PokerStars is hosting the 2021 World College Poker (WCP) Main Event Championship exclusively on PokerStars.net for college students all over the world. The WCP is free to enter with the opening round beginning on July 24 at PokerStars.net with college and university students from all over the planet competing in six different regions. The winner gets a travel package to a European Poker Tour event and second place earns a long weekend of poker training from poker pros including Matt Berkey.

Get ready to put down the beer bong and bust some 20-something donks on the World College Poker (WCP) Championship! This summer exclusively at PokerStars.net, any online poker player 18-years old and older can qualify for the 2021 World College Poker (WCP) Championship Main Event. So long as you have a valid student ID for any sort of secondary school (yes... any vocational school counts like Apex Tech and Astral Yoga College), you have a chance to playing against the top poker students at World College Poker. This is a global event with students separated by six different regions.
There will be four rounds of the WCP with the first round starting July 24 and the final table to be played out at the end of the summer. The date is TBA, but it will be announced shortly. The suits at the red spade would love for the final table to be played out and migrated to a live setting, but there's a bunch of red tape and COVID health protocols to figure out. The backup plan is to play the final table out online.
WCP Round One starts July 24 and the tournament round will conclude when the field gets narrowed down to the final 50 players in each of the six regions.
WCP Round Two begins on July 31 with all qualifiers (300) playing down to the final 45 players.
WCP Round Three starts August 7 and those 45 players will play down to a final table of six players.
WCP Round Four aka the WCP Final Table has a TBA start date but the final six will slug it it out to determine the WCP Main Event Champion. The final table will either be live (if they can pull it off) or online.
The winner earns a European Poker Tour prize package because most card rooms in Europe allow gamblers that are 18-years and older. Oh, and there's a coveted PokerStars trophy at stake as well. Plus bragging rights. Any kid that ships the WPT Championship will be able to brag about it on social media.
The final table runner-up gets a free trip to Las Vegas for a three-day training session with Matt Berkey from Solve for Why Academy, plus a single-hour training sesh by Jon Little.
Everyone final table players will get a specialized gaming chair, which is pretty dope. They also get a free year subscription to Matt Berkey's Solve for Why Academy.
There will be other prizes for the Top 20 players like schwag, tchotchkes, and knickknacks. The WCP will also have an award and prize for the Last Woman Standing.
Registration is now open at PokerStars.net. Check it out if you're still in college for a free trip to Europe to play against robotic German wunderkinds, nonplussed Frenchies, American exiles in hoodies, crazy Scandis of all ages, stoic Brits, fun-going Irish, cool Dutchies, and wild-eyed gamboooling Eastern Europeans.
Some of my favorite times playing poker occurred in college. I spent many late nights playing wild-card games and other forms of stud poker with friends. I even got to fund a couple fun road trips to follow the Grateful Dead with poker winnings from late-night games in Atlanta in the early 1990s. I'd love to go back in time and play again with old friends.
Many of the top American pros right now cut their teeth in their dorm rooms in the 2000s when they were college students at the start of the online poker boom. Online poker game them a chance to crush the learning curve and learn the intricacies of the game at an accelerated pace. Online poker gave smart people that didn't feel like joining the rat race a chance to thrive and succeed and that includes the likes of Phil Galfond.
College students all over the world now have a chance to play against some of the top young players on a global stage with the WCP.