This year's schedule features 70 exciting events with a mind-blowing $45 million in guaranteed prize pools. As of Friday, 13 of the 70 events were in the books, and by the end of the weekend we will see double that with 26 events either underway or finished.
American poker refugee, Peter "RcknTheSbrbs" Nigh kicked things off by shipping the opening event, the WCOOP-01: $109 NL Hold'em [WCOOP Kickoff, Phase 2], $1.5M Guaranteed for $200,352 after beating the United Kingdom's John "Blessed" Duthie in heads-up play. Duthie banked $145,605 as a solid consolation prize.
Thus far, the biggest win belongs to the United Kingdom's "V7JCV21", who won $260,194 after outlasting a huge field of 8,673 players in the WCOOP-04: $215 NL Hold'em [Sunday Million SE], $1.5M Guaranteed on Monday. Uruguay's "komarolo22" collected $190,806 for his runner-up performance in this tournament.
In an epic heads-up battle, according to the PokerStars Blog, Brazil's William "hellzito" Arruda eventually beat Ireland's Keith "bullyboy1978" Cummins in the WCOOP-09: $1,050 NL Hold'em [Super Tuesday SE], $1M Guaranteed, after the duo battled it out for 2.5 hours and agreed to a heads-up deal splitting most of the remaining prize pool. Arruda cashed for $259,203, while Cummins banked a healthy $240,177.
Russia's "Ti0373" snagged his third WCOOP title after shipping the WCOOP-12: $700 NL Draw Championship, $50K Guaranteed for $20,402. American poker refugee Mike "KaptianKush" Carter took second place in this tournament for $13,732, while Poland's Dzmitry 'Colisea' Urbanovich was denied his fourth COOP title when finishing in third place for $10,201.
Meanwhile, in other news, Team PokerStars Online's Jason "jcarverpoker" Somerville finished in sixth place in the WCOOP-07: $700 NL Hold'em [Progressive Super-Knockout], $750K Guaranteed for $22,673 from the prize pool and $15,666 in bounties while streaming live on his Run It Up! channel on Twitch. According to the PokerStars Blog, this stream broke poker records with 37,000 simultaneous viewers propelling "the broadcast become the #1 channel on all of Twitch."
While Somerville may have been the star of the show, it was Canada's "Showtime43" getting the job done, outlasting 1,843 players to secure the win along with $98,049 from the prize pool and $28,470 in bounties.
Here is a look at the final table results of the first 13 WCOOP events.
