The true greats of the online poker world have always found their rightful home at the tables of World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) — and it’s never been more obvious than last night. A clutch of absolute superstars added to their WCOOP tallies in one of the most star-studded nights of all time…

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TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Five-star Leknes back with another win
• Shakerchi finally breaks WCOOP hoodoo
• More titles for Astedt and Frank
• Martins denied single-series hat-trick

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BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Sensational fifth for Leknes: If you want to win a WCOOP title in one of the lesser-known poker variants, you’re going to have to beat Tobias “Senkel92” Leknes to do so. His sensational streak in mixed-games WCOOP tournaments continued last night when he took down the $11 Badugi 6-Max for his fifth career WCOOP victory, and second of this series. It’s worth noting that Leknes does this at all buy-in levels, and this latest triumph was the second this WCOOP in a “low” designation tournament, having also won in previous years in medium and high. The field was 1,321-entries strong, but Senkel92 would have the favourite from the outset. He duly justified the billing and earned $2,015.43, and now has titles in all draw games: 2-7 Triple Draw, 2-7 Single Draw, 5-Card draw and Badugi. Leknes now joins Dzmitry “Colisea” Urbanovich and Dan “djk123” Kelly as a five-time champ, with only Shaun “shaundeeb” Deeb and Denis “aDrENalin710” Strebkov having more.

Shakerchi off the mark at last! Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi has spent an unhappy three years on our list of players who are overdue a WCOOP victory. As inexplicable as it sounds, the five-time SCOOP winner had never got over the line in WCOOP. Until now. Shakerchi finally broke his duck in the $1,050 buy-in Badugi event last night, coming out on top of a 65-entry field to win $22,850.02. The prize money was small fry compared with what Shakerchi deals with on a daily basis, but the victory will have meant a lot to a player who certainly puts the hours in during the major PokerStars festivals. Dzmitry “Colisea” Urbanovich finished in the money, in seventh, with a huge string of superstars missing out on the cash. But not Shakerchi. Not any more.

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MORE ABOUT WCOOP 2020:
OFFICIAL SITE | SERIES HIGHLIGHTS | SCHEDULE (pdf) |
SATELLITE GUIDE | LEADER BOARDS | RESULTS | ALL BLOG REPORTS

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Lena900 gets number two: Two titans of the PokerStars tables went heads up, in front of the PokerStars Live Twitch viewers, for the title in WCOOP-39-H: $5,200 NLHE PKO, High Roller: Niklas “Lena900” Astedt and Gleb “Ti0373” Tremzin. Those two had outlasted a field of 173 entries and now had to decide who would take the final bounty from the million dollar prize pool. Tremzin already has four WCOOP wins, while Astedt won his only title in 2018, but has occupied the top three of the Pocket Fives world rankings pretty much non-stop for the past few years. On this occasion, everything fell right for Astedt, who managed to join the two-time WCOOP winner’s club and earn himself a payday of $201,054.85, nearly half of which came thanks to the final knockout of Tremzin. Tremzin had to settle for $101,249 from the main prize pool but only $19,648 in bounties. Astedt, by the way, is also the chip leader with 20 players left in the $2,100 buy-in WCOOP-44-H. That resumes overnight.

Let me be Frank with you: There’s no doubt that this WCOOP so far has been one when the established names of the game bared their collective teeth, and another very familiar player took down the high buy-in version of the NLHE/PLO 6-Max. With Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins knocked out in ninth, Christopher “lissi stinkt” Frank became the best-known player at the final table — and duly went on to win the whole thing. Frank has had a series of near misses this year, but finally added another title to a 4-Max success from 2018. He banked $28,440.74 and is now also a multiple WCOOP winner.

Martins’ hat-trick has to wait: WCOOP 2020 very nearly crowned its first triple champion when Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins was down to the final two in the 1,587-entry $55 buy-in 43-M: NLHE/PLO 6-Max. Having picked up two victories in the series’ opening week, Martins looked on course to match the achievements last year of Joao “Naza114” Vieira and Filipe “Zagazaur” Oliveira and pick up a third. Norway’s “SKB1908” had other ideas, however, and managed to do what few others have managed: beat Martins heads up. Martins was forced to settle for $8,405 and continue his hunt for the third title, while SKB1908’s career first earned him or her $12,063.97.

