Damian Salas, poker's reigning world champion, won another title on Wednesday, this one a PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) event.
Although it isn't as prestigious as winning the World Series of Poker Main Event, winning a SCOOP title is still quite an accomplishment, and highly coveted. Salas took down Event #72, $10,300 No-Limit Hold'em 8-Max, a tournament that attracted 120 players and created a $1.2 million prize pool during the $100 million guaranteed series on PokerStars.
You'll recognize a number of the names at the final table beyond the current world champion. Salas defeated Christian Rudolph, one of the top German players in the world, heads-up for the SCOOP title. Rudolph has been crushing it online recently with numerous cashes in the SCOOP series and GGPoker Spring Festival, a $150 million guaranteed series that is running at the same time.
Speaking of talented German high rollers, Christoph Vogelsang, who recently shipped the $25k Partypoker Powerfest High Roller, finished in 6th place for $73,437. That's pennies compared to his $25 million in lifetime live tournament cashes.
Wiktor "limitless" Malinowski, who recently lost a heads-up match to another German G.O.A.T., Fedor Holz, also reached the final table of the SCOOP $10k. But he couldn't pull out the victory and was eliminated in 4th place, taking home $122,334 for his efforts.
Damian Salas takes it down
Damian Salas, however, did come out victorious yet again. The Argentinian poker pro is quietly becoming one of the top tournament players in the world. This was his biggest online score ever and his first SCOOP title. His previous high was a $139,183 cash for winning a no-limit hold'em tournament back in 2018.
Of course, he also won $2.5 million total in the 2020 WSOP Main Event, which was mostly played on the GGPoker poker site. The final table was played at King's Resort in Rozvadov, Czech Republic, and then the heads-up finale against Joseph Hebert took place at the Rio in Las Vegas in January. So in a sense, his largest online score was $2.5 million, depending how you look at things.
Salas was a tough competitor at the final table against brutal competition. He beat Rudolph, a skilled pro, heads-up to take down the SCOOP title. Rudolph didn't ship the SCOOP title but he did take home $203,788, which certainly isn't a horrible consolation prize.
Salas is nearly a two-time World Series of Poker Main Event champion. In 2017, he finished in 7th place for $1,425,000 out of 7,221 players. Scott Blumstein won it that year for $8,150,000.
Featured image source: Twitter
