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McEvoy cashed twice at the WCOOP this past weekend (credit: Poker Stars Blog)

Poker Stars kicked off the 2007 World Championships of Online Poker (WCOOP) on Friday, September 14, 2007. Each event has been a big draw so far. The guarantees have been shattered, and the action has been fast, furious and fantastic.

Event #1 was a six-handed NLHE tournament with a $215 buy-in. 4,610 folks paid to play, driving up the prize pool well over the $400,000 guarantee. A whopping $922,000 was divvied up among the top finishers. Some of the big name players in the event were BeLoWaBoVe, gb2005, Mattg1983, and The___DR___Y.

Two hundred men and women went down in the first fifteen minutes of the event so you know peeps were playing for keeps. SlimsChicken was the bubble boy. He finished in 535^th place, the last one to go away from the event empty-handed.

Fourteen hours of play happened before the final table got underway. beerbear123 and WiLDmAn75 battled in a strange hand that left beer nearly crippled. Beer’s pocket ladies were cracked by the big slick of WiLDmAn when the turn brought an Ace. It was a major factor in beer’s fifth-place elimination.

The final three fellas agreed to a deal, which was basically by the chips with $46,000 and the bracelet to go to the winner. samh133, the chip leader at the time, took some convincing. In the end, it was all good because he got the extra cash and the title, not to mention the sweet bling-bling.

Here are the final results:

1) samh133 - $155,561
2) WiLDmAn75 - $96,352
3) LUFCBas - $84,710
4) TiltHappens - $36,880
5) bearbeer123 - $18,901
6) toomanydonks - $10,142

The second event of the WCOOP was actually the first to be decided. On Friday, 857 ponied up the $215 buy-in to play in the short-handed (6-handed) Pot-Limit five-card draw tournament. (Go on; try saying that five times fast. We bet you can’t!)

The total prize pool was $71,400 over the $100,000 guarantee, which was not bad at all. Five-Card Draw is relatively new to PokerStars’ roster of games. However, it was a big ‘draw’, pardon the pun, amongst the pros. PokerStars’ own Tom McEvoy, a former WSOP Main Event champ himself, played in the tournament, finishing in a respectable 63^rd place. Internet heavyweights in the event included AUSSIE_JASE, iCeVeNoM, x2then and sketchy1. Each finished in the top twenty.

Nine hours after the tournament started, the final table was ready to play. BadgerPro, who made it to fifth place, admitted that he’d never played the game before entering the event. He said, “I Google'd strategy twenty minutes before the tournament started.”

The final four agreed to a deal that carved up 95% of the remaining prize money, leaving 5% and the bracelet to the champ, spielraum.at.

These are the results:

1) spielraum.at - $26,265
2) jaygee1984 - $20,654
3) peseudos - $26,912
4) boro83 - $17,609
5) BadgerPro - $5,827.60
6) pairDboard21 - $3,685.10

On Saturday, September 15, 2007, 1,818 entrants forked over $215 to play in the $215 Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) short-handed event. That meant a max of six folks sat down at each table. The $200,000 guarantee was nearly doubled as the prize pool shot up to an impressive $363,600.

A bunch of talented players, some of whom are quite well-known – at least in internet poker circles – made time to play in the tournament. Trabelsi, who won a PLO event in last year’s WCOOP, finished in 233^rd place. Tom McEvoy cashed for a second day in a row in this event, going out in the 401^st slot. Cliff Josephy, aka JohnnyBax, and Kevin “BeLoWaBoVe” Saul played but didn’t cash. Jon “PearlJammer” Turner took 272^nd place and Matt Stout, aka All_in_at420, was the twelfth place finisher.

Nine hours into the event, the final six played their way to the championship. madiso, the first Estonian ever to make a WCOOP final table, made a valiant effort. He carefully considered each move. On his final hand, both TomNordli of Norway and jalla79 of Sweden, the tournament’s eventual winner, called his raise from the big blind. His fourth place finish was nothing to sneeze at.