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TODAY’S RESULTS

†inc. bounties
*denotes deal

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STAT TRACKER

Events completed: 126
Entries so far: 494,118
Prize pools so far: $47,186,632
Players ITM: 70,615
First prizes so far: $7,240,014.20
Tournaments ongoing: 6
Tournaments starting today: 18

(Note: completed events only)

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INTERVIEWS! INTERVIEWS! INTERVIEWS!

We’ve been talking with a few WCOOP winners to hear about their tourney triumphs (and perhaps to pick up a few tips for ourselves). Check out our latest interviews from this year’s winners so far:

• Mike “SirWatts” Watson again collecting cashes, final tables
• “Bryn12” drifts through life and WCOOP towards top of leaderboard
• $2K Sunday Slam champ Matas “NoTilit” Cikinas confirms power of the cat avatar
• “va1umart” finds value, pockets nearly $80K for Event #21-M win
• Mario “brandon0903” Mastropietro’s WCOOP win relieves pressures of $400k court case
• That winning feeling carries Tiago “Tayguera” Guimarães to #13-M title
• Tyler “Juicy_J_93” Jardine sends warning to Pot limit Omaha players
• A bountiful $10K Sunday Slam for Dimitar Danchev
• Heads up! Ankush Mandavia wins third title in $530 TKO HU Zoom
• Marksman_M casually streams huge WCOOP win to three Twitch viewers

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TWITCH WATCH

If you needed any more persuading to watch the PokerStars Twitch coverage of WCOOP, this clip should do the trick. Here’s an incredible hand between Christian “WATnlos” Rudolph and Alex “Pwndidi” Theologis, where both flop a monster. But the MVP in this clip is expert analyser Sam Grafton, who takes us into the heads of these two brilliant players and talks through their thought processes:

Don’t forget, there’s also some brilliant content coming from PokerStars’ Twitch ambassadors, who get into some pretty sick spots of their own. This is gross for Spraggy:

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TOP TWEETS

I’ve already hit “translate tweet”, and here’s where Tobias “Senkel92” Leknes points out just how good he is in WCOOP. “WCOOP #5, now have wcoop victories in all draw games! 2-7 triple draw, 2-7 single draw, 5card draw and badugi!”

WCOOP #5, har nå wcoop seier i alle drawgames! 2-7 triple draw, 2-7 single draw, 5card draw og badugi! pic.twitter.com/5zou61v4ev

— Tobias Leknes (@TobiasLeknes) September 13, 2020

“@Care_Teddy92” won a WCOOP side event on Saturday, which is not quite good enough to get him on the official winners’ board. So he got back in the saddle and is making a run of it now in the $22 buy-in NLHE where he sites 23rd of 211 overnight. Looking for someone to root for in that one? He’s your man:

Officially an unofficial #WCOOP champ since yesterday. Looking to change that tomorrow. 🤩 pic.twitter.com/hmlZS1QkPR

— Kevin / Care_Teddy (@Care_Teddy92) September 13, 2020

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LEADER BOARDS

Two wins and a runner up finish is enough to put Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins on top of the overall leader board at this stage, but it’s an incredibly tight race. The metronomic “aleksandrs10” of Latvia and Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak of Russia also have 700 points (at least) and are cashing everything. Spraggy had another in-the-money finish last night, which keeps him challenging for “low” honours.

Overall

1 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 735 points
2 – aleksandrs10, Latvia, 725 points
3 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak, Russia, 700
4 – chininhaltig, Germany, 645
5 – Joao “Naza114” Vieira, Netherlands, 640

Prize: Overall – $25,000 plus trophy

High buy-in:

1 – Joao “Naza114” Vieira, Netherlands, 425 points
2 – Mike “SirWatts” Watson, Canada, 355
3 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 325
4 – Niklas “Lena900” Astedt, Sweden, 305
5 – Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi, UK, 280

Prizes: Winner $12,500; 2nd $10,000; 3rd $7,500

Medium buy-in:

1 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 345
2 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak, Russia, 280
=3 – chininhaltig, Germany, 240
=3 – “Kaggis”, Norway, 240
5 – joaoMathias, Brazil, 235

Prizes: Winner $8,500; 2nd $6,000; 3rd $3,000 (top 15 are rewarded)

Low buy-in:

1 – aleksandrs10, Latvia, 340 points
2 – Ben “Spraggy” Spragg, United Kingdom, 315
=3 – rastafari898, Germany, 305
=3 – Voziyanov15, Russia, 305
5 – Tobias “Senkel92” Leknes, Norway, 305

Winner $5,000; 2nd $3,000; 3rd $2,000 (top 25 are rewarded)

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COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD

The only country to win two titles last night was Norway — and Scandinavia is responsible for the other remarkable statistic from yesterday’s action. Incredibly, Niklas “Lena900” Astedt’s victory in the High Roller was the first success by any Swedish player through the first 100 tournaments this WCOOP. Japan also got on the board for the first time last night.

