All the latest from the tables of the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) on PokerStars, where a perennial Player of the Series contender laid down a marker…

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TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Leonard enjoys spectacular day
• Kihara claims third career win
• Massive Sunday events end in massive winners
• Lex and Rolle big stacks in $2K

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BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Three up for Leonard on incredible day: The brilliant British grinder Patrick “pads1161” Leonard is among the best online tournament players in the world, and he inevitably rises to the occasion when the major series get started on PokerStars. Leonard is on the board early for WCOOP 2021: last night he won the $5,200 PKO High Roller, banking $121,328, including bounties, having put on a superlative show for the thousands watching live. Not only was this tournament streamed on the PokerStars Twitch and YouTube channels, but Leonard is documenting his WCOOP in a daily vlog on his personal Instagram. Leonard’s victory was the third of his career in WCOOP, adding to titles he won in 2015 and 2016, but it doesn’t end there. Leonard came sixth in the $2K HORSE, is sitting fifth of 163 left in the $109 Mini Super Tuesday, and is third of six left in the $1,050 2-7 Single Draw. He has real prospects of back-to-back titles on Wednesday night.

Kihara denies Leknes to make it three: The $2K HORSE final table was fittingly star studded: a high buy-in, multi-variant affair is always going to attract the very best all-round players. Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi led overnight, with Tobias “Senkel92” Leknes close behind, the latter aiming for a remarkable seventh career WCOOP title. But both of those stars were denied by the unassuming, but no less brilliant, Naoya “nkeyno” Kihara of Japan, who ended up claiming his third career WCOOP success. Kihara, who spent a few years on Team PokerStars, is by some measure Japan’s most successful tournament player, and his three WCOOP victories represent half of all titles won by the country. This one came with a payout of $37,000, alongside the trophy. Shakerchi was fifth and Leknes did something he doesn’t do very often: he lost heads-up.

A very special Sunday Million for hennie-khb: The first Sunday Million Special Edition of WCOOP 2021 was particularly special: it had a buy-in of only $55 but the guarantee was exactly the same as ever. That meant $55 was all it took to give players the chance to earn a slice of a $1 million prize pool. Players duly responded, with the tournament racking up 21,885 entries (including 7,589 re-entries) and building a prize pool of closer to $1.1 million. It took three days to find a champion, but in the end it came down to a heads-up duel between “hennie-khb” of the Netherlands and Brazil’s Stere0Love. The pair decided to do a deal, leaving an additional $10,000 for the eventual champion, and it was the chip-leader at the time, hennie-khb, who went all the way. The Dutch player won $103,154 after the deal and the win, with Stere0Love earning $89,709.52. Even the knowledge that hennie-khb had four bullets, so was in for $220, barely diminishes this brilliant return.

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MORE ABOUT WCOOP:
SCHEDULE & RESULTS | SATELLITE GUIDE | SERIES HIGHLIGHTS
RESULTS 2002-2020 | 20 YEARS OF WCOOP | YEAR-BY-YEAR | MULTIPLE CHAMPIONS
OFFICIAL WCOOP PAGE | ALL BLOG REPORTS | DOWNLOAD AND PLAY!

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Austrian claims biggest prize so far: WCOOP 2021 has already seen two tournaments with buy-ins of $5,200, but the biggest prize pool so was to be found in a tournament costing one tenth of that to enter. The $530 buy-in WCOOP-04-M attracted 3,213 entries when it started on Sunday, and three days later it ended with Austria’s “Soul0faSwan” banking the largest slice of a $1.6 million prize pool. Soul0faSwan found themselves heads up against Ukraine’s “Naked:D” and the pair arranged an even chop, leaving $15,000 on the side for the winner. The final duel went to the Austrian, giving them $205,844, while Naked:D earned $190,844. Soul0faSwan, who has no known major results prior to this one, is now the biggest money-earner of WCOOP so far.

Ambassadors and Lyapin pwned by Impawned: The $530 buy-in WCOOP-08-M began its second day with high hopes for Team PokerStars, with Fintan Hand, Sam Grafton and Lex Veldhuis all well placed. As it turned out, they perished in 74th, 56th and 26th, leaving us with a final table where the main attraction was the reigning Player of the Series Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin. For once, even the brilliant Russian couldn’t take this one all the way, and Lyapin went out in seventh. That cleared the way for “Impawned” to take the title and trophy, which came with a combined payout of $101,323 (including bounties). Impawned is from Moldova, and becomes only the third player from the country to win during WCOOP.

