(Credit: Photo courtesy of Steven van Zadelhoff)The 2017 World Championship of Online Poker came to an end on Tuesday with Dutch pro, Steven van Zadelhoff, who goes by the name “SCZFF” online, got his big breakthrough by winning the $5,200 buy-in Main Event.
The WCOOP Main Event had a guaranteed $10 million guarantee which drew over 1,800 players, with 379 re-entries for a total playing field of 2,183 players, creating a final prize pool of almost $11 million, which saw the top 278 players finish in the money.
By the time Day 2 came to a conclusion, only nine players remained with the van Zadelhoff firmly in the commanding position with over third of the chips in play and three times as main chips as the next biggest threat, Joshua “joshuah333” Herman. The Dutch pro took full advantage of this massive chip lead and went on to eliminate four of his 8 final table opponents before winning the event and claiming the $1.62 million prize money.
After only an hour of play on Day 3, two pros, Michael “imluckbox” Addamo and “romanooo64”, both from Thailand, were eliminated.
Imluckbox open-raised all in for almost 4.7 million with ace-five from the button and was isolated with a three-bet jam by Heikki “Kekkhou” Piira with ace-king suited from the small blind. The board ran all blanks and Addamo was sent to the rail, finishing with a little over $120k.
romanooo64 followed shortly after when he called van Zadelhoof’s all in with his pair of jacks versus Zadelhoof’s Ace-King. romanooo64 lead the way until the King spiked on the river and became Zadelhoof’s first victim, finishing in eighth for almost $167K.
Piira’s run came to an end just shy of the second break. He had been running low in stack for a while, and was eventually eliminated in seventh place for $231k when his pocket kings were no match for joshuah333’s pocket aces.
Georgios “Geokarak” Karakousis from the United Kingdom had less than the big blind in stack after posting the small blind, decided to call all in after van Zadelhoff opened the button for 1.36 million.
The board eventually gave a straight to Zadelhoff, eliminating Karakousis in sixth place for a little under $320k.
The next to go in fifth place for $42,677 was Australia’s JeremiieLand after he open-shoved from the button, but was unable to improve his queen-eight suited, losing to Bernardo “Machadada RS” Rocha’s pocket sixes.
With four remaining, former TCOOP winner Alexandre “Cavalito” Mantovani had the shortest stack, with a little less than nine BBs. Mantovani went all in on a flop of 2s, 9d, 6h to which joshuah333 called, showing his pocket Queens, which was far better than Mantovani’s Q6 for sixes. The turn and river helped neither player, and Mantovani was out with $612,797.15
The final three resumed play after a short break. Rocha had a little less than half of what the other two players had. He managed to stay in the game for another 30 mins, before being eliminated in 3rd place for $848,016 after he was jammed from the small blind with ace-four, but was unable to improve and lost to the ace-king of van Zadelhoff’s.
Finally, it was the heads-up. Unsurprisingly, the last two standing were the only ones to have taken the chip lead at any one time, wrestling it back and forth from each other. After seven hands, the competition came to a conclusion as joshuah333’s ace-two lost to van Zadelhoff’s ace-jack on a flop of jack,5,7 that paired Zadelhoff’s kicker, with a meaningless King and eight on the turn and river.
Both players had more than a million reasons to celebrate as Herman finished with $1,173,713, whereas the champion Zadelhoff finished with slightly more reasons to celebrate, walking away with $1.6 million.
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