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Belarus’ Leqenden Claims First Place at WCOOP-81-H: $530 NLHE

The poker world is taken by storm thanks to this year’s edition of the World Championship of Online Poker and even though the festival is close to its end, there are still thousands of poker players willing to participate in the race for the big win. The penultimate event in the rich schedule of the festival was the WCOOP-81-H: $530 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em [Wrap-Up] which boasted a guaranteed prize pool amounting to $400,000. The big winner in the tournament was the poker player from Belarus Leqenden.

There was an impressive amount of poker players willing to participate in the event and Day 1 welcomed a total of 1,303 entries ready to run for the big prize and the top positions. Due to this big interest towards the tournament, the initially announced guaranteed prize pool was easily surpassed and the poker players managed to reach the even bigger prize pool amounting to $651,500. Just about nine hours were necessary for the winner to claim the throne and the top place on the leaderboard, laying his hands on the $101,734 coming with it. This marks his second win in the COOP since his previous first place came at the Spring Championship of Online Poker.

Other well-known names in the poker world which made their appearance and took part in the penultimate tournament were to the likings of Fatima De Melo, Jaime Staples, and Jeff Gross, who are also PokerStars poker pros, but the competition was merciless and none of them was able to reach the cash bubble and go home with money. There were a total of 161 players who managed to pocket some of the prize pool. Anthony “holdplz” Spinella finished 145th and received $1,140.64, Robin “robinho” Ylitalo reached the 99th position and got $1,451.67. Mike “MikeyGG3” Gentili became 46th, winning $2,351.13, while Kurt “kyrt23x” Fitzgerald climbed to the 26th position and won $3,807.88.

Final Table Action

The final table was more than exciting since there were some of the proficient poker players ready to demonstrate their skills. At the very beginning, the future winner was occupying the seventh place, but he quickly made his way up. The first one to go was player “vino la iubi” who had a kicker issue which could not be resolved in a timely manner and he ended up leaving the race with $7,848.81. Following him close was “skarpet2” who hit the rail after a duel against jwall888, winning $10,811.51 for his good performance.

The final three poker players left on the table after many hands and hours were ready for the big cash. Leqenden was the chip leader among the three of them, and this was more than enough for him to grab the first place. On the third position was left jwall888 from Canada, who had a sweet payday of $53,616.82, while the runner-up position was reserved for Norway’s Kevin “KevBoyStar” Stani, winning $73,855.60.



 Author: Benjamin Barry

Benjamin Barry‘s career is worth observing, since he is not only a competent writer, but he has also practical experience at poker tables.
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