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The World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is an online poker tournament series sponsored by PokerStars. It is played on the PokerStars website in September.
Established in 2002, WCOOP is PokerStars' attempt to establish the online equivalent of the World Series of Poker. The WCOOP tournament series is the largest of its kind on the Internet.[1][2]
The fifteen WCOOP events in 2005 generated $12,783,900 in prize money, making it not only the biggest ever online poker event, but the third biggest poker series (live or online) in all of 2005.[citation needed]
Keeping with the tradition of the World Series of Poker, the WCOOP is a series of tournaments in which players compete in a variety of different poker games, each with different buy-in and prize levels. The games featured are Limit, Pot Limit and No Limit Texas Hold'em, Seven Card Stud and Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo, Razz, Pot Limit Omaha High and Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, and H.O.R.S.E. In 2007, 5 Card Draw and 2-7 Triple draw were added. 2-7 Single Draw and mixed limit games were added in 2008, and Badugi was added in 2009. The main event is No Limit Hold'em.
In addition to the cash prize, the winner of each WCOOP event received a personally engraved 14 karat gold bracelet from PokerStars up until 2015. Since then, PokerStars has discontinued awarding bracelets to save costs.[3]