WCOOP 2018 Proves Poker Is Still Well & Thriving

Although we’ve heard the talk about poker dying and not losing its popularity over the past couple of years, numbers don’t seem to agree. This year’s World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP 2018) was the largest one to date, clearly showing there are many still enjoying the game in one way or another.

WCOOP 2018: Almost 200 events

The WCOOP 2018 saw a grand total of 185 tournaments in three different tiers (low, medium, and high). As always, thanks to these different tiers, the series attracted players with different bankrolls, allowing almost everyone to find at least a few tournaments to play across the schedule.

When it was all said and done, the WCOOP 2018 saw  1,101,677 entries across all tournaments, which is a really impressive number. These players helped generate the prize pool just short of $100 million, distributed among 150,239 in-the money finishers.

Impressive numbers left and right

Over the course of the series, PokerStars has distributed more than $15 million to tournament winners alone, with the biggest single prize going to ‘wann2play,’ the WCOOP 2018 High Main Event winner, who took home $1,352,957 for his impressive run.

In terms of the field size, the WCOOP-L Main Event attracted most players, totaling 39,817 entries. The event featured a cool $1,000,000 guarantee and offered a very affordable buy-in of $55, so  it is no surprise the guarantee was almost doubled.

Best WCOOP 2018 players

When it comes to individual players’ performances in the WCOOP 2018, it was Denis ‘aDrENalin710′ Strebkov who took home the prestigious title for the Player of the Series. Strebkov claimed as many as five titles over the course of the series, bringing his lifetime total to nine!

Max ‘ImluckNuts’ Pisorenko was the player with most ITM finishes – 53 to be precise, which is a really impressive number. The player going under alias ‘AlexKhandaur’ showed up with the biggest ROI as he managed to turn his $8.10 WCOOP satellite entry into $97,565.

Another interesting piece of information relates to the player ‘bananero17’ who scored a grand total of 104 knockouts over the course of WCOOP 2018.

Tournament poker keeping the dream alive?

We’ve seen poker change over the years and it is the fact that the poker dream isn’t what it used to be. The number of people leaving everything to take up poker full time these days isn’t nearly what it used to be a decade ago.

But, big poker tournaments, online and live alike, are still keeping the flame going. The idea of turning the relatively small buy-in into a life-changing amount still appeals to serious players and casual fans alike.

The WCOOP 2018 is another testament to this. Despite the game in general losing a lot of its popularity, large tournament series still have the power to reignite the flame and bring people to the virtual felt.

And, for as long as this is the case, I don’t think we have to worry about the future of poker too much!