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With more than 10,000 entries
and $6 million in prize money awarded in 12 events
held between July 28 and August 8, Third Annual
World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) now
rivals the biggest and most prestigious land-based
poker tournaments in the world. As thousands of
poker fans watched on their computers this past
Sunday, a 30-year-old financial analyst from Oslo,
Norway, known by the screen name "Ragde" won
$424,945.26 in the main event.
The total prize pool for
the main event alone exceeded $2 million dollars --
a higher figure than most of the biggest poker
events shown on television -- and the top 81
finishers received prize money. No Internet-based
competition of any kind in history has ever awarded
such a large cash prize. All of the top five spots
won more than $100,000, an unprecedented payout for
an online poker tournament.
The WCOOP tournament
series, consists of the most popular forms of poker
-- Texas Holdem, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud
High/Low, Omaha and Omaha High/Low -- with four
events featuring the world's most popular version of
tournament poker, No Limit Texas Holdem Players from
all 50 states and more than 40 countries took part
in this year's event.
"There's no denying that
poker is emerging as the world's new favorite
pastime," said Lee Jones, poker room manager and
best-selling poker author. "The global participation
and tremendous prize money for our World
Championship of Online Poker -- totals that dwarf
most successful land-based tournaments -- show that
online poker is a vital part of the worldwide poker
boom."
The grand finale of the
tournament was the WCOOP main event, otherwise known
as the official World Championship of Online Poker.
The feature game was a No-Limit Texas Hold 'em
Tournament with an entry fee of $2,500 -- a
significant figure that attracted some of the
biggest names in poker, including Greg Raymer and
Chris Moneymaker, the past two World Series of Poker
(WSOP) champions.
Many of the participants
in the main event paid the entry fee themselves, but
for others, the entry fee came at a bargain -- a
sizable number of players, where players could enter
a tournament for a chance to win a seat at the main
event for only a fraction of the cost. Many more
players gained their entry into the tournament
"Frequent Player Points" alone, meaning the entry
fee essentially cost nothing other than time already
spent playing at Poker. The company gave away more
than $500,000 in free entries through the Frequent
Player Point program.
Based on the huge
success of this year's tournament, in both the
number of Texas holdem players and total prize
money, it is expected that the WCOOP will continue
to grow in size and stature, especially as more
players come to realize that anyone can sign up and
participate, and perhaps end up as a "world
champion."
Poker tournaments set
the poker industry on fire in 2003 by producing the
first World Series of Poker (WSOP) champion who won
his entry online. Chris Moneymaker, an accountant
from Tennessee and went on to win $2.5 million in
the world's biggest and most prestigious poker
tournament. Almost all of his tournament poker
experience came from playing Poker.
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