PokerStars WCOOP Day 11: 'IlDepredator' Zooms Away From Stacked Final Table

September 14, 2017

The 2017 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) continued marching forward on Sept. 13, the 11th day of the $60 million guaranteed festival. Several events shuffled up for the first time and a handful crowned their champions.

WCOOP-37-H: $215 NLHE [6-Max, Zoom], $250K Gtd

The 37th high buy-in WCOOP event of the series was a little different from the rest because it was started and finished within one day instead of being a traditional two-day event. This is because event 37 was played on six-handed Zoom tables, which made the action fast and furious; the players dropped like flies.

Including re-entries, 2,731 players took to the PokerStars virtual felt, and it took only a shade under eight hours to whittle this huge field down to the final table of seven, a final table that was home to Team PokerStars Pro Jeff "JeffGross" Gross who was streaming his play on Twitch.

Despite some big confrontations early into the final table's proceedings, there were no eliminations for the first few orbits of the table. Gross caught a king on the river with king-jack against Gustavo "PIUlimeira" Ferreira's pair of sevens, then saw his king hold against the queens of "IlDepredator," but then saw his cowboys come unstuck against the ten-eight of Akira "Clutch Hero" Ohyama.

Although it took a while for the first final table casualty to be decided, once it happened, three players busted within five hands.

Ohyama was the first to fall, his queen-eight proving to be no match for the pocket jacks of IlDepredator. Gross then exited stage left when his ace-five lost to IlDepredator's king-nine, which flopped a pair of nines and improved to a full house.

The third exit of that flurry of eliminations saw Romans "RovoDice" Voitovs open-shove with a suited king-five and lose out to Ferreira's suited king-queen courtesy of the latter's queen-kicker.

With the blinds rapidly increasing, the remaining players were having to make moves to keep their heads above water. One such move saw Ferreira move all-in from the small blind with pocket-threes after John "kleath" Leathart had opened the betting with ace-queen. Leathart flopped two pair while Ferreira bricked the turn and river to fall in fourth place.

Third place went to "Korpieworm" who needed some help from the community cards because his ace-seven was dominated by Leathart's ace-king. That help never arrived and the tournament moved onto the heads-up stage.

Thanks to the late heater, Leathart held a substantial 101,000,000 to 35,400,000 chip lead over Argentina's IlDepredator, but the latter clawed his way back into contention when his king-queen came from behind to best the ace-king in Leathart's hand, and a few minutes later the chip counts were all but level. IlDepredator won more than his fair share of small pots to take the chip lead himself.

IlDepredator began turning the screw and putting Leathart to the test for his stack whenever the opportunity arose. One such chance saw IlDepredator move all in with queen-trey and Leathart called with ace-ten. The flop, however, came down with two queens to gift IlDepredator an almost unbeatable hand, and when Leathart couldn't find running cards on the turn or river, he busted in second place, leaving IlDepredator to win his first WCOOP title.

WCOOP NEWS AND NOTES

• Ukraine's "plspaythxbye" won WCOOP-33-H: $530 PLO 4-Max Progressive KO for $47,093 and $30,752 in bounties after a heads-up chop with "onlymtt748," the latter securing a $35,738 payday.
• A quartet of Phase 1 events kicked off on Day 11, one for the $200,000 Gtd fixed-limit hold'em, one for the $200,000 Gtd fixed-limit Omaha Hi-Low and two for the $200,000 Gtd Razz.
• The WCOOP edition of the Super Tuesday played down to the final six players before being paused for a second time. Belgium's "girafganger7" is the player the catch in the event that has almost $197,000 reserved for the champion; the Belgian has twice as many chips as anyone else in the tournament.
• Bulgaria's "PSMozak" has climbed to the top of the WCOOP leaderboard with 425 points, 20 clear of Russia's "ImluckNuts". PSMozak finished third in the $1,050 Badugi event for a $10,500 score and a bagful of leaderboard points

Day 11 WCOOP Winners

_{*Includes bounties}

PokerNews will be recapping all the action played out during the 2017 WCOOP. Check back daily for updates, news, and more.

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