Only six tournaments wrapped on Saturday in the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). But there were some fascinating storylines, with two players heads up for two titles, and another Brazilian titan notching a second win in a week. Read on…

---

TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Martins takes second win in a week
• Figueiredo misses out on famous single-night double
• Kihara finishes runner up twice in a night

---

BEHIND THE HEADLINES

“theNERDguy” becomes 2020’s first double champ: It was going to be a double whatever happened — and in the end Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins took the honours. To explain: by the time last night’s $1,050 HORSE event got down to its final two, from a 127-entry field, there were only two Brazilians left. One was Murilo “Muka82” Figueiredo, who had already won a WCOOP 5-Card Draw tournament earlier in the night. The other was Martins, who won the WCOOP 2-7 Single Draw on Tuesday. So whoever won this heads-up battle would claim a second title for the week. Although Figueiredo’s might have been the more staggering achievement — it’s almost unheard of to win two WCOOP events on the same day — Martins edged him out. Martins took $31,115 for this one, his third WCOOP title in all (he won the $1,050 PL Omaha Hi/Lo in 2015), and seized a grip on the leader boards too. As for Figueiredo, well, let’s start another paragraph for him…

Second WCOOP for Muka82: The Brazilians have known it for quite a while, but it may be time the rest of the world knows about the brilliant mixed-games specialist Murilo “Muka82” Figueiredo. To name his most recent triumph: Figueiredo last night won the $109 NL 5-Card Draw event in WCOOP, worth $5,146.86, a year after winning the $215 buy-in HORSE event during the 2019 series. But that seems to be only a small part of his achievements. Last night he also finished runner up to Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins in the $1,050 HORSE (see above), and this is a year after he won his first World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, in HORSE, and nine years since he emerged on the scene by winning LAPT Chile. Between then, he also added a TCOOP triumph in PLO Hi/Lo and won a SCOOP Badugi tournament in May. He is a special talent, in all poker variants. There were 267 entries into the event he won last night and it earned Figueiredo another $5,146.86. It’s difficult to win one of these things, and this second title proves it was no fluke last time — especially as the man defeated heads-up was Naoya “nkeyno” Kihara, the Japanese ‘COOP expert. That said…

---

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

---

“salamandryko” beats “nkeyno” to high title: Naoya “nkeyno” Kihara pulled off an unhappy double in last night’s 5-Card Draw when he finished second in both the medium and high buy-in versions of the event. As noted, “Muka82” came out on top in the medium, but Kihara also went heads up in the $1,050 buy-in version, losing out to “salamandryko“, of Peru. This was a small but high-quality field, with the final five in-the-money players also including last year’s WCOOP Player of the Year Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna and the four-time champion Tobias “Senkel92” Leknes. But salamandryko beat them all to claim a first victory and close to $20K in prize money.

Finally a title for “aleksandrs10”: Latvia’s “aleksandrs10” is one of those players whose name appears on series leader boards but it’s not obvious how come. As far as we can tell, he’s never won a ‘COOP title despite being top five in this year’s SCOOP leader board throughout the series. But last night aleksandrs10 broke through, claiming victory in the WCOOP-20-L: $11 HORSE, whose 3,128-entry field was the biggest of the night. It earned him $4,433.53 after a heads-up deal with “etips1” of the Czech Republic. But here’s another crazy thing: aleksandrs10 also came third in the $1K 5-Card Draw, won by salamandryko, so he finished with a first and a third on this very weird night.

The chronology of last night’s madness: Distilling everything above, here’s how it all went down last night, where four players seemingly bossed everything:

4.18am WET: salamandryko beats nkeyno heads up in $1K 5-Card Draw. aleksandrs10 comes third.
4.29am WET: Muka82 beats nkeyno heads up in $109 5-Card Draw
6.51am WET: aleksandrs10 wins $11 HORSE
7.15am WET: theNERDguy beats Muka82 heads up in $1K HORSE

That meant the tallies from the night were:

Muka82 finishes first and second
aleksandrs10 finishes first and third
nkeyno finishes second and second
theNERDguy wins second WCOOP in a week

---

TODAY’S RESULTS

*denotes deal

---

STAT TRACKER

Events completed: 57
Entries so far: 231,085
Prize pools so far: $21,163,591
First prizes so far: $3,198,476.34
Tournaments ongoing: 6
Tournaments starting today: 18

(Note: completed events only)

---

INTERVIEWS! INTERVIEWS! INTERVIEWS!

In case you missed it, this week 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 these interviews:

• 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

---

TWITCH WATCH

If you’ve ever played 5-Card Draw you’ll know how difficult it is to get any kind of decent hand, let alone the four-of-a-kind over four-of-a-kind coolers that usually end in a gunfight in a Wild West saloon. But just sometimes you do get dealt a monster that is pretty much unbeatable. Here’s German streamer “Renemastermix” with the proof:

---

TOP TWEETS

Everyone is going all out on the satellites to book themselves a seat in the big WCOOP tournaments. Here’s “@dachdad” and @ColinCapone on the satellite grind. Are you?

