The culmination of 33 events in this year’s PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker came to an end on Monday evening, as the $5,200 Main Event finally concluded after two days of play. 2,185 entrants ponied up the hefty buyin in hopes of not just taking home the coveted WCOOP bracelet, but also the $1.7 million+ first-place prize!  The who’s who of poker players showed up for this tournament, with many members of Team PokerStars hoping to make one more deep run.

Day 1 play ended with 2,125 players being eliminated after more than 12 hours of play.  Considering the fields in today’s live poker circuit, it would normally have taken several days for a figure like that to be shaved down to that amount!  The final 60 players would prep for Day 2 on Monday afternoon, with ElkY, Charder30, AJKHoosier1, and Daut44 among the final entrants hoping to lay their claim to the final table.

The final 5 tables would start play at a pace that I had never really witnessed at a tournament of this magnitude.  Reckless abandonment and absolute aggressiveness was the signature style of the players during the first hour of the second day.  After just 60 minutes, almost half of the remaining field was already on the rail!  Shortly thereafter, WCOOP phenom ElkY busted in 21st, with tournament superstar Charder30 going out just shy of the bubble in 11th place.  FluffDog87 would have the unfortunate moniker of “bubble boy” tagged to his name on this day, going out in a very unfortunate 10th place.

With the final table set, a player by the name of Liberace held the chip lead with about 13 million in front of him, followed by Markush13 with 11 million or so.  Once the cards were dealt at the final table, play once again was ignited at a very sick pace.  Eliminations were coming on the first couple hands of play, and before anyone knew it, there were already just 5 players remaining after just a short period of time had elapsed.  The high blinds costed a lot of the short stacks to go bust early, and Liberace continued to hold on to his chip lead heading into short-handed play.

As 5-handed play hit, a deal was talked about and negotiated for what seemed like an eternity.  With this much money on the line though it really wasn’t surprising to see what kind of numbers were being thrown around.  However, in the end, they all got a deal struck based on chip count, with Liberace not having to give up a huge edge on the large stack he had amassed.  As play continued, support congratulated the players and told them they were still playing for the bracelet and the extra $200K that was left in the middle for the eventual winner.

To make a long story short, my personal favorite AJKHoosier1 ended up grinding his way to a 3rd place finish, as he just never got enough steam to roll past the chip leaders at the time.  Heads up play got underway with Zachary “ckingusc” King being slightly down 1.5 to 1 in chips against Liberace.  However, a higher pair on the turn - which would eventually turn into a flush on the river - gave a huge 40 million chip pot and the chip lead back ckingusc.  

The final hand saw both players get all of their remaining stacks into the middle pre-flop.  King turned over A 8 while Liberace turned up K J.  Both of these players would hit top pair on the flop, but it would be King’s Aces holding up against bricked-out turn and river.  Zach would take home over a million dollars for his 1st place score, while Liberace’s efforts were awarded with a $1.3 million dollar payday as well - which was the amount he locked up during the 5-handed chip chop when he held his sizable lead.

Here are the final payouts:

1. ckingusc $1,265,432 
2. liberace $1,375,249
3. AJKHoosier1 $782,542
4. Markush13 $961,718
5. ShoesRDurrty $801,153
6. Sumpas $415,150
7. klslcz $305,900
8. BOLLPOKER $196,650
9. kovi99 $121,267

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