The PokerStars.com World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) will come back on September 3^rd, 2009 for its eighth straight year. The online tournament series will feature a total of 45 events running for 18 days starting on September 3^rd with the $215 buy-in NL Hold’em tournament and closing on September 20^th with the two day, $10k guaranteed NL Hold’em Main Event.

The series will cover a wide range of poker variants including Hold’em, Omaha, Stud, Razz, HORSE and 2-7 Draw, and offer $40 million in guaranteed prize pools, making it the biggest online poker tournament series ever offered by a poker site. Last year a total of 22,873 unique players from 119 countries competed in the 33 event tournament series, which awarded a grand total of $39,958,000 in prize money.

“There are hundreds of exciting tournaments all year round but nothing compares to the PokerStars.com WCOOP – it’s the ‘must play’ event of the year for any poker player. Last year over 20,000 players came together from across the world to compete in the largest ever online poker event - for their chance to become a World Champion.” said Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu.

Last year members of the Team Poker Stars Pro won a combined total of over $1.5 million, Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier won $407,285 with cashes in the NL Hold’em Triple Shootout, 6-max Re-buy events, Main Event and a second place finish in the NL Hold’em High Roller - Gavin Griffin came fourth and Vanessa Rousso fifth in the same event. Chris Moneymaker made two final tables, in the High-Roller NL Hold’em and the PL Omaha [1R1A], while André Akkari was also on form with a second place finish in the $10,300 HORSE Event for $200,000.

"The WCOOP is my favorite event - anyone can play at anytime, anywhere, with tournaments running throughout the day. For millions of players, it’s the ultimate poker championship and everyone has the chance to become a World Champion!” said Team PokerStars Pro and runner up in the 2007 WCOOP Main Event, Vanessa ‘LadyMaverick’ Rousso.

Players can qualify for WCOOP events through any of the satellites available on Pokerstars and starting for as little as $1. For satellite information and updates on this years’ World Championship of Online Poker please visit Pokerstars.com.