The 2017 Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) is well under way on PokerStars. This year’s edition of the online poker series kicked off on January 18 and is set to run through January 29. Its schedule includes 65 different events with buy-in fees of between $8 and $3,000. PokerStars has announced that TCOOP will feature a guaranteed collective prize pool of $15 million.
Five tournaments were played on Wednesday, Day 8 of the series, but Event #38: $82 No-Limit Draw 2-7 will be paid a bit more special attention. Canadian Mike “goleafsgoeh” Leah won the event yesterday to scoop his first TCOOP title. Here it is interesting to note that Leah has previously won several WCOOP titles and two SCOOP titles, which means that he is the holder of the triple COOP crown, a deed that few other online regulars have accomplished.
Event #38 attracted a total of 503 entries, of whom 353 unique ones and 150 re-entries. They generated a prize pool of $37,725, which secured prize money for the top 62 finishers. Leah scooped a first-place prize of $6,707.46 for his efforts.
The starting field was whittled down to 62 players within the matter of three hours. At that time, Leah had already secured a place in the top half of the chip counts chart. It took another hour for the field to shrink to just 14 players. Norway’s Alm “Chillolini” Wilson topped the final 14 stacks. It is interesting to note that Wilson has, too, won multiple COOP titles.
The seven-handed final table was set with the Norwegian still being the chip leader. However, by the time there were only two players left at the table, Leah had already taken the chip lead from his heads-up opponent, Wilson. Two-handed play began with Leah holding two times more chips. A dozen of small hands were played to see Leah go beyond the 4-million mark and Wilson fall to less than a million in chips.
On the last hand in play, Leah took one card and his opponent drew two to table [Jh][8s][7h][4s][4d]. Leah showed [7d][5h][4h][3d][2d] to scoop the title. Wilson’s share of the prize pool totaled $4,826.15.
With live tournament earnings of more than $5.5 million, Leah is a well-known name on the live poker scene, as well. Most recently, the player took part in the inaugural PokerStars Championship Bahamas, where he cashed in five events, winning one of those. He emerged victorious in the $10,200 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo Super Knockout for $52,740 in first-place prize money.
