PokerStars Releases Provisional TCOOP Schedule

PokerStars has released a provisional schedule for its Turbo Championship of Online Poker 2017 – the tournament series starting on Wednesday 17 January.

PokerStars´ Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) nicely fills a gap between its flagship tournament series – WCOOP and SCOOP – and its more recreational-focused MicroMillions series. The majority of events have a buy-in of less than $100, and the tournaments are played at Turbo speed (five minute levels) or faster.

For the past five years, the TCOOP has been the first of PokerStars major tournament series to be played in a calendar year. For TCOOP 2017 the plan remains the same – the series scheduled to run from Wednesday 17 January to Sunday January 29, after most players have returned from the PokerStars Live Bahamas Festival.

Sixty-Three Events in Twelve Days

The TCOOP series comprises of sixty-three events in twelve days. Buy-ins start at $7.50 and go all the way up to $3,000. In addition to the regular $1,000 buy-in Main Event, a new “low buy-in” ($27.00) Main Event has been added to the schedule, plus there will be a more comprehensive range of poker formats and disciplines for players to get to grips with.

Between the various formats of NL Hold´em, the schedule includes PL and NL Omaha tournaments, Stud, Razz and 2-7 Single Draw events, and two mixed poker tournaments. There will also be two “Players Voice” tournaments – events in which the format/disciplined will be decided by a player vote prior to the start of the series.

$15 Million in Guaranteed Prize Pools

Although the guaranteed prize pools for each individual event will not be announced until the tournaments are deployed in the poker client early next month, PokerStars has revealed that the combined value of the TCOOP series will be $15 million – the same as in 2016, but 50% more than when the series was first launched with just fifty events in 2011.

Other changes include later start times for more valuable events to allow for more last-minute satellites, and a compression of the start times so that players can compete in multiple events simultaneously. In previous years, the day´s action often started at 8:00am (ET) and ran through to 18:00pm (ET). During TCOOP 2017, the action on most days will start later and finish earlier.

TCOOP 2017 Player of the Series Leaderboard Competition

Similar to previous years, PokerStars will be running a Player of the Series leaderboard competition throughout the Turbo Championships of Online Poker. Every player who cashes in any TCOOP event will be awarded points towards their leaderboard position and, at the end of the series, the top 200 players will win the following prizes:

Getting into one of the top three places may not be as hard as many people may think. The winner of each TCOOP tournament receives 100 leaderboard points – regardless of the buy-in, the number of entries or the format of the game. Players who finish in the top six places of any event pick up a minimum of fifty points and, as the top three players had in last year´s leaderboard competition had between 310 points and 340 points, it only takes one hot streak within the twelve days of action to feature in a top position.

Get Ready for TCOOP 2017

PokerStars´ Turbo Championship of Online Poker starts in just six weeks´ time and, while the site is in the middle of its Christmas Festival, now is a great time to visit PokerStars. Players unfamiliar with the site and the benefits of playing there should have a browse through my PokerStars review, where you can find out more about the site´s easy-to-clear first deposit bonus and the wonderful opportunities that exist at the world´s largest online poker site.