PokerStars to hold $51,000 buy-in WCOOP event
Negreanu and Mercier already confirmed, "excited to test their skills" against toughest competition online.
In a statement issued to the press earlier today, PokerStars has announced that it will be hosting a $51,000 buy-in event during the 2015 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP).
Set to run on September 20 at 17:30 BST, the 8-max Super High Roller will be the largest buy-in event in the history of online poker.
The previous record was also held by PokerStars and sister site Full Tilt, for the various $25,000 buy-in heads-up events they've staged during previous festivals.
The tournament has a fairly conservative $1,000,000 guarantee - which is hardly surprising given how tiny fields have been in previous high roller events - but looks to be a tentative first step in a potential move to incorporate more of these super nosebleed tournaments into future major online festivals.
Negreanu and Mercier both attending
While the hosts clearly won't be expecting a huge turn out from the public, they will be expecting two of their sponsored stars in Daniel Negreanu and Jason Mercier to be pulling up a seat:
"I think it makes sense that the world's largest poker site is also the host of the largest buy-in online tournament," said Negreanu, fresh off his deep run in the recent World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event.
"I'm excited to test my skills against the best of the best, online."
Mercier, who recently won a third WSOP bracelet and already boasts a combined 6 COOP festival titles, is also relishing the prospect of pushing online poker's boundaries to new heights:
"I'm really excited about playing in the biggest buy-in online tournament ever. It'll be an awesome challenge to go up against such tough competition for the biggest stakes! I can't wait!"
Though we all have to wait a little while yet for WCOOP and this monster tournament to roll around in September, the countdown is over for a certain MicroMillions 11 festival at PokerStars, which kicks off later today.
How many runners will this event get? Let us know in the comments.
