The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker turned up the speed with Event 45. There were a couple of things about said tournament that made it one of the most action-packed tournaments of the WCOOP. Firstly, every player had a $50 bounty on their head that needed to be paid on top of the $200 + $15 buy-in (it cost $265 total to enter the tournament). On top of the bounties, PokerStars made each level five minutes long making this tournament a turbo. PokerStars set their guarantee at $300,000 but the 2,987 that registered nearly doubled the prize pool making it $597,400. This was on top of the $149,350 that to be given out in $50s after each player was knocked out.
The tournament was fast-paced and did not take long to wind down. At the three-hour mark, only five tables of nine players were left. Thirty minutes after that, the tournament was down to three tables. It only took about four hours from the start of the tournament to get to the final table. At that point, players were already paying 125K/250K chips in blinds with a 31,250 chip ante. The final table stacked up as follows:
Seat 1 – PiRaToS14 – 1,284,362 chips
Seat 2 – hook2120 – 1,531,138 chips
Seat 3 – MSU10s – 595,182 chips
Seat 4 – Mr Swatch – 1,417,676 chips
Seat 5 – liberace – 3,695,805 chips
Seat 6 – SirWatts – 2,605,801 chips
Seat 7 – bgitty – 1,492,954 chips
Seat 8 – JuneauJyack – 1,330,928 chips
Seat 9 – $harKK – 981,154 chips
Obviously, all players were very shortstacked which resulted in a very short-lived final table. The last two players battling were bgitty with 9,464,564 chips and JuneauJyack with 5,470,436 chips. JuneauJyack battled to bring stacks back to even and both players quickly agreed at a deal awarding $79,441.36 to each player with an extra $6000.01 set aside for the winner. JuneauJyack took a lead over bgitty and shoved with 4h3c. Bgitty put his tournament life at stake and called with KcTh and saw a Tc7h8c flop give him the commanding lead. A 6c on the turn gave JuneauJyack a gutshot straight draw and the 5s completed that straight draw. JuneauJyack got very lucky and won the tournament and $85,441.37. The rest of the final table results were as follows:
1st – JuneauJyack – $85,441.37
2nd – bgitty – $79,441.36
3rd – SirWatts – $50,181.60
4th – $harKK – $34,941.92
5th-Mr Swatch – $25,986.90
6th-liberace – $20,012.90
7th – hook2120 – $14,038.90
8th – PiRaToS14 – $8,662.30
9th – MSU10s – $5,077.90