WCOOP 2024: A deep dive into the schedule

Let's take a close look at the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) 2024 schedule and highlight what makes the series so special

August 30, 2024

Poker

by PokerStars Staff

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7 Minute Read

KEY NUMBERS
MAIN EVENTS
BIG BUDGETS
LOW BUDGETS
MIXED GAMES
TURBOS

The schedule for the 2024 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is here, and players are already preparing themselves for an incredible ride through 25 days of competition.

The schedule table in our Coverage Hub is fully searchable, so take some time examining everything on offer and find the games and days that suit you best.

If you need some pointers, what follows is a closer look at the schedule. Allow us to pick out some particular highlights.

KEY NUMBERS FROM THE WCOOP SCHEDULE

Assessing the series as a whole, here are some headline stats:

No. of events: 123
No. of tournaments (inc. low, medium & high): 379
Lowest buy-in: $5.50 (19 tournaments)
Highest buy-in: $25,000 (115-H: NLHE 8-Max, Super High Roller)

Total series guarantees: $80 million
Lowest guarantee: $5,000 (WCOOP 101-L: $11 Stud [6-Max])
Highest guarantee: $5,000,000 (WCOOP 108-H: World Championship of NLHE: $10,300 Main Event)

IT’S NOT CALLED THE MAIN EVENT FOR NOTHING

WCOOP wouldn’t quite be WCOOP without a stonking Main Event, and the 23rd edition continues a fine recent tradition of enormous guarantees on Main Event tourneys at three price points.

The high buy-in NLHE Main has the traditional $10,300 buy-in, and the guarantee is simply enormous: $5 million.

But there’s also the $109 and $1,050 buy-in low and medium Main Events to think about, where guarantees are $2.5 million and $3.5 million, respectively. You simply don’t get many online tournaments as prestigious as these.

But let’s not forget that there are also three PLO Main Events during WCOOP, giving our four-card friends the chance to claim great riches. The PLO Main Events have buy-ins of $109, $1,050 and $10,300 and the guarantees are $275K, $750K and $1.5K, respectively.

The hold’em Main Events run for four days; the PLO Main Events get done in three.

Main Events:

Hold’em
Sun, 29 Sep, 12:30pm – WCOOP 108-L: $109 NLHE 8-Max, Main Event $2.5M Gtd
Sun, 29 Sep, 12:30pm – WCOOP 108-M: $1,050 NLHE 8-Max, Main Event $3.5M Gtd
Sun, 29 Sep, 12:30pm – WCOOP 108-H: $10,300 NLHE 8-Max, Main Event $5M Gtd

PLO
Sun, 29 Sep, 3:05pm – WCOOP 111-L: $109 PLO 6-Max, Main Event $200K Gtd
Sun, 29 Sep, 3:05pm – WCOOP 111-M: $1,050 PLO 6-Max, Main Event $500K Gtd
Sun, 29 Sep, 3:05pm – WCOOP 111-H: World Championship of PLO: $10,300 Main Event, $800K Gtd

Sam Grafton and his Team Pro colleague Parker Talbot will no doubt battle in the biggest events

FOR THE BIG BUDGETS

There was a time when the Main Events had the biggest buy-in of the series, but those days are long gone. During this WCOOP, there are six tournaments with a buy-in of $10,300, plus one costing $25,000 to enter. That one is the Super High Roller, the biggest of all 379 tournaments, and will attract the cream of the crop playing for a $1 million guaranteed prize pool.

Those $10K events include the aforementioned NLHE and PLO Main Events, as well as an 8-Game High Roller. That too promises to appeal to poker’s absolute elite: a huge buy-in and eight variants will truly be a test of class.

