The latest from the final weekend of the 2021 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) on PokerStars, where it’s Main Event time!

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TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Crowds flock on final weekend
• Three for Karmatski and Leqenden
• Thrills continue in Player of Series race
• Registration still open in enormous Main Events

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BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Main Events under way; hunt for WCOOP’s biggest champions is on!: The biggest day on the online poker calendar brought thousands flocking to the PokerStars tables yesterday. Yep, it was WCOOP Main Event Sunday, where three hold’em Main Events, at buy-ins of $55, $530 and $5,200 got started, as well as three PLO Main Events, with entry fees of $109, $1,050 and $10,300. Between the six tournaments, there were guarantees of more than $16 million — and registration is still open, so prize pools will still swell even more. The $5K hold’em champion will probably be looking at a first prize of more than $1.5 million, so it’s easy to see why the tournaments are so eagerly anticipated. More details of how the events are progressing are below. But remember that satellites are still running to all events, so get involved!

More for the Karmatskiy collection: Arseniy “josef_shvejk” Karmatskiy is one of those players on PokerStars who must have a difficult decision to make about what accomplishment badge he wants to show beside his avatar. Karmatski is a former EPT Main Event champion, having won in Sochi in 2018, and has also won titles during SCOOP (a high roller, in 2019) and WCOOP (in both 2018 and 2020). Last night, Karmatski completed the WCOOP hattrick with victory in the Sunday Cooldown Special Edition, beating a 682-player field to a prize of $123,874, including bounties. All of Karmatski’s previous WCOOP titles have also been in high-designation hold’em tournaments, but this one was the richest so far. He beat “GlobalHappiness” into second place, the third time that particular Swedish player has been heads up for a title, but fallen at the last.

Three and three for Lequenden: Not much is known about the Belorussian player “Leqenden” beyond their exceptional skills at the poker table. We’ve never been able to match a real name to a screen-name through several years reporting on Leqenden, during which time they have won three SCOOP titles and now three in WCOOP too, having picked up the latest on Sunday night. This one came in the $1K Deep Stack freezeout (WCOOP 84-H), where there were 253 players and a first prize of $48,649. That’s now sitting in Leqenden’s bankroll, while a WCOOP trophy is heading in their direction to nestle alongside all the others.

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Brazil, again and again: Even by their own lofty standards, this has been an utterly dominant WCOOP display by players from Brazil. On Sunday night, the samba stars picked up another three titles, and turned Event 84-M in particular into a personal home game. Five of the top seven places were occupied by Brazilians, including every podium spot. “Regis R69” took $38,673 for the win, with their countryfolk “$ampaioBruno” second and “Guialves27” third. Other Brazilian winners from the evening were “tchozen666” and “gjwanke”.

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TODAY’S RESULTS

*denotes deal
†inc. bounties

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STAT TRACKER

Today’s the day when the stat tracker feels especially behind the times. Remember, the stats below refer to completed tournaments only, and we know that there are thousands of players contesting millions of dollars in the Main Events, which have already started. But none of those figures appear below. Even so, entries have passed 1 million for the series and the prize pools are closing in on $90 million.

Tournaments completed: 264
Entries: 1,034,008 (inc. 235,161 re-entries)
Prize pools: $88,506,229
First-place prizes: $13,569,306 (inc. $2,735,331 in bounties)
Tournaments ongoing: 12
Tournaments starting today: 9 (plus phase events)

Stats refer to completed tournaments only

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STATES OF PLAY

A look at what’s happening in the events paused overnight:

Six Main Events are now under way: three in hold’em and three in PLO. And if you think you’ve missed out, you’re wrong. Registration remains open for all of the NLHE Main Events until play starts on Day 2 (of four), as well as the medium and high PLO tournaments. That’s at 1.05pm ET. Here’s how they stand:

WCOOP 91-L: $55 NLHE 8-Max, NLHE Main Event
Entries (so far): 36,449 | Players remaining: 8,674
Prize pool (so far): $1,822,450 | Chip leader: Rina-666666 (Russia)
Registration still open; four-day event

WCOOP 91-M: $530 NLHE 8-Max, NLHE Main Event
Entries (so far): 7,135 | Players remaining: 2,178
Prize pool (so far): $3,567,500 | Chip leader: Gothewarriors (New Zealand)
Registration still open; four-day event

WCOOP 91-H: $5,200 NLHE 8-Max, NLHE Main Event
Entries (so far): 1,715 | Players remaining: 603
Prize pool (so far): $10 million | Chip leader: kleinebakker007 (Netherlands)
Registration still open; four-day event

WCOOP 92-L: $109 6-Max PLO Main Event
Entries: 3,023 | Players remaining: 418
Prize pool: $302,300 | Chip leader: oranjewm (Netherlands)
Registration closed; three-day event

WCOOP 92-M: $1,050 6-Max PLO Main Event
Entries (so far): 414 | Players remaining: 204
Prize pool (so far): $750,000 | Chip leader: #Naktro91 (Andorra)
Registration still open; three-day event

WCOOP 92-H: $10,300 6-Max PLO Main Event
Entries (so far): 126 | Players remaining: 35
Prize pool (so far): $1.26 million | Chip leader: yara777 (Ukraine)
Registration still open; three-day event

It’s a bit too early to be making grand statements about who is well placed to win, given that registration is still open in most of the events. But we have to tip the hat to #Naktro91 of Andorra, who leads the medium PLO tournament (with 204 players left) and is third (of 35) coming back in the high version. That’s a pretty good Day 1 showing.

