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Home / News / Poker / WCOOP on a budget: How to play with $5, $50 and $500 bankrolls

WCOOP on a budget: How to play with $5, $50 and $500 bankrolls

August 29, 2024

Poker

by Jack Stanton

watch_later

4 Minute Read

$5 BUDGET
$50 BUDGET
$500 BUDGET

Find out how to play WCOOP, regardless of your budget…

The World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) 2024 is just around the corner, kicking off on Sunday, 8 September and running until Wednesday, 2 October.

Here, we outline how you might approach online poker’s most prestigious series with micro ($5), low ($50) and mid-stakes ($500) bankroll budgets.

HOW TO PLAY WITH A $5 BUDGET

If you think you won’t have a shot at becoming a WCOOP champion because buy-ins begin at $5.50, think again.

Five bucks can go a long way on PokerStars these days, with various avenues for you to turn small investments into big bankroll-boosting scores.

So if you have a $5 budget set aside for the series, the first thing you should do is look through the schedule and pick which $5.50 events you would like to play. There are some fantastic ones on the schedule, including a $60K guaranteed PKO during Main Event weekend, the $50K guaranteed WCOOP Kickoff, and of course, the Phase event with a massive $300K guaranteed in the prize pool.

Once you have two or three of these events circled, you can begin to think about satellites for them. As we get closer to the beginning of the series satellites for each event will appear in the tournament lobbies, and for $5.50 events you can expect these to begin at around $0.55.

Then there are the special WCOOP-themed Spin & Go’s that PokerStars has added to the client. The $0.75 WCOOP Spin & Go’s offer cash prizes and WCOOP tournament tickets ranging all the way up to $1,050, so you could be battling against the big names in no time without breaking the bank.

Don’t forget, every day that you play on PokerStars you will receive a free $0.50 Power Path Step 1 ticket. You could spin one of these all the way up to a WCOOP Package worth $2,500 (Silver) or $10,300 (Gold).

HOW TO PLAY WITH A $50 BUDGET

With more bankroll behind you and more tournaments available to play, things get a bit more interesting with a $50 budget.

Still, there’s no reason you have to buy in directly to a $5.50, $11 or $22 event. Satellites run for every tournament throughout WCOOP allowing you to not only get in cheap but also play events you could never normally play when following a reasonable bankroll management strategy. You could, for example, find yourself playing in $55 or $109 buy-in events with plenty of your roll remaining.

But what events should you add to your calendars?

Well, there’s a juicy $11 Mystery Bounty on the series’ opening day and multiple big PKOs running across the series. Here are our picks for the events you won’t want to miss (don’t forget about the low-stakes events listed above, too):

HOW TO PLAY WITH A $500 BUDGET

Five hundred bucks might not seem like a big bankroll when you’re scrolling past $530+ buy-in events in the WCOOP lobby, but trust us, if managed sensibly $500 is more than enough for you to play multiple action-packed sessions throughout the series (just make sure you mix low buy-ins in with your bigger events).

You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to events, too, so much so that we’re not going to pick out select events and instead show you the full schedule.

You’ll notice there’s a mix of tournament formats (from freezeouts and re-buys to PKOs and Mystery Bounties), tournament speeds (slow structures up to hypers), and poker variants (all the mixed games your heart desires).

There is one event, however, you can’t afford to miss with this bankroll and that’s the $109 WCOOP Main Event, which takes place at 12:30 ET on Sunday, 29 September. There’s $2.5 million already in the prize pool and a shot at etching your name in the online poker history books.

Regardless of your bankroll, remember that Power Path and satellites are an effective way to save money and take shots. Play too many, however, and they can eat away at your bankroll without you ever actually playing a WCOOP event. It’s all about balance, so set your limits.

Best of luck in WCOOP.