Five months ago to the day, Lex Veldhuis rid himself of a long-standing shadow looming over his online poker career — the PokerStars Pro had never won one of the operator's highly-coveted Championship of Online Poker (COOP) titles.
Each year, PokerStars runs two separate iterations of its flagship COOP series: the World Online Championship of Poker (WCOOP) and the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), established in 2002 and 2009 respectively. As one of the site's most well-known ambassadors, Veldhuis' lack of a title stood out in contrast to his fellow representatives.
After countless deep runs ended with final table close calls and third-place or runner-up finishes, the shadow darkened with each passing series. "I've been super close, so many seconds and thirds and fourths. It's funny, now that I got so close in this one, I realized I could have that moment again," Veldhuis told us.
Undeterred, he continued to grind, all the while regularly streaming his gameplay to tens of thousands of viewers — an aspect of his poker career that deserves endless amounts of credit. Then, during the 2024 SCOOP in May, Veldhuis broke free of the COOP shackles by claiming victory in the $5,200 Titans event.
'I'm having more deep runs'
Less than five months later, Veldhuis added to his COOP title count with a victory earlier this week in the WCOOP $5,200 Bounty Builder event.
A second COOP title confirms, in a way, that the first was no mere fluke. It also shows Veldhuis that the work he has done off the table has paid off in a big way. As part of the BBZ Poker training team, Veldhuis works directly with founder and head coach Jordan Drummond to prepare himself for these spots. The PokerStars Pro told us, "Obviously, you need a lot of run good to win tournaments. I definitely ran really well to win, but I can't discount the fact that in general, I'm having more deep runs, more cashes, my win rate is going up over a big sample.
"I get coached by BBZ Poker, Jordan Drummond and he's doing a new way of coaching where we work on areas within my game that needs improvement and then we just hammer those. It's a really efficient way of improving. On top of that, we just released a new course on BBZ Poker."
Now, with roughly three weeks left in the series and a big win under his belt, Veldhuis feels even more ready to take on the grind. "It's so nice. It gives me such a massive boost. If I have a big win at the start [of the series] the stress levels go down. It's more relaxation, it's chiller. It's really nice to experience that. Whereas if you have a big win at the end, there's massive relief and you're happy, but then it's been three miserable weeks before. I hope that I don't lose it all back, but I know it's very possible. It's the best start imaginable, really."
Whether Veldhuis can add to his COOP title count in the coming weeks is something only time will tell, but, for now, he's feeling confident and excited about the rest of the schedule.
"I can't wait to grind out the rest."
Additional WCOOP first week highlights
In other news from the WCOOP streets, PokerStars Pro Parker 'tonkaaaa' Talbot notched his fifth WCOOP title in the $1,050 World Championship of HORSE. Talbot triumphed over an 88-entrant field to claim another WCOOP title and the $21,904 top prize. Notably, this marks the fifth year in a row that Talbot has won silverware in a WCOOP series, claiming titles each year since 2020.
Blaz 'Scarmak3r' Zerjav solidified his spot atop the WCOOP overall leaderboard by notching not one, but two wins in the first week of the series, bringing his total number of titles to three. The latest win on Zerjav's resume came in the $2,100 Bounty Builder NLH where he collected the top prize of $65,837, split between $29,650 in placement prize and $36,188 in bounties won.
