Booyakasha: Lex Veldhuis Bags $130K & First WCOOP Title Dressed as Ali G

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Sep 11, 2024 4 min read

Hear me now. Big up yourself Lex Veldhuis, big respek to you and your crew

In the weeks leading up to year's World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), Lex Veldhuis told PokerNews two things. The first, was that he was "extremely confident" heading into this year's festival. The second, was that he had lots of things planned for his community and their enjoyment of his streaming content.

Last night, Veldhuis put the words into action, keeping it real and taking down WCOOP Event #9-H: $5,200 Bounty Builder Super High Roller for over $130,000, all while dressed as Ali G.

And while Ali G might be the leader of Da West Staines Massiv, Veldhuis had his own gang of loyal followers watching his victory as he live-streamed his first-ever WCOOP title to thousands of fans on Twitch.

The victory rounded off a 2024 COOP double for the PokerStars Team Pro, following his maiden SCOOP triumph earlier this year.

The battleground was WCOOP 09-H: $5,200 NLHE [Bounty Builder Super High Roller], where the 89 entries went on to make a $445,000 prize pool, smashing the $350,000 guarantee.

The top 11 players made the money, with WCOOP League picks Jerry "perrymejsen" Odeen (tenth) and Yuri "theNERDguy" Dzivielevski (eighth) finishing in the paid places.

WCOOP 09-H: $5,200 NLHE Final Table Results

"These Are The Weeks You Live For"

Before WCOOP got underway, Veldhuis spoke to PokerNews about how much preparation he's put into his game for the series.

"I've done a lot of work over the summer. But I can play as well as I can and still have the worst financial series," said Veldhuis. "But in terms of preparation, how much I did over the summer to improve...that's all been class. If you look at the things that are taking place and next steps, it can only be a good series."

"It's always an adventure. These are the weeks you live for. We've got some crazy new things planned for the studio. We have a back wall that's interchangeable, so I can put a different graphic there. We're still figuring out all the stuff we can do in the space, but in the future, there will be smoke machines, lasers, and all that kind of stuff. We're gonna build up to that eventually.

Veldhuis Spins It Up to WCOOP #1

As Day 1 of the two-day tournament neared its end, Team Spraggy's Simon “C. Darwin2” Mattsson found himself on the wrong side of the bubble, bowing out just shy of the money. His exit secured the remaining players a guaranteed payday of $5,774, plus any bounties they had collected along the way. Ivan "ILS007" Stokes was the next to go, finishing in 11th place to claim the first payout before the tournament paused, setting the stage for the finale.

After Odeen's departure, the final nine merged onto one table, where Veldhuis came in seventh in chips while Aleksejs "APonakov" Ponakovs led the pack.

Veldhuis secured the first final table casualty, flopping queens and jacks to send "starwins :)" to outer space after the latter jammed in their short stack from the button with king-five. The added chips put Veldhuis into the middle of the pack with 32 big blinds. He soon took the overall chip lead after picking off Yuri "theNERDguy" Dzivielevski's river bluff-shove for a huge double up.

Ponakovs collected the rest of Dzivielevski's stack ahead of "zelvavegas" exiting in seventh. "PAX176" ran into aces to set up five-handed play.

Veldhuis' stack peaked and troughed, with Alexandros "Pwndidi" Theologis denting the Dutchman. Still, a massive flip against "aminolast" put Veldhuis back on top of the pile. He then widened the gap over his opponents, downing "rofllocktree" for "$5K in bounties and a ladder."

A brutal cooler ended the deep run for "aminolast". The player based in Canada flopped a queen-high straight while Veldhuis made two pair. The chips went in on the turn, and Veldhuis was left speechless after filling up on the river. From then on, Veldhuis' title was his to lose, and he eventually crossed the finish line after seeing off Ponakovs in third before vanquishing Theologis in a brief heads-up duel.

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Calum has been a part of the PokerNews team since September 2021 after working in the UK energy sector. He played his first hand of poker in 2017 and immediately fell in love with the game. Calum has written for various poker outlets but found his home at PokerNews, where he has contributed to various articles and live updates, providing insights and reporting on major poker events, including the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

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