An incredible $75,585,305.05 has been won in the 132 tournaments of the 2013 Spring Championship Of Online Poker (PokerStars) in the past couple of weeks, making it the richest poker tournament series in history! A big chunk of the prize pool was awarded to Viktor "Isildur1" Blom who won $1,096,200 in the Main Event!
In total, 580 players signed up for the $10,300 buy-in SCOOP Main Event (Event #43-H No-Limit Hold'em) and created a massive $5,800,000 prize pool - almost $3 million more than the guarantee! After several hours of play on the final table, Blom was playing heads-up against Team PokerStars Pro Noah "Exclusive" Boeken, who was looking for his second SCOOP watch of the series after winning Event #13-H ($2,100 PLO Heads-Up).
Boeken had a 3-to-1 advantage over Blom when the battle started and there was no talk whatsoever about making a deal. Blom added more than 1 million to his stack in the first 30 minutes of play - without putting his entire stack at risk. Over the next few hands Blom won another 1 million chips and narrowed down Boeken's lead further.
Blom takes the lead
It didn't take long until Blom had overtaken the lead from his opponent. When he had 5.6 million to Boeken's 3.08 million and the blinds were 25k/50k, Blom made a min-raise and Boeken three-bet to 250,000. Blom called.
The flop came out T2J. Boeken bet 250,000. Blom called. The K fell on the turn and Blom called down a 600,000 bet by Boeken. The river card brought the A and Boeken checked. Blom moved all in and Boeken went into the tank for a few minutes before folding.
Blom was sitting with 6.7 million to Boeken's 1.9 million after that hand and the tournament went on a scheduled break. When the cards were back in the air, the two pros only battled for five minutes or so before the final hand.
Boeken min-raised to 100,000 from the button and Blom called. The flop came down JK9, Blom checked and Boeken bet 130,000. Blom raised to 342k and Boeken responded by shoving his remaining stack. Blom snap called.
Blom: QT
Boeken: K5
The 9 fell on the turn and the river card was the A, which meant that Blom took down the pot (and the tournament) with a flopped straight.
Main Event results:
Players: 580
Total prize pool: $5,800,000
Places paid: 72
1. Viktor "Isildur1" Blom (United Kingdom) $1,096,200
2. Noah "Exclusive" Boeken (Netherlands) $803,300
3. cmontopdeck (United Kingdom) $591,600
4. Mike "munchenHB" Telker (Cyprus) $446,600
5. Sergio "zcedrick" Aido (United Kingdom) $313,200
6. Ravi "govshark2" Raghavan (Canada) $246,500
7. w4ldo (Germany) $188,500
8. leshkaGmBlZ (Russia) $130,500
9. Amadi_017 (United Kingdom) $88,740