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Not content with being WPT’s reigning World Champion and generally running hotter than a thousand suns online, Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko was back in the thick of the action last month as he surged his way to WCOOP Main Event glory.
With a truly colossal field featuring 2,144 of the world’s greatest online players firing up their laptops to compete in the PokerStars.com World Championship of Online Poker Main Event, it was Ukrainian-born American Yevgeniy Timoshenko who ultimately emerged victorious to capture the $1.7 million first prize.
Playing under his now infamous “Jovial Gent” ‘Stars moniker, the baby-faced assassin arrived at the final table among the chip leaders after ruthlessly exploiting the bubble and was ultimately able to ride his monster stack all the way into heads-up play, where he held a 3:1 chip lead against online pro “Udon Wannit”.
There, the experienced Timoshenko made fairly light work of his opponent, with the final hand occurring almost immediately after the first break. With the two players sharing a flop of Kc-8h-6s, all of the money quickly found its way into the middle and when the cards were on their backs, it was Timoshenko who held a commanding lead.
After check-raising on the flop and having “Udon Wannit” move all-in over the top, Timoshenko made the call to find that his Kd-6d was absolutely crushing his opponent’s 6c-5c, and no horrible outdraw materialised on the turn or river to hand the young professional the second-biggest pay day of his career in poker.
LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY
However, it was not to be the only prize that Timoshenko took home that evening. Incredibly, just an hour later he also took top spot in Full Tilt’s $1k Monday for a further $75,000 – now that’s what we call a heater. “Udon Wannit”, meanwhile, could not be too disappointed with his deep run in the Main Event as his runner-up spot still secured him millionaire status by earning him well over $1.2 million in prize money.
Timoshenko said to WPT Poker shortly after the win: “I didn’t take any drastically different approaches to the game [that I do live]. All the WCOOP structures were pretty good, sometimes TOO good as we were finishing at 6am! The Main Event was very well-structured and had a very tough field. I didn’t really approach it that differently from the WPT – all the adjustments that I made were made in the heat of the moment, so I’d study people and see how they were playing and that’s how I’d alter my strategy. Before the final table began, the only thing I didn’t want was Dan having immediate position on me, which is exactly what happened! Luckily I made it out OK.”
In total, the $5,200 buy-in two-day event generated a total guaranteed prize pool of $10,720,000, meaning that the top 306 finishers all received very substantial pay-outs indeed. Among the notable in-the-money finishers were Isaac Haxton (31st - $30,016), French footballer Vikash Dhorasoo (11th - $75,040) and Dan “djk123” Kelly, who put the finishing touches on a fantastic series by finishing 4th for $643,200.
Kelly had already taken down WCOOP titles in the $215 Razz event and the HORSE High Roller, putting him alongside French legend Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and Ryan ‘g0lfa’ D’Angelo as this year’s three multiple WCOOP bracelet winners. His final table finish in the Main Event took his series winnings to $956,956 and the three results were enough to secure Kelly the 2009 WCOOP Player of the Series trophy.
And so another successful WCOOP series comes to an end, with the 2009 offering attracting players from 140 countries and dishing out a staggering $51,652,800 in total prize money. Congratulations to everyone that contributed to making this year’s WCOOP the biggest online series of poker in history – here’s hoping that November’s European Championship of Online Poker can be just as impressive. |