Trying to win a $5200 WCOOP seat for $1 on @PokerStars click the link for the full video https://t.co/tWeqmXfnSn pic.twitter.com/3v5fjWr6AJ

— CollinCapone (@CollinCapone) September 5, 2020

---

LEADER BOARDS

Two wins in a week for Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins is enough to put the brilliant Brazilian atop the overall leader board, with all the other stand-out performers from this opening week also sitting pretty. Here’s how all the leader board levels stand:

Overall

1 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 445 points
2 – aleksandrs10, Latvia, 425
3 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia, 395
4 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak, Russia, 355
5 – Joao “Naza114” Vieira, Netherlands, 340

Prize: Overall – $25,000 plus trophy

High buy-in:

1 – Joao “Naza114” Vieira, Netherlands, 280 points
2 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 250
3 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak, Russia, 180
=4 – Ludovic “ludovi333” Geilich, United Kingdom, 170
=4 – Niklas “Lena900” Astedt, Sweden, 170

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

Medium buy-in:

1 – Murilo “Muka82” Figueiredo, Brazil, 205 points
2 – Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins, Brazil, 175
3 – Chris “ImDaNuts” Oliver, Costa Rica, 155
4 – “Kaggis”, Norway, 150
5 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia, 145

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

Low buy-in:

1 – aleksandrs10, Latvia, 195 points
2 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia, 180
3 – mikelarock, Canada, 175
4 – Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg, United Kingdom, 165
5 – icandodge22, Finland, 150

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

---

COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD

A double for Brazil last night has edged the South Americans back in front of the Russians, with the UK still holding top spot despite also drawing a Saturday blank. Things could change dramatically here with all the big Sunday tournaments wrapping in the next couple of days.

9 – UK
8 – Brazil
7 – Russia
4 – Germany
3 – Canada
2 – Argentina, Norway, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia
1 – Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Romania, Slovenia, Taiwan, Uruguay, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Hungary, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ireland, Malta, Jersey, Serbia, Peru

---

ONGOING TOURNAMENTS

19-L: $5.50 NLHE Afternoon Deep Stack
Entries: 2,343 | Prize pool: $70,021
Players left: 244 | Chip leader: Barraba5 (Peru)

19-M: $55 NLHE Afternoon Deep Stack
Entries: 4,829 | Prize pool: 241,450
Players left: 172 | Chip leader: mertholstar (Brazil)

19-H: $530 NLHE Afternoon Deep Stack
Entries: 642 | Prize pool: 321,000
Players left: 56 | Chip leader: MrBenasP (United Kingdom)

21-L: $55 NLHE 6-Max, Progressive KO
Entries: 10,692 (inc. 3,310 re-entries) | Prize pool: $534,600
Players left: 127 | Chip leader: no1speciaI (Poland)

21-M: $530 NLHE 6-Max, Progressive KO
Entries: 1,424 (inc. 393 re-entries) | Prize pool: $712,000
Players left: 36 | Chip leader: MarToMchat (United Kingdom)

21-H: $5,200 NLHE 6-Max, Progressive KO
Entries: 75 (inc. 33 re-entries) | Prize pool: $540,000
Players left: 14 | Chip leader: apestyles (Canada)

---

STARTING TODAY

It’s a packed Sunday as ever on PokerStars, where we’re kicking off, then Sunday Slamming and then cooling down. All of those are no limit hold’em tournaments — the biggest of which has a $25,000 buy-in and $2.5 million guarantee — but there’s also a 5-Card PLO 6-Max sneaked on to the schedule too.

8.05am ET: WCOOP-23: Sunday Kickoff
Buy-ins: $5.50, $55, $530
Guarantees: $30,000, $200,000, $400,000

10.30am ET: WCOOP-24: NLHE 8-Max, Progressive KO
Buy-ins: $11, $109, $1,050
Guarantees: $100,000, $300,000, $500,000

1.05pm ET: NLHE 8-Max Sunday Slam
Buy-ins: $215, $2,100, $25,000
Guarantees: $1 million, $1 million, $2.5 million

2.05pm ET: 5-Card PLO 6-Max
Buy-ins: $22, $215, $2,100
Guarantees: $40,000, $100,000, $300,000

3.05pm ET: NLHE Freezeout
Buy-ins: $11, $109, $1,050
Guarantees: $50,000, $200,000, $300,000

5.05pm ET: NLHE 8-Max Turbo PKO Sunday Cooldown
Buy-ins: $22, $215, $2,100
Guarantees: $125,000, $300,000, $400,000

---

PREVIOUS ROUND-UPS

DAY 1 | DAY 2 | DAY 3 | DAY 4 | DAY 5 | DAY 6

Back to Top