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Aside from the $614,400 prize pool, the NLH heads-up tourney provided over 2,000 runners the chance for ultimate bragging rights. Heads-up poker has long been the proving ground for a player's skill and tenaciousness. In the spirit of the epic matches of old, players took to the felt in an attempt to prove their dominance.

As is the case with most NLH heads-up tourneys, this tourney was structured as a single-elimination freezeout. Since defeated players all finish in a tie depending on what round they are eliminated in, the prize money pays out all players from that round the same amount. The first major jump in cash was moving into the ninth round of play, the quarterfinals.

The $16,896 prize for the four losers of the quarterfinal, though substantial, is merely a consolation prize to the losers, all of whom were within reach of the first-place prize and the bragging rights that come with it.

Quarterfinal Results:

Benba def. Evilly

Huxfluxen def. sqmpork

pandaCHAN12 def. pokerjamers

iFiNishfish def. Lucarelli

The semifinal prize jumped to an impressive $33,792, with only two going on to the final table.

Semifinal Results:

Huxfluxen def. iFiNishfish

pandaCHAN12 def. Benba

As soon as the two finalists took their seats, the players made a deal for the prize money. Each player agreed to take $70,000 prize money, playing for the final $20k and the WCOOP bracelet. After half an hour of intense play, and each player holding the chip lead multiple times, Huxfluxen battle his way into a 3-1 chip lead before going into the final hand.

After battling pre-flop, the players got their chips all in on the flop:

Flop: #6s#Td#5s

Huxfluxen: #Qs#3s

pandaCHAN12: #Kd#Tc

The turn came a #Ts, giving Huxfluxen the flush, with pandaCHAN12 unable to fill out his house as the #Ah fell on the river.

Event 16

The $215 Pot-Limit Omaha Single Rebuy (plus add-on) tournament brought out 1,223 players for a total prize pool of $546,000 (after all rebuys had been completed). It was no surprise to see many of the Team PokerStars players, including Barry Greenstein, Isabelle Mercier, Victor Ramdin, Dario Minieri, Greg Raymer, Humberto Brenes and Chris Moneymaker, seated in this event.

Out of that handful of PokerStars pros, it was Chris Moneymaker who made the final table after only one hand of bubble play.

Final Table

Seat 1: Moorman1 (968,178 chips)
Seat 2: nolimitsuckz (199,841 chips)
Seat 3: Ravinesh (82,385 chips)
Seat 4: Isaac "westmenloAA" Baron (576,492 chips)
Seat 5: Bounatirou (501,136 chips)
Seat 6: Andy McLEOD (2,035,662 chips)
Seat 7: Svend svaerd (776,699 chips)
Seat 8: Team PokerStars Pro Chris "Money800" Moneymaker (1,244,705 chips)
Seat 9: cuthbertt (561,902 chips)

After multiple orbits of cards being dealt, Moneymaker made his exit in fifth place for $28,655. After 14 hours of play, the event had worked its way down to only three remaining players. All talk of a chop was squashed by Andy McLEOD, who wanted to play it out.

McLEOD must be happy with his decision, as he went on to win the $98,280 first prize and the WCOOP bracelet.

At just over halfway through the series, there are still plenty of chances for you to get in on some of the action. With WCOOP events and satellites happening all the time, it's as easy as logging in to PokerStars and registering for a seat.

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