We’re into the final stretch in the 2020 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), but there’s still time for a couple more double champions and a full-to-bursting Main Event. Read all about it…

---

TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Nevanlinna claims career fifth; two double champs today
• RaúlGonzalez denies Chidwick in 8-Game
• Main Events play into the money
• Total series prize pools close to $100 million!

---

BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Nevanlinna claims career fifth: When Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna won WCOOP Player of the Series in 2019, he did it right at the death. He had been accumulating points throughout the series, of course, but nipped into top spot in the final week, overhauling Filipe “Zagazaur” Oliveira. Nevanlinna won’t win the overall leader board again this time, but he is again coming to the fore during the late stages of WCOOP and last night won his second title of this series, the fifth of his career. This latest victory was in the $1,050 8-Game over a field of 135 players. Nevanlinna banked $31,642.70, seeing off the challenge of other WCOOP greats such as Michael “merla888” Gathy, who finished third, “nilsef” (fourth) and Benny “RunGodlike” Glaser, who came seventh despite holding the chip lead going into the final. Nevanlinna now moves into top spot in the “medium” buy-in leader board.

Chidwick denied by RaúlGonzalez: The poker player “RaúlGonzalez” is not thought to be the online screen-name of the Spanish soccer star, who also went by Raúl Gonzalez during a glittering sports career. This RaúlGonzalez represents Germany, and is best known as a high-stakes Omaha crusher, taking on and beating some of the very toughest challengers at the cash-game tables. RaúlGonzalez last night demonstrated exactly why he or she is so feared: outlasting the stacked $10,300 8-Game High Roller field to claim a maiden WCOOP title in the hardest event. RaúlGonzalez beat Stephen “stevie444” Chidwick heads up, earning $235,530.76 alongside the title, as the pair had seen off a final that also included Andrew “ClockWyze” Pantling, Mike “goleafsgoeh” Leah and Joao “Naza114” Vieira. RaúlGonzalez adds this title to a victory in SCOOP from 2016.

---

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

---

Ragazzo becomes 17th double champ: Last weekend, Ricardo “RRagazzo” Ragazzo was part of the Brazilian clean sweep of the Sunday Cooldowns, winning the $530 buy-in version of the PKO Turbo for a first WCOOP title. One week later, Ragazzo came back for more. He is now a double WCOOP winner, winning WCOOP-70-H: $530 NLHE for $80,082.59. After seeing off a field of 972-entries, Ragazzo denied Hungary’s “twirlpro” a first success, winning the heads-up battle between the pair. Ragazzo’s name brings the list of double champions during this WCOOP to a remarkable 17. See full list below.

“utreg” Warms Up with debut win: The PokerStars Live Twitch coverage focused its attention on the $1,050 Sunday Warm-Up final table last night, watching the Netherlands’ “utreg” claim a first WCOOP title. That was worth a combined $165,433.38, including $84,076.10 in bounty payments. “utreg” has previously won a SCOOP tournament, picking up a near $200K score in 2018 for victory in a $2K event. The Dutch player leaves his or her best performances for the biggest tournaments.

$1.5m up top in Main Event: Registration closed on the Main Events yesterday, with the $5,200 High buy-in version welcoming 1,977 players, including 541 re-entries. Its guaranteed $10 million prize pool means a first prize of a whisker under $1.5 million. The medium level, which is being played for the first time this year, obliterated its guarantee as it accumulated 7,105 entries. That put $3.55 million in the prize pool, and $505K up top. Meanwhile the winner of the $55 buy-in event is looking at a first prize of $186,841 — the lion’s share of a $1.933 million prize pool, after that event attracted 38,660 entries.

PLO Main Events prepare for finals: The PLO Main Events are played over three days, which means today they will crown a champion. The $10K buy-in version is, as you’d imagine, heaving with top pros as Ola “Odd_Oddsen” Amundsgård leads the way, looking for a second career title. Hot on his heels is Andras “probirs” Nemeth, who started this series without a WCOOP victory to his name, but now has two and is seeking a third. The Medium buy-in event also has an exceptional top two: Ludovic “ludovi333” Geilich heads Kahle “ROFLshove” Burns, with 18 left. The winner of the high buy-in is in line for more than $283K, while the medium pays its winner $134K.

