Winning Wisdom

At only 27 years old, Gavin Griffin already holds one of the most impressive collections of poker's most prestigious titles: World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour, and World Poker Tour championships.

Now, Card Player is giving its readers a chance to send questions directly to the poker prodigy.

Poker fans can send Griffin their questions to [email protected]. The questions can be about anything from poker strategy to his opinions on certain aspects of poker or his life as a poker pro traveling the circuit. The best questions will be answered by Griffin and published in Card Player. If your question makes it into print, we'll send you a free Card Player T-shirt.

An Impressive WCOOP

Continuing on the theme of the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker, I'm going to discuss some of the more impressive things that happened at this year's tournament series.

Showing that "live pros" can be successful in online tournaments, Team PokerStars Pro had a great series, cashing for a total of $1,543,286. I personally had three cashes, including a fourth-place finish in the heads-up tournament (where I lost to fellow Team PokerStars Pro "ElkY") for a little more than $160,000. Chris Moneymaker made two final tables, Vanessa Rousso made one, and Andre Akkari finished second in the H.O.R.S.E. tournament. The Team PokerStars Pro who had the best WCOOP, though, was the aforementioned ElkY (Bertrand Grospellier). He finished second in the $25,000 heads-up tournament, fifth in the no-limit hold'em triple shootout, and 15th in the $500 six-max no-limit hold'em rebuy event. He wrapped it all up with a 21st-place finish in the main event. He ended up cashing for a total of about $407,000, an impressive few weeks for the European superstar who won PokerStars' flagship event this year, the PokerStars Carribean Adventure, for an amazing $2 million.

Some other individuals not on the team had strong showings during the WCOOP. "TheDonator" cashed 10 times out of 33 events, an incredibly impressive feat, and "Mary 717" won the six-max pot-limit Omaha event and finished fifth in the $1,000 no-limit hold'em event. Some other well-known Internet players like "Randers," "Andy McLEOD," "stevesbets," "pikappraider," and the incomparable "shaundeeb" also took down bracelets.

The most impressive number of the series is this one, though: $39,958,000. That is the total prize pool of all of the 33 events put together. That ranks sixth all time in total prize pools for a tournaments series. The only tournaments to have bigger overall prize pools in the history of poker are the World Series of Poker for the last five years. It's such an amazing number and incredibly impressive when you consider that only seven of the 33 events had a buy-in of $1,000 or more. Congratulations to PokerStars and all of the 22,783 unique players who participated. The WCOOP had 119 different countries represented. Poker is truly becoming a worldwide game, and much of that is thanks to the online sites. The UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) may have been bad for online poker in the USA, but it hasn't deterred a worldwide poker boom of epic proportions.

Finally, the most impressive thing as far as I'm concerned was the willingness of the management at PokerStars to listen to their player base. On June 2 of this year, Bryan from PokerStars posted the tentative schedule for this year's WCOOP. Over the course of the next 18 days, he participated in a discussion about ways to improve the schedule, the structures, and so on. The final schedule was noticeably different, and it's amazing that a huge site like PokerStars would not only listen to its players, but would openly seek their opinions. This has been a constant on the site since its inception. Management personnel have always tried to satisfy their players in any way they possibly could, and this year's WCOOP was no exception. At the end of the series, while in London, PokerStars management had a meeting with all of Team Pro members who were in attendance for EPT London. They asked us what we thought of the tournaments, how we would change them if we could, and what the other players told us they would like to see changed. This attitude will keep PokerStars at the cutting edge of online poker, especially tournaments.

So, to wrap up my ideas on the WCOOP, let me just say that I had a great time playing, commentating, and watching the events. Congratulations to all of the people who had successful tournaments, especially "Docholatchya," "shaundeeb," "liberace," "luvgamble," and the champion of the main event, "ckinusc." Condolences to those who didn't have a great series, you can always get 'em next year. See you all then!

Gavin Griffin is a member of Team PokerStars. Visit his website at www.gavingriffin.net.