Seven year wait ends with second success: As you may have read, WCOOP is currently in its 20th year, and many of its players have been joining in for a very long time. Take “andresds“, of Argentina, for instance, who first won a WCOOP title in 2014. Seven years later, andresds is still at the grind and last night won a second WCOOP tournament, beating a field of 427 in the $1,050 WCOOP-10-H freezeout. With Fintan “easywithaces” Hand bubbling the final table, and Kenny “SpaceyFCB” Hallaert finishing in eighth, none could deny andresds securing Argentina’s first win of this series, and $66,169, including bounties, for his bankroll.

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TODAY’S RESULTS

*denotes deal
†inc. bounties

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STAT TRACKER

Thirty-three tournaments are in the books, and we’re already close to $13 million in prize pools for this series. They just keep coming, with 15 more starting today.

Tournaments completed: 33
Entries: 152,847 (inc. 34,520 re-entries)
Prize pools: $12,996,044
First-place prizes: $1,774,300 (inc. $413,400 in bounties)
Tournaments ongoing: 9
Tournaments starting today: 15

Stats refer to completed tournaments only

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STATES OF PLAY

Plenty to keep your eye on tonight, with the nine paused tournaments playing to a conclusion. Highlights include:

• Lex Veldhuis is already enjoying a very successful WCOOP, and it could get much, much better on Wednesday night. Veldhuis is fourth of 12 remaining in WCOOP-16-H, a $2,100 7-Max PKO event. His PokerStars colleague Ben “bencb789” Rolle is also still in, ninth in chips, with Carlos “Carster” Chadha leading. Damian “pampa27” Salas is also involved still. The reigning WSOP Main Event champ is third.

• As noted above, Patrick “pads1161” Leonard is a player to watch again today. He has interests in multiple tournaments, and will almost certainly fire up to play the rest of the schedule too.

• The $10K High Roller paused with nine players left and the field is typically stacked. Alexandros “mexican222” Kolonias is out in front, with Alexandros “Pwndidi” Theologis in second and Pedro “PaDiLhA SP” Padilha in third. When you note that Teun “tinoemulder” Mulder is eighth, it’s clear that nobody is out of this yet.

• The biggest prize pool being contested tonight is in the Super Tuesday Special Edition, where 81 of 1,071 entries remain. Each entry cost $1,050, so there’s $1.071 million in the prize pool. Audrius “Stakelis24” Stakelis, of Lithuania, leads the way, but familiar faces such as Jerry “Perrymejsen” Odeen, Bruno “great dant” Volkmann, Joao “Naza114” Vieira and Mike “SirWatts” Watson are not far behind.

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TWITCH WATCH

Our first two Twitch clip selections during this WCOOP have showed members of Team PokerStars putting some horrible beats on unsuspecting opponents. It’s time to redress the balance. Sorry Lex…

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TWEET OF THE DAY

Patrick Leonard is always gracious in victory — and one suspects he hasn’t event really got started for WCOOP 2021 yet.

Just won the $5k WCOOP High Roller for $120k and the beautiful trophy. Feel so blessed!!!

— Patrick Leonard (@padspoker) August 24, 2021

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COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD

Fourteen tournaments ended on Tuesday night, and they were won by players from 13 different countries. For all our talk of Brazilian dominance, that really underlines how international WCOOP is. It meant that while all the usual suspects won events (the UK won two), we also welcomed Moldova, Germany, Finland, Japan, Belarus, Latvia, Argentina and Mexico to the countries leader board for this year.

Current standings:

4 titles — Brazil
3 — Austria, Netherlands, Russia, UK
2 — Ukraine
1 — Andorra, Argentina, Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Moldova, Sweden.

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PLAYER OF THE SERIES UPDATE

The Player of the Series race will change every single day throughout the four weeks of competition, but there’s a very familiar name already at the top in the overall leader board. That’s because Patrick Leonard, who is always challenging, has already won his first title and has had a handful of other deep runs. Will anyone catch him? Here are the latest, very early, standings.

