2008 PokerStars WCOOP Main Event Crowns Winner!

After several weeks, 32 events, and over $29 million in prizes given out, the World Championship of Online Poker was coming to an unfortunate end this past weekend.  With  the conclusion of the 2-day $5,200 WCOOP Main Event #33 getting underway on Monday afternoon, the final 60 players started planning their own journeys on how they would get to the final table and have the chance to play for the 1st place prize of $1.7 million dollars.

The remaining 5 tables would have a lot of familiar faces filling the seats, like Team PokerStars member ‘ElkY,’ cash game specialists Dustin ‘neverwin‘ Woolf, Ryan ‘daut44‘ Daut, and ‘ahh_snap,’ and other online vets such as ‘charder30‘ and ‘AJKHoosier1.’  To say that the tourney wasn’t a bit stacked towards the end would be a huge understatement.  Oh yea, and playing for over a million dollars and a prestigious WCOOP bracelet is sort of a big deal too, right?

Action was fast and furious right from the start when play resumed at 4:30 pm EST.  I railed a couple of the tables for the first hour, and saw that nearly half of the remaining 60 players had already been eliminated.  In what seemed like a blink of an eye,  perennial favorites like ‘ElkY‘ and early chip leader ‘august35‘ were already on the rail, with ‘charder30‘ losing out on his own bid for a final table appearance when his pocket pair couldn’t hold against AT later in the match to go out in a disappointing 11th place.  The eventual bubble boy would be ‘FluffDog87,’ which would set the stage for the final 9.

These were the final table chip counts before play started:

kovi99 561,348
klslcz 4,828,175
ckingusc 8,056,086
liberace 13,111,107
AJKHoosier1 3,700,250
BOLLDOZER 3,310,739
Sumpas 2,959,856
ShoesRDurrty 6,547,232
Markush13 11,433,207

Online Poker Player of the Year candidate ‘AJKHoosier1′ was still considered to be one of the favorites to take this one down despite being on the low end of the chip spectrum. And with  players like ‘liberace’ and ‘ShoesRDurrty’ playing fast and loose all day, it really was still ANYONE’s game as the cards began being dealt out at the final table.

Like the beginning of day 2, the beginning of play during the final 9 was once again moving at a fast and aggressive pace.  Within the first few hands, we already had 2 eliminations, as ‘kovi99‘ ad ‘BOLLDOZER‘ went out in 9th and 8th, respectively.  The blinds were moving up quicker and quicker and shorter stacks were shrinking and shrinking for ‘klslcz‘ and ‘sumpas‘ as the levels hit the $80k/$160k mark.  Both of these players would soon meet their demise during this portion of the tourney, going out in a tough 7th and 6th place.  The final 5 players would then call on Support to discuss the possibilities of a deal.

The haggling went on for a few minutes, with each of the players putting in their two cents about how much they should get, and if a chip-chop would be the best route considering the leader ‘liberace’ had over 60% of the remaining 55 million chips in his stack.  After numerous attempts, they finally agreed on something, with AJK scoring an additional $100k out of the deal despite possibly getting more when ‘liberace‘ offered to take off $300k of his share to get things moving along - which would be declined by one of the remaining players at the time it was presented (momentary f**k up?).

From there on, play would resume with ‘ShoesRDurrty‘ going out in 5th place when his 3 3 ran into the Q Q of ‘ckingusc.’  With blinds at $100/$200k, ‘liberace’ would clash with ‘markush13‘ on a board of Q 9 9 6 7.  Markush made an ill-timed push on the river with just A T, getting called by the T 8 (runner runner straight) of ‘liberace!’  The $37 million chip pot and an even bigger chip lead was pushed over to ‘liberace’ just as fast as ‘markush13′ was hitting the rail.  This hand would set up 3-handed play with ‘AJKHoosier1′ and ‘ckingusc,’ with ‘liberace’ looking to close the deal on his final 2 opponents.

Fan favorite AJKHoosier1 was hoping for a rally of epic proportions as he found himself  on the short stack during shorthanded play.  Unfortunately, he was unable to gather any real momentum, and his final WCOOP hand of A 7 would be crushed by the pocket 9’s of ‘ckingusc.’  The hand gave cking a decent stack of $20 million to battle ‘liberace’ with.  Although he was still trailing by $14 million in chips, the tournament could definitely turn around at any moment.  And fortunately for cking, it turned around at just the right time.

On a flop of 8 3 7, the final two got into an immense shoving match, with liberace pushing it all-in after a ckingusc check-raise of $3 million! Liberace turned up Q 7 for 2nd pair, with cking holding two overcards (K J) and a flush draw to boot.  The King on the turn locked up the hand for ckingusc, and the river flush provided a little salt in the wound!  Holding a little over 40 million in chips, ckingusc could feel the victory being stolen away from his rival.

The final hand saw both of them getting it all-in preflop - ‘liberace’ holding K J, ‘ckingusc’ holding A 8.  Both players hit the flop, but it was cking’s Aces holding up against liberace’s Kings in the end, giving ‘ckingusc’ the title and $1.265 million and the coveted WCOOP bracelet!

Here are the final results with the chop #’s being reflected:

1. ckingusc $1,265,432 and bracelet
2. liberace $1,375,249
3. AJKHoosier1 $782,542
4. Markush13 $961,718
5. ShoesRDurrty $801,153
6. Sumpas $415,150
7. klslcz $305,900
8. BOLLPOKER $196,650
9. kovi99 $121,267