---

THOSE DOUBLE CHAMPIONS IN FULL

Just in case anyone has lost count, here’s the full list of 17 double champions from WCOOP 2020 so far:

Adrian “Amadi_017” Mateos, Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna, Dante “dantegoyaF” Goya, “deivid29”, Noah “Exclusive” Boeken, Niklas “Lena900” Astedt, Markku “markovitsus” Koplimaa, Murilo “Muka82” Figuiredo, Viktor “papan9_p$” Ustimov, Andras “probirs” Nemeth, Rafael “pycadasgalax” Furlanetto, Ricardo “RRagazzo” Ragazzo, Tobias “Senkel92” Leknes, “The_Truht”, Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, “Wall131TCI-I”, Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin. Of those, Leknes and Martins have three titles apiece.

---

TODAY’S RESULTS

†inc. bounties
*denotes deal

---

STAT TRACKER

A special note about today’s Stat Tracker: the number of entries and prize pools now include the 12 events that are still ongoing. Registration is closed, so we know for certain how many players are involved. It means that what you see below is the total for all events across WCOOP — and what glorious reading it makes.

Including all the players who entered WCOOP-01, the Phased tournament, at the first phase, we have seen more than 1.1 million entries in WCOOP. The total series prize pools is very close to $10 million.

Events completed: 213
Total series entries: 1,119,186
Total series prize pools: $99,780,230
Players ITM: 158,851
First prizes so far*: $11,431,535.75
Tournaments ongoing: 12

(*Does not include ongoing events)

---

TWITCH WATCH

The PokerStars Twitch channel watched some of the bubble play in the $5,200 Main Event, including this remarkable bubble-up by “NameAceRank1” who had the mighty seven-deuce, facing elimination on the bubble of a $10m guaranteed tournament. And guess what…

Fintan “easywithaces” Hand was knocked out of the $5K Main Event in 476th position, but the poker gods at least laid on some drama as he hit the rail.

---

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:

• Fabiano ‘Kovalski1’ Kovalski runs pure for third title
• Career high for Vitor ‘Vitorbrasil’ Moreira with gritty Event #48-M win
• 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
• ‘Bryn12’ drifts through life and WCOOP towards top of leaderboard
• ‘va1umart’ finds value, pockets nearly $80K for Event #21-M win
• Mario ‘brandon0903’ Mastropietro’s WCOOP win relieves pressures of $400k court case
• $2K Sunday Slam champ Matas ‘NoTilit’ Cikinas confirms power of the cat avatar
• Mike ‘SirWatts’ Watson again collecting cashes, final tables
• High stakes crusher Preben ‘prebz’ Stokkan continues to progress and KO
• Brazilian Brunno ‘botteonpoker’ Botteon in the winner’s circle again
• Winner Gavin ‘gavz101’ Cochrane offers advice on dealing with downswings after ‘turbulent but fun’ 10 years
• Three WCOOP 2020 titles for the unstoppable Yuri ‘theNERDguy’ Martins: ‘Every day I learn something new’
• Ruan ‘jokkers_br’ Bispo punches way to big PKO win, turns $55 into $54K
• Persistence pays off for Kevin ‘Care_Teddy’ van Veen
• Matheus ‘MathCamillo1’ Camillo rides out the storm, wins #15-M

---

LEADER BOARDS



Joao “Naza114” Vieira into pole position for “high” leader board win

Although nothing is ever over until all the admin is complete, it now seems certain that Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin will be the 2020 WCOOP Overall Player of the Series.

As far as we can see, none of the leading challengers are still involved in any ongoing events, meaning they won’t be able to overhaul the Russian. Lyapin will be confirmed as soon as everything is complete.

Meanwhile, Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna may have sneaked in and won the Medium buy-in leader board. His second title put him ahead of Lyapin in that one. The High, meanwhile, looks like it’s now heading to Joao “Naza114” Vieira. He hasn’t won a title, much like Mike “SirWatts” Watson, who led the leader board until recently. But those two have made deep runs repeatedly. Here are the current standings:

Overall

1 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia, 1,200 points
2 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 1,160
3 – aleksandrs10, Latvia, 1,140
=4 – Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna, Finland, 1,000
=4 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak, Russia, 965

Prize: Overall – $25,000 plus trophy

High buy-in:

1 – Joao “Naza114” Vieira, Netherlands, 610 points
2 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 595
3 – Mike “SirWatts” Watson, Canada, 590
4 – Niklas “Lena900” Astedt, Sweden, 585
5 – Talal “Raidalot” Shakerchi, 445

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

Medium buy-in:

