The former PCA champion took home more than $400,000 after winning the first Sunday Slam tournament of the festival.
At least ten more winners will be crowned on Tuesday night, with six-time WCOOP champion Shaun Deeb one of the players in contention as he leads WCOOP 07-H: $2,100 PLO8 [6-Max].
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Dimitar "KuuL" Danchev Wins First WCOOP Title for $400,495 in WCOOP-02-H: $10,300 [8-Max, Progressive KO, Sunday Slam]
After starting the final day of WCOOP-02-H: $10,300 [8-Max, Progressive KO, Sunday Slam] as the chip leader, Dimitar "KuuL" Danchev has also closed it out as the new WCOOP champion by defeating Mike "SirWatts" Watson heads-up for $400,495 which includes a whopping $247,813 in bounties.
Danchev is no stranger to the PokerStars events, with almost $5 million in live cashes and a similar amount online, and gets to add another massive score here today in addition to his first WCOOP title.
In addition to Danchev and Watson, the final table was filled with the crème de la crème of the poker world with players like Joao "Naza114" Vieira, Javier "que_te_crio" Fernandez, and Jans "Graftekkel" Arends on there too for example.
WSOOP-02-H: $10,300 [8-Max, Progressive KO, Sunday Slam] Final Table Results
Just 16 Remain in Event-02-M: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Sunday Slam]
A total of 211 players returned to continue to battle it out in Event-02-M: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Sunday Slam] for Day 2 action but only 16 of them made it through to the final day.
Leading the pack is "Darwinsfish", from the Netherlands, who bagged the chip lead with 33,411,567. "Darwinsfish" was slowly building throughout the day and he took over the chip lead during the last levels of the night when he scored a big double with threes against "1mSoWeeeaK"'s ace-queen suited in a blind vs blind situation all in preflop.
He is followed by Yuri "theNERDguy" Dzivielevski with 19,958,852 and Rasmus "Powergolf" Zerr rounds up the top three with 17,031,520.
Two years after Shaun Deeb won his last WCOOP title in a PLO Hi/Lo tournament, he's chip leader in another with just 17 players remaining in WCOOP 07-H: $2,100 PLO8 [6-Max]. Deeb sits second in the all-time list for WCOOP champions behind Denis "aDrENalin710" Strebkov but is in a strong position ahead of the final day on Tuesday.
There's just 500,000 chips between Deeb (1,561,859) in the lead and the chasing pack of "Us_Alex" (1,064,265), "XD89lol<3" (1,056,228) and "Juicy_J_93" (1,056,228).
Niklas "Lena900" Astedt, Connor "blanconegro" Drinan, Jussin "calvin7v" Nevanlinna and Naoya "nkeyno" Kihara are all still in contention. The winner will walk away with $50,910 after topping a field of 109 players.
Based in the United Kingdom, Will started working for PokerNews as a freelance live reporter in 2015 and joined the full-time staff in 2019. He now works as Managing Editor.
He graduated from the University of Kent in 2017 with a B.A. in German. He also holds an NCTJ Diploma in Sports Journalism.
