billion Hands Celebration’ campaign.

The $0.01 buy-in meant that despite the huge numbers, PokerStars still had an overlay of some $97,463.02 from the $100k guaranteed event, and the winner - DaDumon from Austria – pocketed $10,000 from his 1 cent stake in the turbo-NLHE event.

The Common Cents ‘micro-stakes series’, which continues until October 11th when the Main Event kicks off, will see a further 13 tournaments guaranteed to the tune of another $150k, with buy-ins ranging from £0.11 to $0.99. These will include 500 lucky ticket holders playing the Main Event for free after a ‘giveaway’ during the first hour of yesterday’s play.

For further details, visit PokerStars.