1 – Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna, Finland, 495 points
2 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia, 490
3 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 470
4 – Murilo “Muka82” Figueiredo, Brazil, 425
=5 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak, Russia, 400
=5 – chininhaltig, Germany, 400

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

Low buy-in:

1 – aleksandrs10, Latvia, 565 points
2 – B–rabbit444, Norway, 540
3 – Voziyanov15, Russia, 480
4 – icandodge22, Finland, 470
5 – rastafari898, Germany, 460

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

---

COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD

Two more titles for Brazil on a night where both the UK and Russia drew a blank gives the South Americans a three-tournament cushion at the top of the countries leader board. Twelve tournaments are yet to be completed, so it’s not a done deal. But with Brazilians’ fine performances in low buy-in events particularly, the Samba Boys are now very strong favourites.

Latest standings

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

---

ONGOING TOURNAMENTS

A flurry of entries and re-entries just before registration closed in all the Main Events swelled their fields and prize pools even more. There are still two days of play left in the hold’em Main Events, with the PLO versions concluding tonight. The player to look out for today is Norway’s “jokkee_apart”, who sits in second overall in the $5K Hold’em Main Event, and is 10th of 18 remaining in the $1K PLO Main Event.

WCOOP-72-L: $55 NLHE 8-Max, NLHE Main Event
Entries: 38,660 (inc. 12,252 re-entries) | Prize pool: $1,933,000
Players left: 158 | Chip leader: benton24 (Hungary)

WCOOP-72-M: $530 NLHE 8-Max, NLHE Main Event
Entries: 7,105 (inc. 2,284 re-entries) | Prize pool: $3,552,500
Players left: 80 | Chip leader: Pentakilator (Poland)

WCOOP-72-H: $5,200 NLHE 8-Max, NLHE Main Event
Entries: 1,977 (inc. 541 re-entries) | Prize pool: $10 million
Players left: 71 | Chip leader: rzr1st (Russia)

WCOOP-73-L: $109 PLO 6-Max, PLO Main Event
Entries: 3,066 (inc. 1,146 re-entries) | Prize pool: $306,600
Players left: 18 | Chip leader: MLWing (New Zealand)

WCOOP-73-M: $1,050 PLO 6-Max, PLO Main Event
Entries: 788 (inc. 333 re-entries) | Prize pool: $788,000
Players left: 18 | Chip leader: Ludovic “ludovi333” Geilich (United Kingdom)

WCOOP-73-H: $10,300 PLO 6-Max, PLO Main Event
Entries: 135 (inc. 50 re-entries) | Prize pool: $1.35 million
Players left: 7 | Chip leader: Odd_Oddsen (Norway)

WCOOP-75-L: $11 NLHE 8-Max, PKO, Series Saver
Entries: 28,031 (inc. 10,137 re-entries) | Prize pool: $274,703.80
Players left: 406 | Chip leader: sacha_cas (Russia)

WCOOP-75-M: $109 NLHE 8-Max, PKO, Series Saver
Entries: 9,838 (inc. 3,000 re-entries) | Prize pool: $983,800
Players left: 427 | Chip leader: Xading (Russia)

WCOOP-75-H: $1,050 NLHE 8-Max, PKO, Series Saver
Entries: 1,490 (inc. 407 re-entries) | Prize pool: $1.49 million
Players left: 135 | Chip leader: xhunterfish (Luxembourg)

WCOOP-01-L: $2.20 NLHE Phased
Entries: 123,400 (all phases) | Prize pool: $250,000
Players left: 36 | Chip leader: RidzLS (Poland)

WCOOP-01-M: $22 NLHE Phased
Entries: 10,766 (all phases) | Prize pool: $2,153,200
Players left: 27 | Chip leader: Kot_Spartac (Russia)

WCOOP-01-H: $215 NLHE Phased
Entries: 50,659 (all phases) | Prize pool: $1,013,180
Players left: 36 | Chip leader: NICasinos (United Kingdom)

---

STARTING TODAY

If you’re just tuning in, I’m afraid you’ve missed it. No tournaments start today. Start preparing for next year.

---

PREVIOUS ROUND-UPS

DAY 1 | DAY 2 | DAY 3 | DAY 4 | DAY 5 | DAY 6 | DAY 7 | DAY 8 | DAY 9 | DAY 10 | DAY 11 | DAY 12 | DAY 13 | DAY 14 | DAY 15 | DAY 16 | DAY 17 | DAY 18 | DAY 19 | DAY 20 | DAY 21 | DAY 22

Back to Top