WCOOP Schedule Nearly Finalized

BryanS, the awesome guy who represents Poker Stars on the 2+2 Forums, just posted a nearly final draft of the schedule for their annual World Championship of Online Poker. As usual, it looks like it’s going to be a ground-breaking event for internet poker, featuring some huge buy-ins, some multi-day events, and some new tournament formats like NL 2-7 single draw that to my knowledge are not offered anywhere on the internet.

I don’t envision myself playing any of the 10K+ buyin events, as I’d need to get a backer and the fields will probably be pretty tough anyway. But I’m excited about pretty much everything else. I like that a lot of the lesser played games have small enough buy-ins that I can afford to take a chance on them and that that chance will be subsidized by players even worse than myself doing the same.

Hopefully my non-poker schedule for this year will work out so that I’m able to play most of the events. It’s nice that, since this is the internet, one can play events that run simultaneously. This is a big complaint from some at the WSOP. Now I just need to build up a bankroll on Stars. Thankfully Poker Savvy pays me in Stars money…

Some notes…

1. The event types “Mixed Hold’em”, “Variety”, and “NL 2-7 Single Draw” are planned and in development. If for some unforseen reason the development is not able to be completed in time for the 2008 WCOOP, these events will be replaced by other games.

2. The event name “Variety” is perhaps a bit ambiguous. We plan to hold an event which is a combination of the following games: Triple Draw 2-7, all five segments of HORSE, NL Single Draw 2-7, PL Omaha, and NL Hold’em. After much deliberation without coming up with a satisfactory name for it, we’re asking our players… what do YOU think we should call such a tournament?

3. We have two “Mixed Hold’em” events on the schedule, though we debated replacing one of them with a second Omaha Hi/Lo tournament. What do you think of this? In terms of what we’ll actually spread, this is pretty much the last one up for debate… we want to know what you think! Please discuss.

4. Regarding tournament times: while we would love to come up with the one time on the schedule that is perfect for everyone all over the world, this is of course impossible… no such “one perfect time” exists. We have done our best to schedule the events to reach as many of our players as possible, including our European friends who will no doubt enjoy the 14:30 (19:30 UK, 20:30 CET) tournaments which now appear every day on the schedule. We do regret that some players may miss events they’d play if they could, due to off-PokerStars obligations (work, etc), but we feel that this is unavoidable and that the schedule is rich with many chances to play.

5. Regarding 2-day events: in the end the decision was made that it’s best to begin the biggest events on the biggest day. Some players, particularly our European players, will likely have to plan to take Monday off of work if they play in one of the big 2-day NLHE events. It would hardly be fair to say that we’re not catering to our European players, though, as a majority of the weekday events are at times which will require our North American players to shuffle their schedules to play at all.