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2018 PokerStars WCOOP Winner Disqualified, $1.353m Prize Money Redistributed

  • wann2play DQed from 2018 WCOOP Main Event after lengthy review
  • eze88888 named champ and awarded?won first-place prize money
  • wann2play’s $1.353m winnings redistributed to players who cashed
  • Reason for DQ not made known to the public
Dan Katz

Dan Katz graduated with a BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Emory University. He clearly uses neither of those degrees now, having been writing about the gambling industry (specializing in poker) since 2005. Prior to that, he was an IT and management consultant. He is an avid gamer, primarily on PC, and enjoys collecting retro video games and consoles; finding room to set them all up is his current challenge. Dan lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and two children. You can get in touch with Dan at [email protected].

Poker player showing a joker as a hole card
Almost 18 months later, PokerStars has disqualified the 2018 WCOOP Main Event winner wann2play, awarding eze88888 the champion’s title. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

New winner is eze88888

Though the 2018 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event was held nearly a year-and-a-half ago, the official champion was not decided until this past weekend.

PokerStars has disqualified the September 2018 winner of the $5,200 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event, “wann2play”, awarding the top prize to “eze88888”.

wann2play’s $1.353 million was redistributed to the other players who cashed

When heads-up at the final table, the two players agreed to a deal, with Argentina’s eze88888 taking $1.257 million of the remaining prize pool and wann2play raking in $1.153 million. They competed for the $200,000 left over and a Platinum Pass, which wann2play won.

After the recent ruling, PokerStars awarded eze88888 $1.529 million, the amount that would have been the first prize without the deal. wann2play’s $1.353 million was redistributed to the other players who cashed.

Reasons for DQ a mystery

PokerStars has not publicly revealed why wann2play was disqualified from the 2018 WCOOP Main Event.

suspicions that something was amiss near the end of the tournament

According to PocketFives, eze88888 said he had his suspicions that something was amiss near the end of the tournament. He reviewed hands and spoke with other players, eventually becoming more convinced that something was up. He stayed in touch with PokerStars for months after the event.

Congratulating the new winner on Twitter, UK poker pro Max Silver noted that the online poker room had frozen wann2play’s account in the meantime.

Nothing is really known about wann2play, except that his (or her) account is registered in the Netherlands and that they gained entry into the 2018 WCOOP Main Event via a $530 satellite.

The real-life identities of high-stakes online poker players are often known, but not in this case. There were rumors last summer that wann2play may have been a “well-known pro” and was multi-accounting, but nothing has been confirmed.

Second WCOOP winner to be DQed

The 2018 PokerStars WCOOP had a three-tier buy-in structure, with “low,” “medium,” and “high” buy-in versions of the 62 events. The lone exception was the Main Event, which had just a $55 low tier and a $5,200 high tier. The latter was the showcase event, the tournament which eze88888 has now won.

The event fielded 2,044 entries, generating a $10.220 million prize pool. This just beat the $10 million guarantee.

This is the second time that the winner of the PokerStars WCOOP was disqualified. The first was in 2007, when TheV0id was found to have violated the site’s rules.

Natalie Teltscher was the registered account holder, but PokerStars determined that she was not actually the one playing on the account during the tournament. Teltscher filed a lawsuit against PokerStars, but eventually dropped it, admitting that someone else was, in fact, playing on the account.

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