More than $5 Million Awarded Across USACOOP Series

PokerStars Championship of Online Poker (COOP), one of the most recognizable poker series names in the online game, recently held another trio of COOPs session on the collective PokerStars USA markets.

Across the three markets, $5.27 million in prizes were awarded over the three two-week series.

All three beat their guarantees this time around, with $4.5 million guaranteed in total. The biggest series, unsurprisingly, came from the biggest market, Pennsylvania, which guaranteed $2 million in prizes and ended up about 19% above that in actual prize pools.

Michigan and New Jersey were also solid series. PokerStars MI guaranteed $1.5 million and built a pile of nearly $1.8 million. Meanwhile, the smallest market, New Jersey, promised $1 million and collected $1.1 million in prizes.

PACOOP

The Pennsylvania leg of the Championship of Online Poker (PACOOP) was unsurprisingly the biggest event of the three. PA is the biggest US market, so it stands to reason it had the biggest guarantee and the largest amount of money collected.

With $2 million guaranteed, players came out in droves to try to get a piece of those prizes, and the resulting turnout bumped the prizes significantly over the guarantee. In the end, more than 25,000 entries across the series generated $2.38 million in total prizes, which was about 19% above the promised prizes.

The feature event, as always, was the Main Event, a two-day game on the final days of the series. This year, it was a $300 entry that ended up with a series high $238,000 in the prize pool. That meant the winner took home a cool $36,400 for a couple days work.

MICOOP

Michigan is the newest US market in the PokerStars stable, with the first games being laid in January this year. That didn’t stop the players from coming out for the second running of MICOOP since opening, with more than 18,000 entries across the 68 events.

That meant they were playing for almost $1.8 million in prizes, which matched the overage in PA at about 19% above the $1.5 million guarantee. The big game at the end of the series, the Main Event, built a prize pool of $176,960, which put just over $31,000 up top for the win.

This latest edition of the MICOOP was slightly smaller than the first version earlier this year. When PokerStars MI opened, the first series they put on was MICOOP, somewhat out of schedule.

Usually, the COOP series run in the fall, but with PokerStars MI freshly started in January, it ran in February this year in Michigan.

That series ended up handing out an astonishing $2.2 million in prizes in February, so this version was down a bit from that, but still well above guarantees.

NJCOOP

New Jersey is the smallest US market for PokerStars, so it made sense that the guarantee of $1 million was lower than the other state series. The series as a whole drew a crowd of about 10,600 entries, which put the total collected prizes at just over $1.1 million.

Most games in the market broke their guarantees, but one of the ones that missed was the $300 Main Event. With 334 entries, they didn’t miss by much, but ended up playing for $100,000 total, with $18,660 up top for the winner.

Overall, it looks like a big success for PokerStars in the US market. With guarantees broken in every market, the future for regulated US poker looks good for the PA and MI market leader.

Additionally, it is worth noting that with $5.27 million collected across the three markets, if shared liquidity were allowed in the US, a similar USACOOP series that combined the three markets could be huge.

With separate player pools collecting more than $5 million, a combined series might approach or surpass the $6 million mark. Even with the segregated markets, PokerStars seems to be doing well in the US regulated poker space.