The WSOP Online Championship is officially over and, after thanks to the first digital Main Event in history, the series will go into the record books.
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Stoyan Madanzhiev has won the WSOP Online Main Event but the series as a whole will go down as a winner. (Image: WSOP)
Stoyan Madanzhiev may have won the Main Event but it’s GGPoker and the WSOP that can claim the biggest victories.
When the 85 WSOP Online events were over, the organizers had given away almost $150 million in prize money and smashed multiple records.
Main Event Breaks Two Records
The final stages of the $5,000 WSOP Online Main Event were marked by a dose of good fortune and a dominant performance from Madanzhiev. Despite only having $30,000 in tournament earnings prior to the event, Madanzhiev played like a pro once he had the chip lead.
However, getting to that point required some luck. With 12 left, Madanzhiev took on Samuel Vousden in an all-in pot. The latter was the player at risk, but Madanzhiev couldn’t afford to lose any chips at such a vital stage in the tournament.
When the cards were revealed, Vousden’s A-9 was ahead of Madanzhiev’s A-3. However, a three on the turn flipped the script and, after a blank on the river, Vousden was out. It later emerged that two players had folded threes pre-flop.
That one-outer proved to be the turning point for Madanzhiev. With a dangerous player gone and a stack of chips in hand, he cruised to victory in a comfortable fashion.
WSOP Online Main Event Result
1 – Stoyan Madanzhiev – $3,904,686
2 – Wenling Gao – $2,748,605
3 – Tyler Rueger – $1,928,887
4 – Thomas Ward – $1,353,634
5 – Satoshi Isomae – $949,937
6 – Joao Santos – $666,637
7 – Stefan Schillhabel – $467,825
8 – Tyler Cornell – $328,305
9 – Samuel Taylor – $230,395
WSOP Online Makes Positives Out of Negatives
Everyone that made the final table enjoyed a huge return on their investment. However, the WSOP Online Main Event will stand out for two reasons:
- It’s the largest online poker tournament in history with a prizepool of $27,559,500.
- The top prize is the largest in online poker history at $3,904,686.
Those figures mean that the WSOP and GGPoker now have two of the industry’s most prestigious records. Moreover, for GGPoker, it keeps up the pressure on industry leader, PokerStars.
As well as breaking records with the Main Event, the WSOP Online series notched up more notable achievements:
- Number of nationalities represented = 166
- Amount raised for Caesars Cares charity = $354,756 ($257,853 raised by the worldwide poker community, $96,903 donated by GGPoker)
- Number of tournaments with a prize pool of at least $1million = 45
- Number of tournaments with a prize pool of at least $5 million = Five
- Number of tournaments with a prizepool of at least $10 million = Two
By all measures, the inaugural WSOP Online Championship was a success. While it may never replace the summer festival in Las Vegas, the stats show that it’s a viable alternative if the world is ever stopped in its tracks by another pandemic.
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