Only a few minutes later, Nordli and jalla would find themselves heads-up, less than forty minutes after the final table began. Nordli was out-chipped, but got jalla to agree to a chop. They split the cash down the middle with $18,000 and the bracelet going to the champ. On the final hand, Nordli raised pre-flop. Both players watched as a 7,2,4 hit the board, all different suits. jalla bet out; Nordli called. The turn was a 3, which made all sorts of straight possibilities out there. jalla pushed Nordli, who called, all-in and showed the wheel to his opponent.

Here are the final results:

1) jalla79 - $67,740
2) TomNordli - $49,740
3) ely_cash41 - $27,379
4) madiso - $16,432
5) smittymatt - $9,162
6) lefty2506 - $5,500

Event #4 at the WCOOP was a $100,000 Guaranteed Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw extravaganza. For those of you who don’t know, 2-7 triple draw is a lowball game. You get three chances to make the best “worst” hand. Straights count against you and flushes don’t mean a thing. The best possible hand here is 2,3,4,5,7 with any suit combination.

The best thing about the game is that, with so many opportunities to make the worst hand, folks take a lot of chances and play a lot of pots. 649 folks decided to take a stab at the event on Saturday, which brought the total prize pool up to a respectable $129,800. 

Hevad “RaiNKhaN” Khan, who came in sixth at this year’s WSOP Main Event, went out in eighth place, earning $2,077 and narrowly missing the final table. PearlJammer’s galpal, Tracey “XTraCey” Nguyen, took eighteenth place and netted $1,233. PearlJammer, THAY3R, JohnnyBax and BeLowaBoVe also played in the event, making this a true star-studded affair.

Plplaya, the short stack, was the first one eliminated at the final table. He was followed more than an hour later by polpolpol, who is more commonly known as Crazy Cypriot.

It didn’t take too long for pstarfish to find himself heads-up with a Norwegian player who goes by the moniker “Donald.” Star had the chip lead, but would watch in disbelief as it was eroded by the talented Norwegian. Of course, picking up an ace on the third draw of a key hand doesn’t help either.

These are the results:

1) Donald - $32,450
2) pstarfish - $18,821
3) omaha kid - $12,006
4) GymZQuirk - $7,788
5) polpolpol - $4,900
6) GodlikeRoy - $3,200

The fifth event at the WCOOP was the longest event in the history of the WCOOP. It took over 20 hours for the $2 million guaranteed NLHE tournament with the $530 buy-in to be complete. 6,025 folks played in the event, driving up the already generous prize pool to $3,012,500. gobboboy, who made quite a splash in the live action world with his second-place finish at the 2007 Aussie Millions Main Event, went deep in the tourney. His fifteenth-place ending was good for $13,858. westmenloAAA took the 19^th spot and over $10k in cold, hard cash.

Other notables who made their way to the tables included Daniel Negreanu, Katja Thater, Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer and Luca Pagano.

mc_palermo busted the bubble. Over ten hours later, the final table got underway after tpreston lost his tournament life to fredmainiac’s set o’nines.

666 INRI, a German player, was the first elimination of the final table. He pushed all-in with a K,J that proved to be no match for mainiac’s pocket queens. Unfortunately, mainiac would go from hero to zero in no time flat. He was sent packing by Bill Ivey in sixth place. Ironically enough, Ivey, who we are told is no relation to Full Tilt pro, Phil, followed him out the door in 5^th position.

The final two players, AB_illusive and taktloss47 agreed to a chop as heads-up play got underway. We think they just wanted to see the 22 hour tournament come to end sooner rather than later. They split up the spoils, leaving $150,000 and the bracelet for the eventual winner.

Here are the final results:

1) AB_illusive - $398,649.93
2) taktloss47 - $260,184.82
3) glynda - $162,373.75
4) wNwNw1 - $126,525.00
5) Bill Ivey - $96,701.25
6) fredmainiac - $69,287.50
7) dankhank - $49,706.25
8) debrisfish - $30,125.00
9) 666 INRI - $18,677.50

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