Two ambassadors in the kick-off hunt: Most tournament grinders fire up more tables on WCOOP Main Event day than perhaps on any other Sunday of the year. Certainly Sam “SamSquid” Grafton doesn’t always play $50 buy-in tournaments anymore, but he did yesterday — and it looks to be worth his while. Grafton is placed fifth, from 80 remaining, in the $55 Sunday Kickoff Special Edition, which attracted 6,677 entries. Three of those came from Grafton’s Team Pro colleague, and double WCOOP champion Spraggy, who is 67th overnight. He’ll resume his hunt for a third title today.

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TWITCH WATCH

Mason Pye has been playing some big buy-in events during this WCOOP, probably for the first time in his career. He was involved in the $5K NLHE Main Event too, and it got off to an incredible start. “What even is this hand?” he asked, with good reason. Take a look for yourself:

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TWEET OF THE DAY

Patrick “pads1161” Leonard was planning on playing a lot of tables on WCOOP Sunday. (And he probably has more than one monitor too.)

Average table size today 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/focl6qbwdo

— Patrick Leonard (@padspoker) September 12, 2021

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COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD

Brazil’s march continues unchecked, with another three titles overnight putting the South Americans 20 (TWENTY!) titles clear of Russia, the closest challengers. Russians actually picked up two titles on Sunday, as did the UK. But there’s simply no catching Brazil.

Current standings:

52 titles — Brazil
32 — Russia
24 — UK
17 – Netherlands
14 — Austria
12 —Canada
10 — Sweden
9 — Poland
8 — Finland
7 — Belarus, Germany, Norway
6 — Hungary
5 — Latvia, Mexico, Ukraine
4 — Argentina, Czech Republic, Lithuania
3 — Bulgaria, Romania
2 — Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Japan, Moldova, Peru
1 — Andorra, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, New Zealand, Panama, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland, Uzbekistan.

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PLAYER OF THE SERIES UPDATE

We were all so focused on Patrick Leonard vs. Camilancefieldg that we took our eyes of Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi. That was foolish. Another superb Player of the Series race is drawing to its conclusion, but is there more drama to come? Quite possibly. Here are the current standings:

OVERALL

1 – Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi (UK) – 1,605 points
2 – FONBET_RULIT (Russia) – 1,560
3 – Camilancefieldg (Canada) – 1,450
3 – Patrick “pads1161” Leonard (UK) – 1,440
5 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak (Russia) – 1,305
Prize: $25,000 to the winner

HIGH

1 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins (Brazil) – 870 points
2 – Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi (UK) – 865
3 – Joao “Naza114” Vieira (Netherlands) – 770
4 – Patrick “pads1161” Leonard (UK) – 710
5 – Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna (Finland) – 560
Prizes: 1st — $15,000; 2nd — $10,000; 3rd — $5,000

MEDIUM

1 – FONBET_RULIT (Russia) – 660 points
2 – Matt “OLD TIME GIN” Stone (Canada) – 545
3 – Camilancefieldg (Canada) – 535
4 – Jerry “Perrymejsen” Odeen (Sweden) – 520
5 – Scarmak3r (Slovenia) – 470
Prizes: 1st — $10,000; 2nd — $7,500; 3rd — $5,000; 4th — $2,500; 5th — $1,500; 6th-10th — $1,000

LOW

1 – ekvilibryst (Ukraine) – 620 points
2 – ILoveScarfGuy (Croatia) – 590
3 – WTFOMFGOAO (Russia) – 575
4 – Camilancefieldg (Canada) – 565
5 – FONBET_RULIT (Russia) – 540
Prizes: 1st — $5,000; 2nd — $2,500; 3rd — $1,500; 4th — $1,000; 5th — $500; 6th-10th — $300; 11th-20th — $150

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TODAY’S ACTION

As mentioned above, registration is still open on the Main Events, so you can hop in those still if you haven’t exhausted your supply of bullets already. But if you have, or you just fancy something new, three more events kick off tofay. They’re all hold’em, with the standout being the PKO “Series Saver”. With $1.25 million guaranteed in the prize pool for the $1K version of that, it should really save someone’s series, and then some.

WCOOP 94: NLHE 8-Max, PKO, Series Saver
Buy-ins: $11, $109, $1,050
Guarantees:$200K, $750K, $1.25m

WCOOP 95: NLHE 8-Max, Freezeout
Buy-ins: $5.50, $55, $530
Guarantees: $35K, $200K, $300K

WCOOP 96: NLHE 8-Max, Turbo, Freezeout
Buy-ins: $11, $109, $1,050
Guarantees: $85K, $200K, $250K

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WATCH THE ACTION ON TWITCH AND YOUTUBE

Live broadcasts of WCOOP 2021 go out every Monday through Wednesday featuring cards up coverage of the biggest final tables and expert commentary from James Hartigan, Joe Stapleton and a host of special guests. Click for full details.

You can watch on the PokerStars YouTube channel, the PokerStars YouTube UK channel, or PokerStars’ Twitch channel.

Broadcast schedule:

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POKER NEWS LIVE UPDATES

Our friends at Poker News will be bringing you live updates from a number of events during WCOOP. Head to their Live Reporting pages to see the action unfold in real time.

Poker News WCOOP reporting schedule:

WCOOP 91-L: $55 NLHE [8-Max, NLHE Main Event], $1.5M Gtd
WCOOP 91-M: $530 NLHE [8-Max, NLHE Main Event], $2.5M Gtd
WCOOP 91-H: $5,200 NLHE [8-Max, NLHE Main Event], $10M Gtd
WCOOP 92-M: $1,050 PLO [6-Max, PLO Main Event], $750K Gtd
WCOOP 92-H: $10,300 PLO [6-Max, PLO Main Event], $1M Gtd
WCOOP 94-H: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Series Saver], $1.25M Gtd
WCOOP 01-H: $109 NLHE [Phase 2], $1M Gtd

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