WCOOP’s biggest buy-ins:

$25,000: Mon, 30 Sep, 2:05pm – WCOOP 115-H: NLHE 8-Max, Super High Roller, $1M Gtd

$10,000

Tue, 10 Sep 2:05pm – WCOOP 17-H: $10,300 NLHE [Super Tuesday High Roller], $600K Gtd
Sun, 15 Sep 12:30pm – WCOOP 38-H: $10,300 NLHE [Progressive KO, High Roller], $700K Gtd
Thu, 19 Sep 1:30pm – WCOOP 61-H: $10,300 8-Game [High Roller], $250K Gtd
Thu, 26 Sep 2:05pm – WCOOP 97-H: $10,300 NLHE [Progressive KO, Thursday Thrill High Roller], $600K Gtd
Sun, 29 Sep 12:30pm – WCOOP 108-H: World Championship of NLHE: $10,300 Main Event, $5M Gtd
Sun, 29 Sep 3:05pm – WCOOP 111-H: World Championship of PLO: $10,300 Main Event, $800K Gtd

PAY $5.50 TO PLAY FOR $300K

Close observers of ‘COOP tournament schedules will notice that Event #1 often doesn’t appear at the top of the chronological list. That’s because the first event to get started, the default Event 01, is usually the “Phase” event, which plays out throughout the series as a whole and then only wraps on the final few days.

Phase events are the tournaments that have multiple starting days, known as “phases”, running many times per day, even before WCOOP proper begins. Players are permitted to play as many Phase 1s as they want. If you bag chips, you’re through to Phase 2, which essentially plays as a freezeout starting Monday, September 30. This multiple-entry format ensures tens of thousands play the lower buy-in versions, which cost $5.50 and $22 to enter this time. The guarantees sit at $300K and $500K respectively for the low and medium buy-in event, and there’s a cool $1 million guaranteed in the $109 high buy-in. .

The Phase events almost always attract the highest number of entries of the series, and it’s not one to miss.

WCOOP 2021’s Phase events:

#01-L: $5.50 NLHE [Phase 2], $300K Gtd
#01-M: $22 NLHE [Phase 2], $500K Gtd
#01-H: $109 NLHE [Phase 2], $1M Gtd

Phase 1s begin on August 30 (check client), and Phase 2 begins 2.15pm, Monday, September 30.

MIX IT UP WITH THE MIXED GAMES

No limit hold’em reigns supreme in WCOOP, as ever, but there are plenty of tournaments in other games, and we run the full gamut from razz to stud to draw to badugi, plus numerous Omaha variants.

In fact, Omaha these days packed of variety and we have four-card and five-card PLO, plus some hi/Lo, plus some five-card hi/lo. We have some no limit Omaha hi/lo too, which should make for chaos, and some PLO PKO, which adds the knockout dimension to the four-card game. There’s variation within the variations.

There are lots of affordable low buy-in non-hold’em tournaments running, but let’s take a look at the championships.

The mixed games championships

Wed, 11 Sep 12:30pm – World Championship of HORSE: $1,050, $80K Gtd
Thu, 12 Sep 12:30pm – World Championship of 2-7 Triple Draw: $1,050, $75K Gtd
Mon, 16 Sep 12:30pm – World Championship of PLO8: $1,050, $150K Gtd
Wed, 18 Sep 12:30pm – World Championship of Razz: $1,050, $65K Gtd
Mon, 23 Sep 12:30pm – World Championship of 8-Game: $2,100, $150K Gtd
Thu, 26 Sep 12:30pm – WCOOP World Championship of Badugi: $1,050, $40K Gtd

KEEP IT BRIEF

Not everyone has the two days spare it usually requires to win a WCOOP event. For this reason, 101 tournaments in this series are turbos, and will wrap in a single evening. Many of them are the final event of the day, giving everyone one last chance to make a mark before heading to bed.

If you’re particularly interested in this kind of event, then Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays are for you.

Sundays host the Sunday Cooldown Special Edition, on Sep 8, 15, 22, and 29. These are usually at the $22, $109 and $530 price points, but take a step up on Sep 29, when the buy-ins become $33, $215, $1,050. There are also high roller editions on Sep 15 with buy-ins of $55, $530 and $5,200.