Poker Stars 2009 World Championship of Poker Update and Highlights

Lots of excitement over at the PokerStars 2009 World Championship of Online Poker, the $40 million guaranteed tournament that parallelsthe World Series of Poker in standing among tournament series of its kind. It’s more than half over now, with events #32 and #33 happening today out of 45 events total.

Here are some of the highlights so far:

In Event #24, the the $530 Heads Up event, the winner was a man already successful in the world of poker, online and off, to the tune of $3 million dollars or so. That would be Eugene Katchalov (aka MyRabbitFoo), the 2007 winner of the approximately $2.5 million grand prize in the WPT Doyle Brunson’s Five Diamond Poker Classic and before that the Bellagio Cup III the same year. This was also the best return for any winner’s money so far in the 2009 WCOOP as it’s been the only event so far to have an overlay – with PokerStars needing to contribute about $218,000 of its own money into the pot to meet the $1 million guarantee.

In Event #26 H.O.R.S.E. Todch, with the second biggest chip stack at the start of the final table, switched places with marked aces, the chip leader, by the tournament’s end, giving Todch the $70,400top prize, while his neck-and-neck opponent marked aces took the runner-up prize of $50,000.

In event #31 the $215 rebuy/add-on event, Soterdelf won the $174,594.68 top prize. This was a particularly notable achievement considering the tournament way outlasted its set length due to 2,439 rebuys and 1,765 add-on.

There are still 5 more days left to get in on the 2009 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker action and maybe have your name mentioned in the next WCOOP post.