Latest standings

20 – UK
17 – Russia
15 – Brazil
8 – Germany
6 – Canada, Netherlands
5 – Ukraine, Norway
4 – Austria
3 – Latvia, Hungary, Argentina, Finland
2 – Belarus, Bulgaria, Malta, Romania, Lithuania, Poland
1 – Estonia, Slovenia, Taiwan, Uruguay, Costa Rica Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ireland, Jersey, Serbia, Peru, Luxembourg, Greece, Monaco, Croatia, Sweden and Japan.

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ONGOING TOURNAMENTS

The one to watch tonight will be WCOOP-44-H: $2,100 NLHE, where Niklas “Lena900” Astedt leads an incredibly stacked last 20. It’s truly a who’s who of online poker left, including Manig “swordfish007” Loeser, “Aleks Better”, Alex “Pwndidi” Theologis, Preben “prebz” Stokkan, “XMorphineX”, Stefan “mindgamer” Jedlicka, Mike “SirWatts” Watson, Artem “veeea” Vezhenkov and Gleb “Ti0373” Tremzin.

WCOOP-42-L: $11 NLHE 8-Max, PKO, Afternoon Deep Stack
Entries: 13,809 | Prize pool: $135,328.20
Players left: 214 | Chip leader: rosko58 (United Kingdom)

WCOOP-42-M: $109 NLHE 8-Max, PKO, Afternoon Deep Stack
Entries: 3,539 | Prize pool: $353,900
Players left: 64 | Chip leader: rVdZzZ (Brazil)

WCOOP-43-H: $1,050 NLHE 8-Max, PKO, Afternoon Deep Stack
Entries: 362 | Prize pool: $362,000
Players left: 27 | Chip leader: dujo123 (Canada)

WCOOP-44-L: $22 NLHE
Entries: 8,113 (inc. 3,299 re-entries) | Prize pool: $228,240
Players left: 211 | Chip leader: CheckReissu (Finland)

WCOOP-44-M: $215 NLHE
Entries: 1,930 (inc. 525 re-entries) | Prize pool: $386,000
Players left: 70 | Chip leader: bolonhax (Brazil)

WCOOP-44-H: $2,100 NLHE
Entries: 192 (inc. 56 re-entries) | Prize pool: $400,000
Players left: 20 | Chip leader: Lena900 (Sweden)

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STARTING TODAY

It’s Sunday, which is exciting enough in itself. But a WCOOP Sunday means a spectacular full slate of hold’em tournaments for all buy-ins, with the three levels of the Sunday Slam boasting guarantees of $1 million, $1.5 million and $1 million. That’s a lot of millions. There’s also a No Limit Omaha Hi/Lo event lurking in there, but mostly this is one for the battalion of hold’em fans.

8.05am ET: WCOOP-46: NLHE 8-Max, Sunday Kickoff
Buy-ins: $11, $109, $1,050
Guarantees: $50,000, $200,000, $300,000

10.30am ET: WCOOP-47: $215 NLHE Sunday Warm-Up
Buy-ins: $22, $215, $2,100
Guarantees: $125,000, $400,000, $500,000

1.05pm ET: WCOOP-48: NLHE 8-Max PKO Sunday Slam
Buy-ins: $55, $530, $5,200
Guarantees: $1 million, $1.5 million, $1 million

2.05pm ET: WCOOP-49: NLO8 6-Max, PKO
Buy-ins: $22, $215, $2,100
Guarantees: $50,000, $100,000, $200,000

3.05pm ET: WCOOP-50: NLHE 6-Max
Buy-ins: $11, $109, $1,050
Guarantees: $100,000, $250,000, $500,000

5.05pm ET: WCOOP-51: NLHE 8-Max Turbo PKO Sunday Cooldown
Buy-ins: $5.50, $55, $530
Guarantees: $50,000, $250,000, $400,000

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