The long-time poker pro takes home almost $1 million with his latest victory
The coronavirus pandemic pushed the World Poker Tour (WPT) to run its first-ever online series, the WPT Online Series. This event came with several attractive events, but certainly the most awaited one was the $3,200 buy-in WPT Online Championship No-Limit Hold’em Main Event, which registered 2,130 entries. The first professional player to take home the first online WPT Championship Cup was Christian Jeppsson from Sweden, who fought the last heads-up battle against Viktor Ustimov and took home the top prize of $923,786.
The total guaranteed for this event was $5 million but, based on the 2,130 entries, the final prize pool was for a total of $6.39 million; the number of players in the money was 312. There were several renowned poker players from across the globe participating in this massive online event, but some great ones did not make it to the final table. For instance, WPT’s first-ever female champion of the main tour event, Ema Zajmovic, 2014 World Series of Poker main event champion Martin Jacobson, high roller regular Matthias Eibinger and three-time WSOP bracelet winner Benny Glaser were all sent to the rail before the bubble burst.
The final table had only space for eight players, and Jeppsson took the lead since the action started. Right behind him, and almost stepping on his heels, was Sam Greenwood; however, he got a really bad start right after the tournament was resumed when he lost a massive preflop race for one of the largest pots of the tournament. Pascal Teekens was the first one to leave the final table against Ustimov. Greenwood, who could not recover from his major loss, was the next to hit the rail.
Jeppsson's first elimination of the day was Pascal Hartman who was the next one being busted and finished in the sixth position. The other two players sitting at the final table were Alex Clark and Nikolay Ponomarev, who finished fifth and fourth, respectively. Jukka Koskela hang on a little longer, exiting in third.
