It’s been a huge month for online tournament players, but as November came to a close so too did the PokerStars Regional Championships of Online Poker. Following closely on the heals of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series, the PokerStars events gave tournament players little time to recover, but offered substantial overlays and otherwise awesome tournaments that were too good to resist. The USA COOP was the most exciting of these regional series, and its two-day main event came to a close in the early hours of this morning, with ‘trainwrecks’ taking down the title.
The PokerStars Regional Championships of Online Poker was announced this year as a brand new series of tournaments. More accurately it could probably be described as a series of series of tournaments, as there were a number of unique COOPs, with registration being open only to players in the same area. The USA COOP was, as the name suggests, the Championship of Online Poker that was available to US players. The tournament series was certainly a success for players, but given the number of overlays in the events we may not be seeing this series anytime again in the near future.
The Main Event was by no means exempt from the theme of overlays, and the 1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool had a shortfall of exactly $175,000. Those of you who are far too quick on their maths will have worked out that this means 1650 entrants registered for the $500+$30 event, either outright or via one of the many satellite tournaments Stars had running. The tournament was deep-stacked and a two-day event, which meant slow blind increases and a lot of room for skillful play to prevail.
It was a marathon event, coming to a close some 34 hours after it started, which certainly must have taken a toll on the players involved, even with the break in between days. The final three left from the field were trainwrecks, JohnFR and dreedog, and understandably after a long uphill battle the three decided to cut their risks and agree on a chop. A certain portion of the prize pool had to be left aside and the three were forced to resume play and battle it out until a final winner was left. The chop ensured that each player walked away with six figures. In the end it was trainwrecks who was left standing, and in addition to the USA COOP Main Event title, he receive $140,000 for his troubles.
The official final table results are as follows:
1. trainwrecks – $140,743.43
2. JohnFR – $108,294.06
3. dreedog – $125,012.51
4. TheTaker – $67,000.00
5. gboro780 – $47,500.00
6. ChAtBan – $37,500.00
7. schnizeltoe – $27,500.00
8. Baeras – $17,000.00
9. 10lsTheYear – $10,000.00