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Home / Uncategorized / Putting faces to usernames as WCOOP winners are honored in Prague

Winning a World Championship of Online Poker title is the highest achievement you can earn in the online game. It’s one of those titles that can be used as a kind of short hand, like stars on a general’s shoulder, or on your PokerStars avatar, or on your McDonalds name badge. The recognition is immediate.

But these single portions of poker history are easy to miss. After all, when a final table concludes the table shuts down and the winner is left to celebrate alone, possibly while wearing pyjamas, exhausted after hours in front of a computer screen.

So events in Prague last night set to change that, with an award ceremony to mark the occasion of each of the 66 titles won during a presentation in the Cloud 9 SkyBar at the Prague Hilton.

More than half of this year’s 66 WCOOP winners made the trip for the ceremony, familiar usernames that may now become familiar faces.

Star of the show was undoubtedly Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz, the WCOOP Main Event champion, who has enjoyed a breakout year.

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WCOOP Main Event winner Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz

As well as defeating a field of 2,142 to win $1.3 million in the September showstopper, he also cashed six times at EPT Barcelona. By the time of his WCOOP win (the report of which you can read here) nobody could say they were really surprised. Although Holz was, as he explained in an interview with the PokerStars Blog.

Others in town to collect their bracelets were Adam “Roothlus” Levy, who beat a 967-player field in Event #49 to earn $41,572 (read the interview with Levy here), and Sweden’s “whatifgod” who was the one of two players to win two bracelets during the 2014 Championship, winning both the $320 NL Hold’em 6-Max Shootout and the $215+R NL Turbo.

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“WhatifGod” collects his bracelet


Not everyone was able to attend, notably Canadian pro Shyam “G’s Zee” Srinivasan, who as the canapés were being brought out was still in the Day 1B Eureka Main Event field.

Four women were among those collecting their awards.

Christina Laesser-Chang made the journey from Taipei to pick up her bracelet after winning the $215 pot-limit Omaha 6-Max event. Russian player Kristina Llakhova won the $215 pot-limit 5-Card Omaha Hi/Lo tournament, while Croatian Medina Resic won the $215 NL Hold’em 8-Max event.

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All shall have prizes

Congratulations to all the WCOOP winners, and if you want to look back on all the reports from this year’s Championship, and read interviews with the winners, go to our WCOOP webpage.


Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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