OVERALL

1 – Patrick “pads1161” Leonard (UK) – 240 points
2 – renemastermi (Germany) – 235
3 – nmi128 (Netherlands) – 210
4 – FONBET_RULIT (Russia) – 200
5 – Dart Serg (Russia) – 195

Prize: $25,000 to the winner

HIGH

1 – Dinesh “NastyMinder” Alt (Austria) – 180 points
2 – Patrick “pads1161” Leonard (UK) – 165
3 – nmi128 (Netherlands) – 160
4 – Pedro “pvigar” Garagnani (Brazil) – 130
5 – Jonathan “Proudflop” Proudfoot (UK) – 125

Prizes: 1st — $15,000; 2nd — $10,000; 3rd — $5,000

MEDIUM

1 – Dart Serg (Russia) – 140 points
2 – Mr.Creditor (Russia) – 130
2 – Naked:D (Ukraine) – 130
4 – Saage (Finland) – 120
5 – Vlada2108 (Croatia) – 115

Prizes: 1st — $10,000; 2nd — $7,500; 3rd — $5,000; 4th — $2,500; 5th — $1,500; 6th-10th — $1,000

LOW

1 – renemastermi (Germany) – 170 points
2 – CnISayWanker (United Kingdom) – 135
3 – disneyyman (Poland) – 130
=4 – Camilancefieldg (Canada) – 125
=4 – HetlsJeBoy (Netherlands) – 125
=4 – RagVoen (Belarus) – 125

Prizes: 1st — $5,000; 2nd — $2,500; 3rd — $1,500; 4th — $1,000; 5th — $500; 6th-10th — $300; 11th-20th — $150

Read a full explanation of this year’s promotions.

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TODAY’S ACTION

One of today’s events is the first re-buy event of the series and that will mean chaos. Re-buys allow multiple bullets to be fired for the designated re-buy period, and players invariably take advantage of that. So come prepared if you want to get involved. Some technical hitches on Tuesday meant Event 12 had to be postponed, but that has been rescheduled for tomorrow, Thursday.

WCOOP-17: NLHE 7-Max
Buy-ins: $22, $215, $2,100
Guarantees: $125K, $300K, $600K

WCOOP-18: PLO 6-Max
Buy-ins: $11, $109, $1,050
Guarantees: $35K, $125K, $250K

WCOOP-19: NLHE 8-Max Rebuys
Buy-ins: $5.50, $55, $530
Guarantees: $75K, $200K, $275K

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WATCH THE ACTION ON TWITCH AND YOUTUBE

Live broadcasts of WCOOP 2021 go out every Monday through Wednesday featuring cards up coverage of the biggest final tables and expert commentary from James Hartigan, Joe Stapleton and a host of special guests. Click for full details.

You can watch on the PokerStars YouTube channel, the PokerStars YouTube UK channel, or PokerStars’ Twitch channel.

Broadcast schedule:

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POKER NEWS LIVE UPDATES

Our friends at Poker News will be bringing you live updates from a number of events during WCOOP. Head to their Live Reporting pages to see the action unfold in real time.

Poker News WCOOP reporting schedule:

WCOOP 14-M: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Super Tuesday SE], $1M Gtd
WCOOP 14-H: $10,300 NLHE [8-Max, High Roller], $1M Gtd
WCOOP 22-M: $530 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Thursday Thrill SE], $1M Gtd
WCOOP 22-H: $5,200 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, High Roller], $750K Gtd
WCOOP 34-M: $2,100 NLHE [8-Max], $1M Gtd
WCOOP 34-H: $25,000 NLHE [8-Max, Super High Roller], $3M Gtd
WCOOP 42-H: $5,200 NLHE [8-Max], $700K Gtd
WCOOP 51-H: $2,100 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Thursday Thrill SE], $800K Gtd
WCOOP 52-H: $10,300 8-Game [High Roller], $500K Gtd
WCOOP 63-M: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO], $1.5M Gtd
WCOOP 63-H: $10,300 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, High Roller], $1M Gtd
WCOOP 71-H: $2,100 NLHE [8-Max, Super Tuesday SE], $650K Gtd
WCOOP 80-H: $10,300 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, High Roller], $750K Gtd
WCOOP 91-L: $55 NLHE [8-Max, NLHE Main Event], $1.5M Gtd
WCOOP 91-M: $530 NLHE [8-Max, NLHE Main Event], $2.5M Gtd
WCOOP 91-H: $5,200 NLHE [8-Max, NLHE Main Event], $10M Gtd
WCOOP 92-M: $1,050 PLO [6-Max, PLO Main Event], $750K Gtd
WCOOP 92-H: $10,300 PLO [6-Max, PLO Main Event], $1M Gtd
WCOOP 94-H: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Series Saver], $1.25M Gtd
WCOOP 01-H: $109 NLHE [Phase 2], $1M Gtd

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