WCOOP and WSOP Online main events set for take-off with $37.5 million in guarantees

Mo Afdhal
Posted on: September 26, 2023 18:00 PDT

The final day of the week is the best day of the week for online grinders, but some Sundays are more special than others. October 1 represents the perfect storm, with two of the biggest annual events playing out simultaneously across multiple days and buy-ins, and with huge guarantees.

GGPoker's WSOP Online Main Event has the biggest guarantee (massive, at $25 million), while the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker Main Event comes in three flavours – $10,300, $1,050 and $109 buy-ins, with $6 million, $4 million and $2.5m guarantees respectively.

GGPoker WSOP Online Main Event

The WSOP Online Main Event is a $5,000 buy-in with multiple Day 1 flights offered, and many already played. Players can only enter each Day 1 flight a single time, but the sheer number of flights on the schedule allows for essentially as many bullets as it takes, or as many as your bankroll allows for. Players can only take their largest stacks forward.

Day 1T (yep, you read that right) plays out on October 1, but if you missed that and the rest of the Day 1s, you can still catch a last-chance Day 1 on Monday.

GGPoker, home of the $25m guaranteed WSOP Online Main Event GGPoker is the home of the $25m guaranteed WSOP Online Main Event, which also ships the winner a prestigious bracelet

4,206 players have already qualified for Day 2, which also starts on Monday. That means GGPoker is currently just a shade under $4m away from reaching the guarantee.

You can still play Steps satellites that start at $6, with regular satellites running daily. If you're not playing, you can follow the business end of the Main Event action, with a live-streamed final table on GGPoker.tv starting on October 3. The talented duo of Ali Nejad and Jeff Gross will provide the play-by-play.

WCOOP Main Events

Meanwhile, on PokerStars, the WCOOP Main Events come in three different buy-ins, but just a single Day 1 for each – and they all start on Sunday. The Low ($109), Medium ($1,050), and High ($10,300) versions of each No Limit Hold'em Main Event begin at 5:30pm BST. The Pot Limit Omaha trio of main events kick off just a little later at 8:05pm BST, with the same buy-ins.

You can still win your seat via satellites and the Power Path promotion.

There are also plenty of ways to follow the WCOOP Main Event action, with a number of PokerStars Team Pros planning to stream their runs. Lex Veldhuis, Benjamin 'Spraggy' Spragg, and Parker 'tonkaaaap' Talbot will be three streamers looking for deep runs in the flagship WCOOP event.

You can also watch cards up action on the PokerStars Twitch channel on Days 2, 3 and 4.

Fedor Holz
Neil Stoddart

The WCOOP Main Event continues to be one of the most prestigious online poker tournaments in the world. Portugal's Luis "luis_faria" Faria won it last year for a $1,293,825 payday. Other notable winners include Fedor Holz (2014 champion, winning $1.3m) and JC Tran (2006 champion, winning $670,194.00).