Welcome to the 2023 World Championship of Online Poker Main Event
The 2023 edition of the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) at PokerStars has been firing on all cylinders for several weeks now. After Championship Events in multiple disciplines and variants of poker, among which No Limit 2-7 Single Draw, 8-Game, and Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em, the time has come for the series’ culmination with the $10,300 World Championship of No Limit Hold’em, the official Main Event of the flagship online poker series boasting a $6,000,000 guaranteed prize pool, which is set to kick off at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
It will be the second time that the WCOOP Main Event has a $10,300 buy-in, with the 2022 edition being the first time it was changed up from the previous $5,200 price point that players were accustomed to since 2008. Last year, it was Luis “luis_faria” Faria who captured the title and etched his name in the online poker history books, beating out a field of 760 entries to score a seven-figure payout of $1,293,825.
This year, however, it has been Benny ‘'RunGodLike’’ Glaser who has been stealing the show. The British crusher has managed to win a record-breaking seven WCOOP titles this edition alone, both in no limit hold’em and mixed game events. This astronomical performance sees him on top of the overall leaderboard for WCOOP 2023. His lead is not as comfortable as one might expect, however, as both “FAL1st”, and Patrick “pads1161” Leonard are on his heels, both trailing by less than 100 points. A strong run in the main event will be a crucial part for any of these players to come out ahead in the biyearly COOP leaderboard title race.
They will be facing some stiff competition, however, as many of online poker’s most prolific names have either already won their seat in one of the many satellites running on PokerStars, or have bought in directly in order to be dealt in from the very first hand. Among them are Simon "C. Darwin2" Mattsson, Jans “Graftekkel” Arends, Felipe “ketzerfelipe” Ketzer, David “MissOracle” Yan, and Christian "WATnlos" Rudolph. Of course, the expectation is that many more of online poker’s cream of the crop will join the competition before the end of late registration.
WCOOP 98-H $10,300 NLHE (World Championship of NLHE / Main Event) will run for four days, with the final table and subsequent crowning of the champion on Wednesday, October 4th. On day 1, 15 levels of 30 minutes will be played, and the cards will be in the air at 12:30 p.m. ET. The starting stack amounts to 250,000 chips, and play will begin with blinds at 500/1,000 with an ante of 125.
Late registration will be open until the start of Day 2, and players will have up to three reentries at their disposal if all their chips happen to vanish before then. Those who register at the latest possible moment will still have a start stack worth more than 20 big blinds.
PokerNews will provide live coverage throughout all four days, as well as the $10,300 PLO Main Event, so stay tuned to not miss any of the action of the WCOOP main events.
![Alejandro "[Papo]AR" Lococo](https://s.pnimg.net/pnZmiR8rAwq1pmHXr8dg0DesF-4QhODTsD-rgqMTGpw/pr:player-photo-chipcount/aHR0cHM6Ly9wbmlt/Zy5uZXQvdy9wb2tl/ci1wbGF5ZXJzLzAv/NjJjL2M4MjAwYzI5/ZDguanBn.webp)
