Event #16 of the 2009 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is in the books. One of the bigger buy-in tournaments proved that the cream does in fact rise to the top. The $1,000+$50 buy-in attracted over 1,500 competitors, creating a massive $1,558,000 prize pool. Many of the world’s best tournament players were on hand including PokerStars very own Barry “barryg1” Greenstein and Chris “Money800” Greenstein.
Many of the world’s best online professionals played as well, including two big names who barely missed making the final table. Tim “Tmay420” West who has more than $1,700,000 in cashes to his name on PokerStars alone busted in 18th place, taking home just over $7,000. Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko is also no stranger to success on PokerStars. In total he has nearly $1,500,000 in cashes including a huge $250,000 score back in 2006. Unfortunately for Timoshenko he found himself on the rail with West after busting in 16th place.
Even though two great players failed the make the final table, there was still plenty of talent to be found. One of the more recognizable names was “skilled_sox”, a Heads-Up SNG legend who is up over $800,000 playing the highest stakes SNGs on PokerStars. Sox is not only a great player, but was also one of the fastest to earn Supernova Elite status on PokerStars this year. Joining him was Joe “hoodini10” Udine, a top-50 ranked tournament professional who shipped an FTOPS Event last month for over $300,000. Greg “DuckU” Hobson rounded out the bigger names at the final table. His third place finish yesterday for over $140,000 eclipsed a third place finish in the 2008 WCOOP $500r for nearly $120,000 as his biggest score to date.
Skilled_sox found himself heads-up versus a relatively unknown player, “XTheDecanoX”. With all of his success at HU SNGs it seemed he had quite an advantage; however, poker can be a funny game sometimes, as the lesser experienced XTheDecanoX was able to take down the title and nearly $250,000. Congratulations goes to all the final-tablists and the 225 other players who were able to make the money in WCOOP Event #16!
WCOOP Event #16 $500k NL Hold’em
1558 Entrants; $1,558,000 prize pool
1. XTheDecanoX $249,280
2. skilled_sox $186,960
3. DuckU $140,200
4. pedmend $102,438.50
5. hoodini10 $74,005
6. O0Brian0O $57,646
7. Holla10 $42,066
8. cabbie12 $27,265
9. amrasaralond $15,580